Resolution (n.) The state or quality of being resolute; firm determination.  A resolving to do something.  A course of action determined or decided on.

2013 was a great year for me.  I can easily say it was better than 2012, but my 2012 wasn’t too hard for anyone to top.  The end result of 2012 was definitely favorable, but the process to get there was one that was hardly envious.  Having a successful liver transplant by the skin of my teeth, with not even a full 48 hours to spare was a life-changing event in itself.  Then throw on-top of that an extremely rare and fatal fungal infection in my brain and you don’t have to say much else to already know that 2012 was a hell-of-a-year for me.  When I look back, I am often puzzled as to why or how I am alive today.  You might be thinking, “That was 2012?  We’re about to be in 2014!?”  True, but most of my 2012-2013 was spent either ill or recovering from illness, so for the purpose of this blog, I am grouping 2012 and 2013 together as one-big healing time period.

While those questions of how or why I am still alive will never be answered, the matter of the fact is that I managed to persevere and triumph over the impeccable odds against me.  It is crazy to think that almost 100% of people who inquire invasive aspergillosis in their brain while being immunosuppressed, die.  I am one of very, very few people to somehow escape the burden of those devastating odds.  Somehow, I, Monique Gesualdi, am still alive.  To experience what I have experienced and to overcome what I have overcome, is a huge deal for me, and it has forever changed my outlook on life and how I treat myself. Not like you can easily put yourself in my shoes, nor would I want you to, but it is hard for me to genuinely convey to you how greatly this has affected my life in so many different ways. 

For someone in my shoes, “Grateful” doesn’t even begin to describe your appreciation for life and the little things we take for granted each and every day.  Things like walking without assistance, showering in a shower by yourself, breathing on your own, wiping your own ass, things like this we do every single day and we don’t think twice about.  If asked prior to my 2012 what if those “little things” were taken away from me, could I do it?  Could I live for two months of my life in the hospital, in-and-out of consciousness, having back-to-back-back surgeries that resulted in life-or-death?  If I was asked that, I would have probably looked at whoever asked me very confidently answered, “Well that’s never going to happen, and even if it did, I can’t imagine spending one night in the hospital let alone two months.”  When you are a kid, some of you have visions of yourself growing up, getting married, buying a house, having kids, grand kids, and so on.  Never does anyone say, “I’m going to get fatally ill at age 26 and go from there.”  But it was happening to me, and I had no choice but to face my illnesses head on.

I was up against the two most feared opponents of all: I was up against time and I was up against death.  I have no way of changing time, and once you are “dead,” that’s it, you can’t go back in time and make yourself “undead.”  When you are in the hospital and ICU and the doctor’s are doing everything in their power to save their life, you basically have no physical control of the outcome.  All you can do is hope and pray and  whatever happens, happens right?  To one degree yes.  To another, I’d say no.  You have control of your attitude.  For me, attitude was EVERYTHING.  My attitude partially attributed to me being alive, able to write this blog (my medical team at Yale and my family and friends’ love and support were also the reason).

I would be lying if I said I had a positive attitude the entire time I was in the hospital.  Luckily for me though, I had one of the best medical proxies you could imagine.  My medical proxy also happened to be my motivator, my positive encouragement, my strength, and one of my reason for surviving; my Aunt Caryn.  Some days were tough, really tough.  My recovery once I got out of the hospital was especially rough on me just trying to get back to “myself” and nothing more.  Physically, mentally, and emotionally I was being challenged to the extreme.  Every single thing in my life had changed, where I lived, who I lived with, what I could do, what I couldn’t do. Just about everything.  It was far from easy, but I knew what I wanted.  I knew I didn’t want to die.  I wasn’t ready, I was only 26 and I had so much left to accomplish.  Deep down I didn’t want to just “make it out alive,” I wanted come out swinging.  I felt like the previous two or three years of my life were wasted, lost searching for a purpose, MY purpose in life.

In my opinion, “happy” people wake up each morning because they have a purpose and they are on a mission to completing the next step of their purpose, whether they realize it or not.  It could be something small, it could be something of greater magnitude, but it doesn’t matter what it is, as long as they have something inside that gives them drive.  I call these people “happy” people, because they are at one with themselves, they know who they are, what they want in life, and they are continually moving forward with their lives in one way or another.

Next you have what I call the “complacent” people, they wake up each morning coasting through life.  They don’t really have goals or anything that they are truly passionate about, challenging them to enhance their life in one way or another.  They are complacent, and that is fine for them because they don’t want to actually put in the time or effort to get the results they “wish” for.

Then there are the “unhappy” people.  These people don’t necessarily walk around with a frown on their face kicking the dirt, but what I mean is that their soul is not happy.  I’ve seen these people and they don’t truly know who they are as a person, and they are not at one with themselves.  Who they are and what they want to be are not the same person and this dissimilarity causes an internal tug-of-war with oneself.  Eventually these “unhappy” people become frustrated with life, are typically not accountable for themselves, blame anything they can, and bring down anyone in arm’s reach of them.  We have all heard the expression that, “misery loves company.”  These people become toxic to themselves, and toxic to others.  I’m sure we’ve all met a few of these people along the way or have even had a period of time where we ourselves were guilty of a time of self-pity.  As my Aunt would say, these people “can’t get out of their own way,” and that couldn’t be any more well said.

