I’D Rather Be Me: The Story of My Unusual Journey

By Jo Ayres

The book is all about a life that changed drastically. From
being a physically active person all of her life, earning a blackbelt
in Tae Kwon Do, and walking up to 6 miles a day. An
unknown illness struck her in 2013. Thanks to the staff of the
VA hospitals, and her own determination, she continues to live
a productive life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524617318

Jo Ayres

Jo earned a bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice in 1991. Shortly thereafter, she joined the United States Navy and spent time stationed in Naples, Italy and Ankara, Turkey. Afterwards, she found employment with a globally recognized company. Jo was a physically active person all of her life, earning a blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do, and walking up to 6 miles a day. An unknown illness struck her in 2013. Thanks to the staff of the VA hospitals, and her own determination, she continues to live a productive life.

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© 2016 Jo Ayres. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/18/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-1732-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-1731-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016910879

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

A word of thanks

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Saginaw, MI and Cape Coral, Fla VA hospitals, for their commitment to my care and continued improvement. I’d like to thank my parents, Dr. Don, and my neighbors Pat and Ray for the immense support they have provided me. And of course, I’d like thank the many friends and people I’ve met on this journey, who have offered me a lot of encouragement along the way. If it hadn’t been for all of you, my journey would have had a vastly different outcome.

To write a book or to not write a book

Before it was over, I would start to lose my eyesight. Once I would commando crawl through my yard to the front door of my house, and at times across the kitchen floor to the fridge because I could not walk. I would sleep on the floor because I was too weak to make it onto the couch. And after all of this and more, I would sit and think to myself, Is this what it’s like to die?

Almost from the very beginning of this adventure, people have been telling me that I ought to write a book. But trying to motivate me by telling me I really ’oughta wanna’ is really no motivation at all. Think about it for a minute, trying to get anyone to do anything because they ’oughtwanna’ rarely works. However, I was provided tools to accomplish this task and soon after I was out of the hospital, I started journaling about my experiences. It was slow going, partly because the story hadn’t happened yet, and partly because I do lazy really well. So I would tinker away at my story and I stalled. Until one day I was talking to a friend of mine who was in a recovery program for addiction and she told me that one of the steps of recovery is to give back. I thought about my time in AA and it occurred to me if I had stuck with that program I would probably know that. The truth is I didn’t care for AA and could not imagine giving back in that capacity. When I got home that day it dawned on me; maybe my way to give back is through this book. Not only to say thanks to the countless number of people who have helped me since the very beginning, but also to potentially help, or entertain, people I’ve never met. All of a sudden the book wasn’t about me anymore and that made me feel better and more motivated. If I can succeed in thanking, entertaining, or helping even one person then I’ve met my goal.

I need to explain the previous scope of my world so that people may understand exactly how much these events impacted me. In one sense I could say that these events were chronic in nature because they did not happen overnight, but, it could also be argued that when I finally gave in and asked for help…the need was both urgent and important.

So let me tell you some about my history. Shortly after earning a black belt in Tae Kwon Do I graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice. Soon after graduation I joined the U.S. Navy. I was trained as a communications specialist and graduated 3rd in my class. I was stationed overseas in Italy and later in Turkey. I enjoyed my time in the military immensely.

After my discharge I hired into a global company as a loss prevention officer. In the first two years that I was employed there I received certification as a medical first responder, a hazardous material technician and became firefighter I qualified.

I recognized early in my career that in order to be of value to the company I worked for, I needed to be willing to learn, change, move and grow. As a direct result of that I moved quite a bit among various sites, once I moved to a different state, and once I took a rotational assignment in another country (rotational meant 2 or 3 months there and a month or so back home).

During my rotational stint I was offered a position within the company to become an Ergonomic professional, and I started earning my certification in that field when the company reorganized and left me with 40 days to find another position within the company. I landed, not in my milieu – which was safety, but in a position in a lab. I was thankful for the opportunity to try something new. I didn’t want to leave the company – I had great benefits, a good-paying job and seniority. It was not in my genetic make-up to walk away from that scenario. Truth be told, I was not cut out for that job, but I tried to make the best of it. In 2012 the company cut 800 people. I was one of them. To this day I am not sure if I was more embarrassed or relieved by the situation I found myself in.

People have consistently asked me, What happened? and I sought a definitive answer. I had a basic need to put some semblance of order into what was tantamount to utter chaos. I have always felt that what happened to me was insidious- I didn’t see it coming. If there was a pattern, or some sort of formula to make sense of it all, then I remained clueless and I felt unbelievably frustrated at my inability to communicate what I felt should have been easy. It wasn’t until I talked to someone who introduced me to the concept of the downward spiral, and subsequently the upward spiral, that I finally found the answers I was seeking, well, some of them anyway. Thanks Dr. Don.

As for my particular downward spiral – the bad thing that happened was that I lost my job and wasn’t rehired anywhere. The first display of something awry was when I’d plan to sleep for five minutes and get up five hours later. Call for help? And say what? Hello, my symptoms are I’m tired and lethargic. The likely reply; Join the crowd. It just wasn’t troublesome enough. My trick knee giving me problems? It’s been that way for months – no cause for alarm.

So losing my job was bad; not getting rehired made me feel worth less and with no money coming in, I felt hopeless. Add the gradual physical issues – my inability to walk, see, and drive and the sense of isolation was prevalent. Sitting on my couch wondering, Is this what it’s like to die? was bad but it wasn’t until I couldn’t get on the toilet to pee that I felt utter powerlessness.

Not being able to get to and onto the toilet was what finally led me to my ‘self-triggered transition’ and let the upward spiral commence. This book is a great deal about the upward spiral.

