An Attitude and a Way of Life
WHEN I WAS LOOKING for jobs a few years ago, I almost didn’t even apply to Wabash. I thought, A college for men? What would they want with me?
But as I looked deeper into Wabash I found educational values that I share, great facilities for my research, and, yes—women on the faculty and staff.
I heard the saying “Wabash Always Fights” before I arrived on campus. I thought it was kind of endearing. Like me saying “Go Cats” to my Northwestern friends or “AOT” to my sisters in Kappa Delta. I liked it even more when I heard it at a football game. It was a positive message when the game started to get a little scary, and I was used to fans at larger schools booing their own team when mistakes were made.
I didn’t really get it.
But I knew that there was something about Wabash that I didn’t feel at any other place, and the decision to come here was an easy one. The motivated students and colleagues that I met, along with all the resources I felt I needed to teach effectively in the classroom and the lab—how could I say no?
Two years later, I realize that it was much more than that. Wabash Always Fights isn’t just a motto. It’s an attitude and a way of life that I identify with.
WHEN I WAS 14, I was tall for my age and played almost every sport. My favorite was volleyball, and my mom drove me around the Midwest in the predawn hours so I could play in tournaments with my club team. I had some knee problems, but with a basketball star as a big brother, I always saw him icing his knees for tendinitis, so it seemed perfectly normal.
When I started to sit out practices because my back hurt too much, my coach told my mom I was way too young to be having these problems. We saw doctor after doctor. I underwent a litany of tests. They found nothing to explain the level of widespread pain I was having, and I had to quit sports.
Eventually, one doctor asked me a simple question: Do you cry when you’re in pain? When I said yes, he diagnosed me with fibromyalgia.
You may have heard of fibromyalgia—it affects nearly six million Americans and although there is no cure, there seems to be an ad for Lyrica or Cymbalta during every TV commercial break. But 16 years ago, more than half the doctors I saw didn’t even recognize it as a real disease. There is a huge range of symptoms, some of which seem to contradict one another. Many doctors just saw it as something to tell patients when they were stumped. But there I was, 15 years old and faced with a chronic, degenerative disease that no one really understood.
My mom did everything she could to help me cope with the news. She took me to a support group for people with fibromyalgia. It usually affects middle-aged women, so I was definitely out of place. “I lost my job because of fibromyalgia,” one woman said. “My husband left me because of fibromyalgia,” said another. They were bitter, angry, and hopeless, which only scared me more. I decided in that moment that I would never blame anything in my life on fibromyalgia. I would never let it define me.
It was a split-second decision made by a scared little kid, but I stuck by it. I wouldn’t let fibromyalgia stand in the way of anything I knew I could do. I would never be an athlete, but I was pretty smart. I worked hard and got into the Integrated Science Program at North-western University. In my freshman year, walking the one-mile distance between classes became too painful, and my mom tirelessly fought with the school to figure out a way to help. But there was no feasible option; my doctor decided that I was legally handicapped.
THAT’S STILL HARD FOR ME TO ADMIT. I wasn’t in a wheelchair. Every time I used my parking pass, I wondered if people were judging me. Sometimes they called me out on it, accusing me of laziness or of stealing a spot from someone who actually needed it. They had no idea that I was mentally counting the steps it took me to get to the door and hoping I’d make it without having to stop for a rest.
The handicapped status was supposed to be temporary, until we could find an effective treatment, but it lasted for the next nine years. Through college, I powered through the pain, hiding it, and only discussing it with those closest to me. Even then, I didn’t like to talk about it because it reminded me that there were things I couldn’t do.
I tried every treatment in the book, and saw more and more doctors. I got X-rays, CAT scans, and MRIs, changed my diet, took supplements, had acupuncture, massage therapy, physical therapy, aqua therapy, went to chiropractors, rheumatologists, and orthopedic surgeons, got botox shots to stop the muscle spasms, and tried Lyrica, Cymbalta, and a dozen other drugs that were thought to have a chance against fibromyalgia.
Exercise was considered the best treatment for fibromyalgia, but the pain was too much. Even the physical therapists didn’t feel comfortable giving me exercises because I couldn’t do them without significant pain. I had to take narcotics to curb the pain, an incredibly tough decision because clarity of mind is so important to me. People doubted me and treated me like an addict seeking pills.
