Forward

Getting the glorious news that I had been selected to manage a hospital in Southeast Africa meant that I would pass a rigid physical examination with lots of laboratory testing and to begin a series of inoculations to enter foreign countries. The excitement of foreign missionary work had been with me since age seven. Nearing the ripe age of fifty meant leaving behind two adult sons, two grandchildren, a host of friends and a successful career in long-term care administration. Protection consisted of shots and pills and such for protection against everything from Yellow Fever to Rabies. I was to start taking chlorquin tablets to build up immunity against Malaria.

I had always been on the management end of health care and left all those medical debates and decisions to those so trained. My nurse colleague made arrangements for our pill taking amounts and times and faithfulness to the task. I took my turn at other duties more related to training schedule departure dates and the like. We arrived in upstate New York to experience a month of intense foreign service orientation. I thought my recent mid-life weight gain was slowing me down. My colleague was comprehending things in training that seemed to just float over my head. Never daring to question what was happening, I continued to blame the weight gain and all those shots that could possibly make us feel badly a few days.

Arriving in Portugal a few weeks later, I collapsed upon entering our apartment and slept for eight hours without moving, while she got acquainted with the beautiful living arrangement, scouted the neighborhood for grocery stores and bus stops. Two days later it was time for us to enter language training. Oh sure, the reason she was learning Portuguese so much easier was her background in Latin in nursing school. Oh well, there will be equalization along the way, I thought.

We continued our daily routine of pills, then more shots, then time for that long anticipated flight to Africa. Our work began. Several weeks passed into months and the civil war was carrying on and our hospital was serving the injured of both sides along with Malnourished being the primary diagnosis on all admissions and Malaria being the second on all admissions. Then came the third and main cause for their arrival in the emergency room (usually) - that being war-related atrocities of which most Americans can not fathom.

One, then the other of us, began having episodes of Malaria. She would be down a day or two at the most and spring back. For me, no way. Fear for my life would fly through the mission station, making news in the Church office 500 miles away where that news would be transmitted 10,000 miles back around the world to the New York office. Reserves of four different treatments would be administered with the local folks praying that their missionary friend would not die on their hands. Plans would be made and I would be shipped stateside for medical leave, recovery and return to the most interesting and fulfilling job of my life.

Five years and eight documented bouts like I have just described and I was brought to Atlanta, GA for further testing and several months medical leave. Upon completing that course of action I was sent to New York to work in the finance office of our mission agency. I contacted a private physician there who had 35 years experience in Malaria work, hoping that he would have a formula for freeing me of what seemed to be post-malaria complications. He tested and observed me for several months with a final dismissal of not providing clearance to even leave the States. Supposedly there was a heart murmur or some similar minor reason he provided.

In order to return to frontline missions work, I took an assignment in New Mexico with a K-12 school. That position provided schooling benefits for my adopted children who were still in Africa. I had managed to accumulate enough vacation and sick time to stop over in West Texas for Ordination and gall bladder surgery. Both programs were successfully accomplished. I returned for the post-op check up to report the instantaneous relief from the gall stone surgery but I continued with this dreadful sensation of fatigue, particularly in my back muscles. I then asked, "would there be any chance of this problem being linked to Myasthenia Gravis since I had had a thymectomy in 1978 --- as a result of chest pain? An appointment was set with the neurologist and eight days into my new assignment (and new insurance plan) I was given the diagnosis of MG.

Starting a new medication called Mestinon, I continued to work long hours, thinking the medication would make the difference. As with many new assignments in the world of finances I had come upon an interesting challenge of budget problems that no one wanted to claim --- meaning longer hours and more stress. It took eight months of stress over the scale before my body said enough and shut down right into a MG crisis.

Most folks would have been willing to stop back up the road several years but I was one of those die-hards that kept going. I had cut my teeth on Management by Objective, setting all sorts of records for resolving management problems and made lots of money for ownership as results. Why was I so driven? Why did I have to prove to family, co-workers, and to me that my strength was equal to my size - extra large?

I did not know. I just knew it must be done.

After the MG crisis I began recuperation slowly. Some days I seemed to go backwards then to regain a little only to loose ground again. I had decided that may be buried in all this was a point or two of anger that had not been processed. I sought out our pastoral counselor for our church. When we inventoried after not three or four sessions that I thought would be sufficient, but 18 months' worth, we were able to identify thirteen points of grieving. Still, a lot of questions remained in my mind about the personality and the disease and how could they work together to benefit someone - how could I use those two factors to re-enter mission work.

One of the great blessings of illness is that you can be recipient to many cards, letters, phone calls, visits and e-mails. Somewhere along that part of my journey I came in contact with a childhood friend. She brought her husband along and they came to visit me after forty-two years of not seeing one another. What a wonderful visit! We have continued to stay in close contact through the wonderful advances of technology called e-mail. They sent a magnet belt to try on the muscle fatigue. Then she found a book about Myasthenia Gravis and asked if I had read it.

That little book has been a missing link in understanding Myasthenia Gravis and the personality involvement.  When I began reading Clete Gress', "Beyond the Limits", I began writing notes in the margins, underlining, making references, remembering dates and incidents. Ultimately I began getting acquainted with the man who has written words in algebraic equations, personality traits, and sequential steps of behavior. He has done this in a simplistic way that makes this little book my best advisor to living with Myasthenia Gravis.

Clete Gress is a man who has lived forty years with the disease because he has figured out long ago that personality is a major part of the governing of entering the world of MG and living there after one has entered. I can only say "Thanks Friend." As he brings to the internet the edition, I look forward to the freshness of breath of the Holy Spirit to bless him for the strength needed to accomplish this task so that many others may have the opportunity to find some Peace in mountain streams and contentment in the forests of one's Soul.

Rev. Carolyn S. Belshe, BSOE, MBA, MDiv.
Ordained Minister and Commissioned
Missionary with General Board of Global Ministries
The United Methodist Church.