news&views Autumn 2018 | Page 10

Opinion Val Finnemore My Rocky Trail to Retirement With great anticipation, I could see light at the end of a tunnel that I had entered well over two decades ago! My plan was to retire from a gratifying teaching career in December of 2016. I anticipated counting down my final school days, then raising my arms in celebration as I walked out of that tunnel into the sunny liberation of retirement. Little did I know that I was to take a breathless plummet into the combined worlds of E. Munch’s Scream and Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory. On June 23, 2014, I was lounging on my deck contemplating the beauty of my yard and life in general, but my thoughts drifted to the declining physical condition that I had been experiencing since March. I had painful mouth ulcers and was unable to eat properly, which was leading to greater than usual fatigue and weakness by this time in the school year. Tears unexpectedly fi lled my eyes as I saw the writing on the proverbial wall, and my intuition was telling me that I was unlikely to make a full recovery by September. However, I was determined to endure to the end of the year with my students. I had been working part-time the last few years because of previous medical conditions. If I needed an extended medical leave beyond September to recover, I would not be able to pay my bills based on the allotted income from my part-time salary. I had to retire! The fi nal week of school 10 | arta.net was a whirlwind of winding up with my students, conferring with my principal, handing in my resignation, and submitting the required forms to begin retirement — not to mention cleaning out years of accumulated teaching materials from a classroom and storage area. On July 17, 2014, I arrived in dire condition to an appointment with my rheumatologist. He immediately asked my friend to wheel me across the walkway to the emergency department at the University of Alberta Hospital. This physical whammy proved not to be a quick fi x! I had again wandered into the wiley world of the ‘wolf’ by encountering a multifaceted lupus fl are-up that looked very diff erent from my previous fl ares. My fl are-ups usually presented with painful, red, and swollen joints. This time, my immune system went haywire with a litany of symptoms that would endure for the next year and a half. The painful mouth ulcers made eating diffi cult, and weakness and signifi cant muscular atrophy required months of using a walker. I had blistering rashes, and the skin on my fi ngers peeled, making them very painful. Pericarditis was aff ecting my heart. I suff ered two unexpected medically induced allergic reactions. Weakness and fatigue were continuous challenges. Eventually, having baffl ed the doctors, I underwent six months of outpatient chemotherapy to knock out my immune system in order to reboot it. Two cataract surgeries were also thrown into the mix. Finally, I had a bout of pneumonia that warranted my third hospital stay. It was quite a rollercoaster ride of decline and recovery throughout that year and a half. Mentally, I suff ered states of disbelief, disappointment, anger, and depression. So far, my retirement had been a physical and mind-bending bomb blast!