From Laura Hillenbrand's Facebook Page

[Who Me?]

Laura Hillenbrand

1 hr ·
On the afternoon of March 22, 1987, when this photo was taken, I was nineteen, a sophomore at Kenyon College, an athlete, a straight-A student, enveloped in sweet friendships, healthy and happy. At 9:30 that night, as I rode back to school from spring break in my best friend Lincoln's old Mercedes, a deer brushed past my window a breathtaking millimeter away, so close I could see the swirl of hair around his nostrils. An instant later, a blazing meteor shimmered over the car and vanished into the hills ahead. It was then, in a singular instant of startled wonder on a dark Ohio road, that I felt the first symptoms of the disease that would leave me bedbound for years, housebound for decades, in a realm of suffering far beyond the reach of words.

March 22 was, for many years, a day I met with the deepest grief. But someone I love taught me how to see it so differently, as a day to mark my distance from the past; a day to celebrate all the gifts I have been given, the love that showers down on me, and the life that never stopped beating in me; a day to be grateful to the hardest beams of my soul that refused to be felled, even when I was too weak to speak or roll my body over in bed or find a rational reason to go on; a day on which to gaze with happy laughter on the wonderland I see awaiting me; and now, a day to look back on the last radiant, magical year, in which I took a risk beyond imagining and landed on strong legs, in a new home in a paradise across the country, with the person I love, in a body that is at last leaving frailty behind and carries all the promise it held at nineteen.

There is an Aztec Camera song that always comes to my mind on this day. One stanza runs over and over in my head:
It rises up to let me know
It's not so deep
I'm not so slow

Today is no day of grief. I will spend it as I intend to spend every day left to me. I will leap into joy.

 

[Hello!]

I saw this too. She's a great writer, but this bit is confusing.

and now, a day to look back on the last radiant, magical year, in which I took a risk beyond imagining and landed on strong legs, in a new home in a paradise across the country, with the person I love, in a body that is at last leaving frailty behind and carries all the promise it held at nineteen.

Is she recovering? Dreaming of recovering? So far she has not answered this question. If she's better what did she do?

 

[Hello!]

I think she was going for the princess Di look.

 

[Strike me lucky]

Is the deer encounter insinuating lyme disease?

 

[Hello!]

I imagined it to be symbolic of her innocence and youth which she saw up close, then it was gone. But I did wonder about Lyme, too.

 

[Who Me?]

I've never heard her mention lymes.

 

[Remy]

Almost everyone on that thread is asking the same question...are you recovered, from what and how? And yet, she doesn't answer. It's her right, of course, to share or not share her medical journey with people, but she has to know how frustrating that is just by reading the comments. Why be so vague?

 

[Cort]

Almost everyone on that thread is asking the same question...are you recovered, from what and how? And yet, she doesn't answer. It's her right, of course, to share or not share her medical journey with people, but she has to know how frustrating that is just by reading the comments. Why be so vague?

Very frustrating.

 

[Danesh]

Just found a two year old printed (edited) interview and podcast (which is complete) with Stanford School of Medicine, to which Cort already posted a link. Its title uses a phrase from this above FB post ---, "Leaving Frailty Behind." I was also trying to find out what are those new treatments she has found helpful. She does not reveal them in the interview/podcast. However, she does describe her process of very slowly moving forward in tiny steps with activity she could previously not tolerate. And the wonder of experiencing the world outside her home and bedroom... for which I long!
http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2016summer/leaving-frailty-behind.html#audio0
Worth listening to.
Denise B

 

[Merida]

@Danesh @Remy
Laura H.’s experience at age 19 is mysterious at least. I read it several years ago and thought it was odd, but didn’t pay much attention to details. But a few years ago my husband and I saw a very strange object in the San Luis Valley near Great Sand Dunes. It was a very bright light with an odd halo around it moving across the night sky - silently and at a steady pace. We watched with binoculars as the light began to exude a bluish hue, and a triangular craft with rounded corners took shape. Within 10 or 15 seconds the entire object just blinked out and was gone. Three other people also observed this.

So, curiosity led me to attend MUFON meetings, then 2 conferences where I spoke with people who claimed Contact, and heard their stories. Wow. There were several people who told of the Visitors initially taking the form of animals - especially rabbits and deer. They also mentioned “receiving” certain gifts and psychic experiences. Often the people they were with were not aware ( ie ‘asleep’ or not remembering) what happened.

A year or so ago I re-read Laura H.’s account “A Sudden Illness” and realized that her unusual experience at age 19 was a seamless fit to the stories I had head from people who have had Contact.

It is important to realize that Disclosure is happening - probably due to Tom DeLong and To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. The main directors of this group are a stellar panel of scientific experts and engineers. Check it out. Also, I understand that Gary Nolan’s Lab ( Stanford) is involved.

Also, Kathleen Marden ( author, Contactee) did an informal study of the Contactees and found that about 40 percent developed chronic fatigue syndrome.

So, the strangeness continues and maybe even deepens.

 

[Forebearance]

Wow, @Merida !

I think that Laura's feeling better may be at least partly due to her moving away from Washington, DC, which is known to have a lot of mold toxins in the outdoor air, to a place that is very dry and less moldy. If she was lucky enough to have moved to a house that didn't have a toxic mold problem, that would have helped too.

Regardless of why it happened, I am very happy for her!

 

[Merida]

@Forebearance
I am always encouraged and grateful to hear stories of improvement. There is no one I admire more than Laura H. My comments’s were in response to @Who Me? and the quotes from Laura’s Facebook page where she briefly discussed the strange beginnIng of her severe illness.
Her original story was published in the New Yorker and called “A Sudden Illness.”

I live in L.A. - in a very dry San Fernando Valley. No mold in my house or anywhere - severe drought. But I remain ill and very symptomatic. We had a large support group over many years. I appreciate the mold issue, but think it must be secondary to a different primary issue?

 

[Forebearance]

Hi again Merida,

Yeah, I remember when her article in the New Yorker came out. In my 2nd paragraph, I was responding to the people who were wondering why she might have gotten better.

I've heard from fellow mold avoiders that eastern Oregon is good, in terms of outside air quality. Please forgive my shorthand of referring to the dry climate there. There are a lot of factors involved in outdoor air quality. Mold avoiders seem to rate the LA area as having poor air quality.

Yeah, I think that whatever our primary issue is, it results in a sensitized immune system that reacts to many environmental toxins. When explaining ME/CFS to people who don't know about it, I describe it as making me "easy to poison".

 

[Forebearance]

P.S. by Wow I meant that the ideas about people with ME/CFS being contactees are pretty hair-raising. It's a shocking subject.

 

[Merida]

@Forebearance
I don't know what the truth is. But in my nearly 70 years, as a daughter, sister, wife, parent, grandparent, , I have experienced many things that help me appreciate that Humans are more complex, and have more dimensions, than I ever imagined during my first 3 decades !! Onward.