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PhilNE
My name is Phil Harris, better know as PhilNE in the chatroom. I was born and raised in Nebraska, near the center of the United States. The State abbreviation of Nebraska is NE, hence
PhilNE.
Many things have happen to me over the past 50+ years that I recall of my life. I have done many things with failures and successes, even started over from scratch a few times. I left college my first year, married and began to raise a family. Perhaps due to job failures among other things, the marriage didn't last, and I found myself raising two young children as a single father.
A few years later, I embarked on a new career in the automotive service business and remarried. I noticed a few strange occurrences happening with my health, but passed them off as imagination. My second wife was a widow with a small son, and we were blessed with 3 more boys over the next few years. We were a happy family of 8, living and loving each other though good times and bad. Even though the companies I was working for closed their service businesses, the marriage continued happily for the most part, and I embarked on yet another career, self employed as a computer consultant, and working part-time teaching at the local college.
My life came to an abrupt slowdown for 2 months, when on the way home from school, our 8 year old son was struck by a pickup. My wife and I spent most of those 2 months in the hospital and rehabilitation center, nursing our 2nd youngest son back to health. He had suffered a traumatic brain injury, but we were full of hope and joy when 3 weeks after our young son had been transported to the rehab center, he all but ran out of the building when he was dismissed. Our life seemed blessed and miraculous.
Eighteen months later, this same son suffered an asthma attack and passed away. life was again temporarily slowed down, yet we had been blessed with another 18 months for a second chance with our son, a blessing not all parents have. I took a job managing a telecommunications store, selling pagers and cell phones, and life was returning to normal. 4 months after our tragedy. my oldest son had a epileptic seizure in his bathtub, and drown at age 22.
Life became a struggle for me at times, and it was difficult to concentrate, sometimes even to get out of bed and go to work. After 6 months, I was diagnosed with severe depression. It was difficult to maintain the endurance of working 8 or more hours a day, and I left the business, and worked for a computer store for a short time, before I went back to my consulting business finally, with a small core of die hard customers who really didn't want to do business with anyone else.
I struggled to keep going, my problems with concentration and endurance will still blamed on severe depression by the doctors and psychiatrist, even though I didn't show any consistence improvement with medication, therapy, or exercise. I eventually had to give up the computer business for good, and went back to work as a automotive and farm manager of a retail store. I worked at that for almost a year, before I could no longer work 8 hour shifts because of extreme fatigue. I filed for disability and waited for a determination. the 6th month after I had stopped working, I had a strange tightness, almost like going numb from my chest to my toes. The doctor said it wasn't consistent with a stroke, but referred me to a neurologist for examination, just in case. The neurologist wanted to do an
MRI, but since I couldn't afford it, the diagnosis was again severe depression.
Finally social security determine that I was ineligible for disability, which allowed social services to step in and pay for the MRI and other tests the neurologist wanted. In December of 1999, a few weeks before Christmas, she told me in front of my wife and father that I had multiple sclerosis, 13 months after I had been no longer able to work. It took another year of appeal and denial, as well as confirmation of the diagnosis from the MS Center before I was granted a hearing from Social Security, and the judge granted my disability.
Since December of 1999, support chat for MS has been a very large part of my life, both in the support and encouragement I have received, as well as the support and encouragement I have been able to offer. My marriage, and a subsequent marriage failed, but through it all, I have been compelled to return to chatting in support of MS. It seems at times support chat is the one place I feel welcome and at home. Life is wonderful again!
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