MY DREAM WAS ALWAYS TO TEACH, but I wasn’t sure I could physically stand long enough to make it through a 50-minute class period. Ten minutes of standing was my maximum. But when I graduated, I called upon that promise I made to myself as a 15-year-old and decided that I was smart enough to get my PhD.
I headed to University of Wisconsin-Madison with a fellowship in hand. I didn’t tell my advisor about my health issues because I didn’t want him to doubt my abilities or wonder if he could count on me. I just wanted him to see me as a normal, productive, successful graduate student.
I wasn’t really prepared for the long hours, and most meals happened at the vending machine, my stress level skyrocketed, and the pain increased. I put everything I had into keeping up with my research. I would collapse when I got home. My parents made the trip from Milwaukee to help keep my apartment in order, do my grocery shopping, my laundry, and take care of my dog. I was lucky to find a group of people that I could confide in, and they generously supported me as friends and coworkers. I had to ask for help dozens of times a day and they never hesitated, even though they were dealing with their own issues and time constraints. I would be working some days with tears streaming down my face but I was too stubborn to go home, and my boss never doubted that I would get things done.
Around my fourth year, my doctor told me I had to rearrange my priorities to focus on my health, that graduate school and teaching had to take a back seat. Even my parents suggested that it might be time to face reality and admit I couldn’t do it anymore.
I was shocked. I had ignored everything else in my life with the singular goal of getting my PhD so I could become a professor. What other options did I have? Give up on my dreams? Give up on the life that I knew I wanted? That didn’t seem like an option at all. I decided to keep fighting.
I got through grad school with an offer that would change my life. Luke Lavis, a good friend of mine at UW-Madison, asked me to work with him at Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus. He knew all about my health issues and promised that my health would be a priority and we would just have fun doing science. We worked collaboratively to foster good discussion and followed interesting leads in a field that still inspires me today.
But here’s the difference: Sometimes, I went home to relax, started to cook my own food, and tried to take one day off on the weekend. I realized that “fighting” didn’t necessarily mean pushing through every obstacle with brute force. I needed to change my strategy to succeed in the long term—to work smarter, not harder.
In the first year, the lower stress level allowed me to wean off of my pain meds. Then I got on the elliptical machine in the gym. Over the course of a year, I lost 100 pounds. Exercise has become my treatment. When I go to the gym four days a week, I almost feel normal. I no longer need to take anything other than the occasional dose of Advil.
The chronic pain will never truly go away, but it becomes easier and easier to ignore. But shortcut that schedule, and I feel it within a week. I will always have to deal with this, but I have learned how to fight the pain effectively and put my stubborn nature to good use. Now when I visit my friends at Janelia, they comment on my transformation from a reserved girl who didn’t go out much to the girl who can be located from anywhere in the building by my laugh alone. I don’t have to push through the pain to be myself anymore.
WHEN I CAME TO WABASH A YEAR AND A HALF AGO, I think I recognized the same fight that I have always had within myself. I’ve seen it lived out through everyone on campus: students working at all hours, giving everything they have on the playing field and classroom. I’ve seen faculty who serve the College in every way imaginable and who aren’t happy with the status quo. They’re smart people, but from what I can tell, they don’t know the meaning of the words “phoning it in.” I’ve seen staff members who lend their support behind the scenes without any expectation for recognition.
And I’ve had generous offers of help from students, faculty, and staff who probably already have more on their plate than they can handle. I never could have gotten to my dream alone. Everyone, from my parents and family to my friends to my colleagues, has given their love and support so generously to help me with the big and small things in my life.
“WABASH ALWAYS FIGHTS” isn’t just something that applies to an individual. It’s something we carry as a community. Each Wabash man or woman always fights. And Wabash as a community always fights. It’s not just a motto, it’s how we live, day in and day out.
“Wabash feels like home to me because I see in you the same fight that I have. Some people choose the easy path and allow their setbacks and circumstances to define them. But others face adversity and choose another option. They decide to define themselves. These are the people I want to surround myself with, and these are the people I’ve found at Wabash.”
Laura Wysocki is Byron K. Trippet Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Wabash, and this essay is excerpted from her Winter 2013 Chapel Talk.