My heart and my jaw were somewhere on the floor of that small exam room when I finally came back to real life. “Does anyone in your family have ALS” she asked again. “Um, no. No, I don’t think so” I replied. “It’s either ALS or Myositis. We’ll know more for sure when the bloodwork and the EMG results come back”. My head was still swirling as I shuffled down the hallway and out the door of the office. As soon as I hit the elevator I broke down crying. I rest myself against the inside wall, my body already having difficulty keeping myself upright without the sting of this new information. As it reached the ground floor I did my best to pull myself together. I wiped my eyes, straightened my cane and made my best effort to appear calm as I returned to my mother in the waiting car. It was useless. As soon as I saw her face I broke down all over again. The tears were so hard and fast I could barely get out words. It took what seemed like forever to calm down enough to replay the visit with her. “It will be fine” she assured me. No one in our family had ALS. We’ll get all the test results and it will be fine. We made the short ride home in almost complete silence. I don’t know if we were too stunned to speak or afraid that if we did we would give it life. We pulled into the driveway and I prepared to have the conversation all over again with my dad. My father is an eternal pragmatist. I knew that his voice would be one of reason and reassurance that this doctor was overreacting. I’d never been so grateful to be right. After a brief, but comforting conversation, my dad had assured us that all was going to be ok. We just had to make it through the weekend and we’d have the results on the other side. I did my best over the next two days to put it out of my mind. I watched some movies, listened to a lot of music and doom scrolled through social media. I snuggled a kitty, broke out my adult coloring books, painted til my hand hurt. Anything to distract myself. Monday came and went without a phone call. My neurologists office didn’t have a portal so I couldn’t even circumvent her for the results and internet doctor my way through it. Looking back I know that was probably some kind of divine intervention. On Tuesday the call came. I swear I think my heart stopped for a moment. The doctor was straight to the point, I did not have ALS. She talked with me about what my EMG indicated and that my bloodwork showed elevated inflammation markers. Words I never heard like CK and sedimentation rate, myositis panel and C-reactive protein. All of these, combined with my ongoing symptoms, all but convinced her I had Myositis. Myositis. I vaguely remembered that she had mentioned that as an option in the exam room last week. I had spent so much time focused on the prospect of ALS that I never gave it a second thought. With a naive but grateful heart I asked, “what’s myositis?”…