Читать книгу Finding the Sun Through the Clouds - Dawnmarie Deshaies - Страница 23

Chapter 18

California: Round 1

We finally made it to our new home in Newport Beach, California. I loved the development we lived in. This was going to be such a new and exciting place to live in. I started to work at Victoria’s Secret as store manager at Fashion Island, an outdoor shopping mall in Newport Beach. Life was going really well. Robert had his own business dealing in the new and exciting world of rising technology. I worked forty-five to fifty hours a week. The company was great to work for, and my team was amazing. This was where I met my best friend, Jenna. We remain best friends to this day. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I mean, not only by her looks, but her heart was pure and filled with seemingly endless love as well. We worked long hours together because she was also a store manager for another VS store down the road. We had so much fun together.

Our new life as a married couple was going so well. Then the strange phantoms started happening again. I made a floor move late at night, and I began to feel the pins and needles all over my arms and feet. I started to notice that if I worked long hours with little sleep, the phantoms kept coming back. I remember telling Jenna about it. I confessed that I thought I was going crazy. I had been to so many doctors and had all the blood work imaginable, and they all said there was nothing wrong with me. So she suggested going to see a doctor for my headaches, vision problems, and neck pain. Maybe that could give me some light on what was wrong with an individual approach. With Jenna’s advice, I made an appointment, and the optometrist said I had twenty-twenty vision. My neck, according to the doctor, was having spasms, so they gave me a medication called Flexeril to help keep my symptoms from getting worse. The medication didn’t help. I continued to think, If this is just me, then I have to live with all these phantoms.

One day at work, I was talking with my team about moving some props and items around when I noticed that a whole table of clothing was gone. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two people with large garbage bags shoplifting from my store. I started to approach them, and they grabbed the bags and started to run. I ran after them and yelled to the team to call the police. As I was running in high heels, one of the lifters dropped the bag, while the other one kept running. Suddenly, as I was approaching the discarded bag when I felt my legs pull out from under me and I collapsed to the floor. The two lifters got away with the other large bag of merchandise. The mall security team came over to me to help me up and walk me back to the store.

I was shaking and couldn’t really feel my feet and legs. The mall security sat me down and had a medical team check me out. It felt like I had been knocked down by a truck full of bricks. The phantom fatigue and the pain were so intense I started to cry. Robert rushed to my work and took me to the hospital. They said I just pulled a leg muscle. The very next day, I was in more pain than I had ever felt before. My legs were weak, and my body was so fatigued. The phantoms surged and attacked from every angle, it seemed. I took the medication Flexural and popped a Xanax. I went to a specialist, and he said I had pulled my sciatic nerve. He gave me some medication, and I was out of work for three weeks.

With the medication, I could walk without feeling like I was going to fall flat on my face. My left hand, however, was always going numb on me. My visions continued to give me trouble. The idea of me losing my mind was the most outstanding thought in my head. Over those three weeks of recovery, I attended therapy three times a week for my legs. I would tell my therapist all the symptoms happening to me, and she looked at me like I was a hypochondriac. I almost thought she was right. I started to keep it all to myself. I pushed that unresolved thought as deep as I could.

I went back to work at Victoria’s Secret and continued my job with my all-too-famous smile. After work, I would go home feeling so fatigued, every damn day. Robert would ask me how I was doing, and I would tell him I was okay. I didn’t want him to worry. It was my problem, so I dealt with the everyday pains that had no name. It was around this time I coined the name phantoms. I didn’t want to be that wife that was always complaining, blaming my pain and worries on my persistent sickness. I stayed focused on my job and worked hard every day, just like all those days before. I made every day seem like everything was great. The only person I would tell my problems to was Jenna. She always agreed there was something wrong—the doctors were obviously missing something. These symptoms shouldn’t be considered normal for any person. Jenna and I would laugh a lot together. She got married on September 4. She married her best friend, Bob, who also worked in retail. They looked like the perfect couple. Bob was a giant with dark hair, and Jenna was every man’s dream. Before we knew it, Robert and I had been living in Newport Beach for four years.