Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Resolving to Change the Future, While Thinking of the Past

As the first month of 2019 comes to a close I am wakened up today by a strange dream. For some reason I find myself in 1997, in my sister's old room at our previous house. I am talking to the 12 year old version of her, the thing about my dreams is that I can speak and read in them so I could hear myself talking and understand what was being said to me. Why 1997 of all years? I have no idea, maybe it was because in 1997 I was just starting high school and for many that is the beginning of the road that shapes them into the adults they become later. I was 14 and I didn't know what month in 1997 I was in so if it was January I would have still been in grade 8, we don't call it middle school up here. Up here elementary school runs from junior kindergarten to grade 8, THEN you get into high school from grade 9 to 12. Grade 13 or OAC (Ontario Academic Course) has not existed for 20 years I was in the second last year to get the option of going to OAC. Anyway, I was being asked questions that normally one would be taught in Sex Ed, don't ask me why my 12 year old sister was asking me about that, dreams rarely have any sense of logic to them. And then I saw my 45 year old father and my 43 year old mother come up the stairs as well as my 14 year old self. My parents were bringing dinner on a tray for some reason to the bedroom we were in and my 14 year old self saw me and just turned to go back down the stairs. They saw the older version of me sitting there and the younger version and instead of freaking out, like one would assume one would when seeing two versions of your daughter, my dad said to me "What year are you from?" My parents are sci-fi fans so I guess that means when they see two versions of their daughter they just assume time travel. The next thing they say to me is "Tell us about you and the future." My reply is "Do you really want to know that?" And then I reach full consciousness and there goes that. However, I still think about it now like where would that conversation have gone? I don't actually wake up or get out of bed I am lying there still thinking about what I would have said to the younger versions of my parents and myself.

I suppose 1997 was sort of a pivotal year for us, I was starting high school and that is a milestone for any family when the oldest is starting high school. Had I had the chance to tell my parents what was coming what would I have said to them? Well, for starters I would think that their first question would be "Is everyone healthy and happy?" and I would have to say no. My sister has become a smoker and a drinker like my grandfather, my dad has pinched nerves and degenerating discs in his spine, mom has cholesterol issues, my uncle had major heart problems, and I have MS. Of course I would not just drop that bomb on them so bluntly, I would have to ease them into it. First thing I would say is no, we aren't and if their next question is who and why I would start by telling my dad he needs to stop working 60-70 hours a week right now. That pain he has in his back, it's being caused by a tiny little tumour that is growing around his spinal cord at the base of his skull putting pressure on the nerves, and that tumour is not cancerous but is caused by stress. His chiropractor is the one who finally suspects something else is wrong when my dad is getting no back pain relief from the sessions he attends with him. My dad's chiropractor literally saved his life. This was discovered in 1999, two years after the time I happened to land in. My mom needs to get her cholesterol under control as well, I am not sure if the cholesterol medication Crestor existed in 1997 but if not then any family doctor can prescribe whatever the alternative at the time was for her. This is especially significant for my mom because her mom died in 1976 from a heart attack, she was only in her 40's which in 1997 was the same age as my mom was. My sister started smoking when she was 16 because at the time my grandmother had just died in February 2001 from lung cancer and instead of remembering that her cancer was caused by over 50 years of smoking, my sister still starts. The drinking comes later after my sister takes off and starts living with friends. She was never one to resist peer pressure that well.

Then we come to me, in Canada at least 100 000 people have MS and for our country's small population size that is a huge percentage of the people. I happened to hit all three of the criteria to get MS as well as getting the bad end of luck odds. Studies show that in those who develop MS, it has been linked to a vitamin D deficiency the mother has if she's carrying the baby through the winter months when it's cold out and not much sunlight. I happened to be a baby that was carried through the winter months. The chances of MS are also higher for those living in northern countries where the sun doesn't shine as strong or for as long, like Canada. Also if you're born female, it tends to be worse in men but also rarer for some reason. If I could tell my 14 year old self something it would be to be confident, I am far more capable of handling a higher level of school subjects than I think I am. Ontario's school curriculum in 1997 had three levels of courses you could take; Basic, General, and Advanced. I stuck with general level courses because I didn't think I was smart enough to handle the Advanced levels. This is not true, I found that I could have very easily done all advanced level courses and STILL done well enough to earn subject awards for the highest grades. Book work and memorization were my strongest suits. I would have also told 14 year old me to start taking the same doses of vitamin D and vitamin B12 that I take now. I don't know if it would have changed my odds of being diagnosed with MS in 2016 if I had been taking the same doses I take now for the previous 19 years, for all I know it could have built up my body's reserves of the vitamins and prevented the MS from ever triggering in the first place.

My uncle's heart problems were probably existent long before we started to notice his symptoms. The uncle I am talking about is my dad's younger brother, he is also mentally challenged. For his entire life my grandparents tried to deal with having a mentally challenged child as best they could for the time they grew up in. They would often leave him to his own devices or simply ignore him. My dad tells me that he was often told to leave his brother alone when he would do something to annoy him. My grandparents tolerated his mentally challenged state and didn't do much of anything to help my uncle find the support he needed because of it. They never pushed him to brush his teeth which led to him having to get them all removed in 2016, the heart surgeon would not operate on him until his rotten and broken teeth had all been removed completely before hand. Keep in mind my uncle will be 65 this year and because he was born in 1950's there was no tolerance for the mentally ill or challenged, they were shipped off to asylums often and forgotten about. My grandparents were Depression Era born and as you can imagine the stigma existed even back then against the mentally challenged and ill.

What does this mean for my future? The past shapes the present and if I had changed everything back in that pivotal year of 1997 my present self would cease to exist, having no reason to go back in time to change things in the first place, a paradox. Many scientists agree that time travel only flows in one direction, forwards and going back is not currently possible according to our current level of scientific knowledge. All I can do now is use that past to change my future. This year my New Year's resolutions were not about losing weight or being healthy, as I am right now I am okay and keeping my MS symptoms under control with the vitamins. Even though I am aware of the fact that the vitamins are only a stop-gap measure and to truly manage them I need much stronger medications. They all have side effects and cost a lot of money I am not sure I really want to deal with those right now. I need to get some money coming in, either from a job or finally applying for disability. I want to move out of my parents' place this year and that requires money. So my resolutions involving making that happen. January is always a terrible month for me, I ALWAYS get sick for the first two weeks of it and I just don't want to do anything. Also not many places are hiring in January, as they have just finished their Christmas rush and are now cutting loose their temporary hires. I still look though, not all industries have Christmas hires or even get Christmas rushes. There are still 11 months in 2019 left to make that happen so I don't have to do it all right now, I can get the ball rolling in January which I have.

As this year goes on, there will be more entries here about my progress and what's happening. This is why I started this blog to begin with. When I have strange dreams that wake me up like today, I come here to write them out and what I think will happen because of them.