In one of my all time favorite pieces of The Colbert Report, Stephen goes on a journey to sell his portrait for megabucks at a New York art gallery. He goes the whole nine yards—he has it appraised by several art appraisers, he learns all about the art scene from the art curator Simon de Pury, he shmoozes it up at the pre-auction cocktail party, and he crashes the actual auction.
The whole time, he’s happy as a clam (and a little tipsy at the cocktail party) and keeps sing-songing variations of “it’s happening!”
After it aired, I immediately adopted the entire series of phrases. I was soon greeting people by calling out, “is it happening?” or “there’s a happening happening!” every time I felt excited about something. This was occurring at a time when I was coming out of some darkness and finally seeing some light, relief. And it was my spring semester of my senior year of high school, things were very much happening. (Although they weren’t as spectacular as Stephen Colbert dancing to “Gin & Juice” with a Frenchman.)
*
Dysautonomia Awareness Month kicked ass all because of volunteers. (Pardon my French.)
I burst into tears the day I saw that Nasdaq billboard in Times Square was lit up turquoise with the word dysautonomia plastered all over it.
It’s happening.
Two years ago, I’d never heard of dysautonomia. My mom and I had trouble pronouncing it—her proclivity for other languages and their rules had her falling over syllables. And I couldn’t keep track of what letters went where. But we got it right pretty quickly.
Two years ago, as we were learning what this disorder was, we were also explaining it to my doctors. We were shopping for cardiologists who had also heard of it, who had heard of POTS. Some would say “no” and offer up a treatment plan, a treatment plan that was completely wrong for me.
Now? Things are different.
Today, I’m getting e-mails from my cousin at a conference for anesthesiology with pictures of poster presentations on POTS.
Today, my friend who works for a T-shirt design company is getting tons of custom orders for Dysautonomia Awareness shirts.
Today, my doctors are collaborating together on new projects. There’s a lot that they do know, and everything they don’t, they’re making plans together to figure out and to treat me in the process.
It’s happening.
*
I recently got some potentially incredible news that my insurance company might be coming through for me on something big. I’m staying ridiculously cautious in my optimism, but this, like seeing the Nasdaq billboard lit up turquoise, was one of those “cry your eyes out, this is happening” moments.
I’ve been pretty fragile lately. My doctors have been wonderful, reminding me that expectations change when circumstances change. I felt like I wasn’t achieving anything and like I was cutting myself too much slack. I should just push harder, that’ll fix it, right? I wanted results, I wanted to see something happen.
But there are some times when pushing won’t fix it. There are some times when you have to pull back a little bit. A lot of people believe that you have to keep goinggoinggoing all the time to treat dysautonomia, but on the advice of my doctors, I’m pulling back just a little bit. I’m just going to keep going at a slower speed and see if I can make things happen that way.
So I’m working on being good to myself, and I’m working on those happenings.
And in the mean time, big things are happening for dysautonomia.
And that’s pretty freaking cool.
(Please, do yourself a favor and watch all three parts of Stephen’s quest to sell his portrait–it was for charity, after all: part one, part two, part three)