An Essay On The Story Of Kate Jensen

2019 By Alyssa Jensen The story of Kate Jensen’s illness is nothing short of a tragedy, a story of pain and sadness. She was numb on the entire left side of her body, couldn’t walk, and was losing her ability to write and speak, and no one knew why. By the beginning of 2019, she thought she was dying. Today, despite everything, she is better than she has been in years. She recently finished her bachelor’s degree and is now a fourth-grade teacher, things that had seemed unimaginable only two years prior. The story of what she calls an “awful, beautiful experience” is devastating, yet she is better because of it. Throughout her life, Kate had been taught to seem as though everything was fine, even if it wasn’t, and this mindset carried on through her experience of being sick. She rarely talked to anyone about what was happening. Even now, she doesn’t like talking about it and often

She said, “There was just something off, something was wrong,” but when she went to seek medical attention, the tests and doctors said there was nothing wrong, so she summed up her constant exhaustion to being a mom of four kids. Although this train of thought was reasonable, it led to much bigger problems. In 2012, she had her gallbladder removed to relieve the extreme stomach pain she was experiencing. She then had another surgery to address complications from the first surgery and fifth pregnancy, and then yet another to fix the second surgery. These surgeries were meant to fix the problems she was facing, but yet she was still having what she describes as “bizarre health problems that seemed not to connect,” and after that, her health only deteriorated. Eight years later, Kate was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. An MRI showed plaque on her spinal cord, and her neurologist gave her the diagnosis. This news is devastating. Although Kate was glad to finally have answers to her health issues, the answers didn’t add