Just after learning of my calling to Dine Bikeyah, I became very ill. I went to doctor after doctor, and while they could treat some of my issues, not all could they figure out. Thyrioditis was what they said I had, but the medican was making it worse. For nearly 2 years, except for a few good months where I got to do things like camp, I was stuck in bed or on the sofa. Weakness and the fear of death were two of my compainions, and I was just 16 and then 17 years old. By the May I was 18, the symtoms eased, and I thought I was well for good. I went both to camp and then to my second missions trip, this time to New Orleans. While my illness never laid me as low as it did those first two years, it kept haunting me. Then finally at 21, I learned I had a immune disregualtion, that most likely is a cousin to lupus, but not full blown lupus. The doctor said, since I had such issues with the medicans over the years, to try taking a green tea capusal every day, drinking alot of green tea too, and then eating alot things like brocally and melons. Not a bit of that hurt my feelings any. Durning that whole time I had nearly given up on working in Dine Bikeyah, except for short visit.... I thought the heat would kill me. Little did I know that back in Kansas it was not the heat that was killing my system every summer, but the very high humidity. After I learned that was the issue... Dine Bikeyah again became a goal, not just for ministry but because it would aid my health.
Durning this time, the summer to winter I was 19, death came visiting my door. Not my own death as I had so long feared, but the death of many close to me. It began with the death of a dear friend and mentor, Samuel Meadows, then continued as my uncel Bob (my dad's sister's husband) died, then my mom's cousin, who I called Uncel Phil, then a lady at church who's son I carried for in nurcery, then my cousin Bobby-Jo (my dad's sister's daughter; same one who lost her husband). The death of Samuel had shattered my world, as he had been a teacher, a mentor, and to me, in my strange ways, a father figure. Then with the other deaths componded upon it, I entered a fog. For a time, sharing it with my beloved Elk Hound, Wolfy, aidded me, but then she died from cancer durning the middle of the human deaths, and I was alone....
While both of these events happend while I was still a teen and into my early twenties, they grew and shaped me in many ways into the woman I am today. I could not be able to face much I do now, had I not gone through those things when I did. This chapter lead to the next: Of Celts and Subcultures
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