I began my senior high school year in August 1976 and had enough credits to graduate early, so I went to college at night and continued to attend high school during the day. By December, I was bored with high school and wanted to move on, so I began college full time in January of 1977. 
I was accepted early to Indiana University in Bloomington and expected to go in August 1977. My grandparents wanted me to attend my high school graduation since neither of them attended school past the eighth grade. I was already attending college, and it seemed as though I was traveling backward by going to high school for a ceremony. I have always hated ceremonies. Christenings, graduations, weddings, and funerals, I do my best to miss them all and prefer to miss the last one of my own. I succumbed to guilt and attended my graduation.
In August, I was eagerly planning to go away to college. I had always worked multiple jobs while putting away every penny. I was paying for my room and board. With a scholarship for the rest, still, most of my savings were depleted quickly.
At the end of August, my grandfather was hospitalized in great pain and diagnosed with multiple myeloma. The cancer had already spread, and we would only be able to try to keep him comfortable. I went to Bloomington, and left Grandpa two hours away but never far away in my heart.
It may have been the stress learning of Grandpa’s illness or just time for my chronic pain to begin. My pain levels rose considerably, and I saw many doctors who all said with my congenital anomaly I should expect pain. They prescribed opiates that made me so sick I was constantly vomiting.
My first year at Indiana University, I arrived on crutches. I lived on the first floor, but with the pain, I was unable to climb the stairs. In an eleven-story building, those living on the top floors didn’t look kindly on those who didn’t walk up the stairs if they were on the lower floors. There were looks of disdain from those in the elevator if you had the nerve to push the number “1,” so there were times when I rode to an upper floor and then came back down. This experience was heaping emotional pain on the genuine physical pain.
I drove back to Louisville on Thursday afternoons for the weekends for physical therapy. My Grandpa needed radiation treatments on Fridays. My mother worked while her sister couldn’t be bothered to spend the time with him. I enjoyed this extra time with my grandfather. He was quite old when I was born and wasn’t interested in being a “fun” grandpa. He was a gardener, selling his boysenberries, raspberries, green beans, lettuce, and tomatoes to local farm stands. My youth was spent picking fruits and vegetables and little else.
I had to drop a class or two in my first semester so that I could be available to him. After my Thursday classes, I would jump into my car and drive the two hours through the beautiful country roads of Southern Indiana, passing Amish carriages and old grist mills.
A leading prosthetist was coming from Colorado to Louisville, and I needed to get a prescription from a doctor for a new leg. The prosthetist had developed a new procedure to make a leg that would help with my gait. Finally, I was excited and felt hopeful. I went to the doctor prescribing the opiates and asked him for a prescription for a new leg. It should have been simple, but he wanted to do surgery on my spine. I firmly resisted, and he said he would not prescribe a new leg. Instead, he wrote a letter stating that I was “..too emotionally unstable to have a new leg.” Luckily they did not listen to him, and I was able to get the new leg. I went to the local medical board to complain, and they would not listen. Years later, I learned that this doctor had been responsible for the death of a young girl and removed from the state medical board.
I got my new leg, and although it did help, it was not the answer I expected, and the pain persisted…but so did I.
By the end of the semester, I was exhausted and completely out of money. Not only had I sold all of my books, I even sold my “Earth Boots.”I went to the Joslin Clinic in Boston for their education and medical program to help with my diabetes. It was a frigid and snowy December. I spent my birthday and Christmas in the hospital depressed with diabetes, the physical pain, added to the emotional pain of my grandfather’s illness. I saw psychologists who told me they understood my depression, but realistically, with Type 1 Diabetes, I should not plan to live to be a grandmother. I did not know how I would ever earn enough money to afford a new leg and pay for several injections of insulin a day, as well as testing my urine multiple times daily. With the increasing depression, I stopped taking my insulin injections. My sister came to see me and gave me hope for my future of a life with my family.
I wasn’t able to go back to Bloomington, so I got a job at a local convenience store working long hours. It was miserable, but I did earn much-needed money. I was able to spend months with my grandparents learning everything I could from them from his attending the Harrison County Fair in 1900 to the best gardening ideas. It turned out he was quite funny, and we would laugh together. Looking back, it seems odd that we were laughing through such dire circumstances.
In September 1978, I lost my grandfather. It was tough because we had become so close, but I received a great gift; the gift of spending time with my family. Grandpa died quietly in his sleep at the hospital. His pain finally ended.