The Descent – questions people ask

○ Why didn’t you call for help?

I didn’t call for help, in part, because I didn’t know how sick I was. I had let it go on too long. I didn’t realize how bad off I was until a friend of mine came over to help me write some checks, because I couldn’t see well. She told me how bad I looked, that I needed medical help, and that I looked severely dehydrated. I didn’t feel I had anyone to call. My parents were in another state and my closest relative was living two hours away from me. It never crossed my mind to call any of them. I had friends who lived closer but I had no intention of asking them for help either. Being sick and needing help was as foreign to me as it was to ask for help.

○ In hindsight would you have called for help sooner?

As they say, If hindsight were foresight we’d all be rich. Given the information I had ahead of the time – which was literally nothing – probably not. However, had I known how badly off I was – yes. The question remains; At what point would I have known it was time for help?

○ Who would you have called for help?

I still don’t know. At that point in time I felt isolated and alone. My friends have families of their own who need them at home. I tried to be sensitive to that fact whether or not I was sick. The most likely candidate would have been Kay because she is the one who came over to help me write checks.

Blind ambition-:

When I initially started losing my eyesight I thought it was because I had recently started using over-the-counter glasses to read. I figured I was due for a real prescription; so this explained why I couldn’t write checks, read a magazine or see my 70-inch TV clearly. I had blurred vision in the center of my sight which meant if I looked at someone in the face I couldn’t see his or her nose but I could see either one of his or her ears. It wasn’t until I drove to Walmart that I realized I couldn’t see distance either. After that last trip to Walmart I knew I couldn’t drive anymore. Of all of the things that happened to me during this time, losing my eyesight is what scared me the most.

On my last trip to Walmart, I parked near the cart return and grabbed a cart to use so that if my knee gave out I wouldn’t tip over. At this point I hadn’t eaten a lot of food, and I felt weak, but I had no idea just how weak I was. It wasn’t as if I had skipped breakfast that day; it felt more as if I’d skipped food for the past week. I remember I wanted to get some juice and that was at the back of the store. I picked up some stuff along the way. After I got the juice, I started to make my way back to the front of the store and it hit me about midway that I would never make it without some help. I was so tired and weak that I had to sit down somewhere. Luckily for me there were some folding chairs as part of a display. I sat there until I felt strong enough to make it to the front of the store and the checkout line. I went through the self-checkout line but I couldn’t manage so I had an employee help me while I went and sat in a chair in Subway. I had to go back, once they were done, to run my credit card and sign off. They asked me if I needed help getting to my car and I told them no; I would be just fine. I drove back home and didn’t drive again. I figured it was one thing to go out; drink and be unable to drive but still another to start out impaired. That seemed to me to be more irresponsible.

During this entire time I rationalized to myself (also known as denial) that as long as I could pee I was still okay. In hindsight that was a really dumb thought. Somehow I figured that if my internal functions were okay I still had a chance to be just fine. I really thought I’d get better on my own. Besides, I had no insurance, no job, and I was living on money I had managed to save. I felt I had no option but to get better on my own. At one point, on an unrelated health topic, my mom had said to me, Your health is more important, don’t worry about the money. Sometimes in life we don’t take our own advice. I figure that’s why it’s so easy to dispense it. It’s like that saying, Take my advice, I’m not using it. I’d like to think that if I saw a friend of mine in trouble, I would encourage him or her to get help, to the point of harassment. In reality, my friends didn’t have that option because I never said a word, at least, until I couldn’t pee.

After my difficult trip to Walmart I gradually lost my strength and balance. I started moving from my bed to my couch and chair in the living room by bracing myself on the wall or any piece of furniture within my reach. Eventually I could no longer get on my bed because it was too high and then I moved between the couch and the chair. As time went by, I just moved to and from my couch from the floor. I didn’t attempt to get into the chair anymore because it was a swivel chair. I was afraid the chair would turn as I launched myself into it from the floor and I would hit my head on the wall. From that point on, I lived on the couch and floor. This was after I had tried to make it to my mailbox one night.

On my way to the mailbox that night, I stepped into the road and my right leg gave out. I heard it crunch as I sank to the curb. I debated attempting to cross the road, regardless of my situation, but then I recalled the video game frogger from when I was a kid. I remembered how bad I was at it so I didn’t attempt to cross the road. I sat there on the curb for quite a while, thinking it was just my luck that I was stone cold sober and there were no police officers coming by to stop and help me back to my house. Eventually I commando-crawled across my yard to my front door, and into the house. That was the last time I walked without some sort of assistance.

During the time I was living on the couch and floor, I would scoot around on my butt using my arms to push me and sometimes using my feet to pull me. My friend Kay, the one who helped me write the checks the night I collapsed in the street, had dropped off some food. There were pretzels, a grilled cheese sandwich and various caffeine-free diet sodas. The night she helped me with my check, she told me I looked terrible and that I needed to get to the hospital. I replied I thought I’d get better, and if I didn’t get better within a week, I would seek medical help. I was hesitant to go because I didn’t have insurance. She told me that I looked severely dehydrated and reiterated that I needed medical help. She told me that if I didn’t seek help she would take me herself.

During this time my neighbors Pat and Ray went to Walmart to purchase some items for me. I had written them a check and a grocery list. On it were things like eggs, lunch meat, tomato juice, cheese, bread, and mayonnaise. I felt these were things that would fatten me up. The problem was, I couldn’t stand up at all, let alone cook eggs. I put the supplies they brought me in the fridge at a level I could reach from the floor. Eventually I managed to make myself a turkey sandwich by placing the items in my lap and dragging my body to the coffee table in the living room. I only ate half of that sandwich because I didn’t have an appetite.

One night,