I have floated between my three levels of “happiness,” “complacency” and “unhappiness” throughout my life, but post college, I was a resident in “Cluelessville” which is a suburb of “Complacent City.” I was clueless as to what to do with my life and how to get there, and this often times made me a frequent visitor of “Unhappy Ave.”  I knew I was becoming complacent and it scared the living shit out of me (excuse my french).  Since I was ten years old, golf was my entire life.  Golf was my sport, it was my childhood, it was my heart, and I was certain it was going to be my future.  I loved the challenge, the honor, and the prestige associated with golf.  Later, golf wasn’t just a game, it was my “in” to greater things in life, particularly my education.

I attended Nease High School in St. Augustine, FL, and Furman University in Greenville, SC solely because of golf.  My world was golf, and no matter whether I made it as a touring or teaching pro, all that mattered was golf was my past, it is my present, and it would certainly be my future.  My second half of college, my love and passion for the game of golf, something since age 10, I planned on being my career, my future, was now something I “hated” doing due to a very bad two-year coaching experience.  So I decided I “hated” golf for a while, quit, threw in the towel and let my clubs get dusty sitting in the garage.  What I didn’t realize until recently was that I had let the game of golf define who I was.  When you heard the name, “Mo Gesualdi” you automatically associated something with golf, and now, at this time in my life, all I kept hearing from family and friends was, “You’re not playing at all?” or if they asked me to play I always had an excuse as to why I couldn’t play, some legit, others just so I wouldn’t have to play.  While it never felt right in my heart to “give up” golf, it had this guilt attached to it for some reason, I did it anyway, against my own instinct.  One of many terrible decisions I’ve made in my life, but it was the decision I made, and one I can’t go back and change.  I always knew I would get back to playing golf, but it would be on my own terms, when I was ready.

Along with throwing in the “golf towel,” I basically threw in the towel altogether.  I had a horrible attitude about myself, about people, and about life for a long while.  I was rather depressed my final two years of college and had to go to therapy, for the second time since I started college, one of four times total in my life.  I kept it pretty quiet, mostly because I was embarrassed to go to therapy, and I was embarrassed about how I was feeling.  I got it together so I wasn’t completely unglued, but the way I was put back together it was like using a cheap glue stick, barely enough to get me through as I was on the verge of “ungluing” at any point in time.

What was my problem?  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I now realize I feared responsibility, I feared success, and above all, I feared failure.  As a kid I was determined I was going to be a professional golfer of some magnitude when I grew up.  Fast-forward to 2012 and I wasn’t on that path at all and it terrified me.  Each year I was getting older and not any closer to the person I wanted to be.  I was happy and smiling on the outside, taking pictures, having fun, partying, but deep down I was miserable.  I was so disappointed in myself.  I had no purpose, and the haphazard style life I was leading was proof of that.

Does that make me a bad person?  I think not, because I was still kind and friendly and always have the best intentions for others.  What it did make me was off-my-beaten path.  I made a wrong-turn somewhere in my life and instead of slamming the breaks and turning around, I just kept driving not knowing where the road would take me.

Somehow I failed to accept that traveling 90 mph toward the ledge of a cliff wouldn’t have any repercussions. Well I know now, that certainly isn’t the case.  Depression led to drinking.  It was the only “solution” to not having to deal with my lack of purpose in life and for a while it felt fine because it opened up my social horizons and I became much less introverted and more easily extroverted.  I also met a lot of people, and I was having a great time being constantly social.  Every event or birthday party, I was there.  If I made to one person’s invitation, I had to go to every invitation I encountered.  I had a very hard time saying “no.”  Then months passed, and then a year, and then several years, and I wasn’t making any progress in my goals or myself, and it began to eat away heavily at me.  Not just emotionally, but physically too.  I wasn’t taking care of myself the way I should have been, and just like a plant that isn’t properly watered and fed, I began to internally wilt until I was practically dried up and dead.

Thankfully I had always been an athlete and exercised, because I think that greatly contributed to my strength and ability to endure those three, major, life-saving surgeries in a few weeks time.  Was my need for a liver transplant due entirely to eating and drinking lots of glutinous foods and beer over a few years?  No, but it certainly didn’t help and surely it expedited my illness to the severity that it was.  Is what I put into my body something I can control?  Yes.  Do I have much better control of my self in terms of how I nourish my body?  Yes.  Does it feel better?  The answer is absolutely.

I feel people who binge themselves in booze, drugs, or food (or whatever superficial and temporary form of fulfillment that is their own personal weakness), is because they are trying mask the feelings that come with having no purpose in life.  I not only observed this in myself, but some other people I was surrounding myself with.  Not my true friends that I love with all of my heart, (you know who you are), but I encountered many other people over the years.  I was “stuck” for a long time, but I finally had the strength and the courage to step away from this toxic environment and this undignified person that I was becoming.

I decided it was best for me to pack it up and move. But by the time I had decided that, it was too late.  It was too late.  I started feeling sick, and then I fell ill, and then I fell even more ill.   It is a horrible feeling to feel hopeless, like you don’t mean anything, like you are a waste of a human being.  I sadly had to hit my “rock bottom” before I realized that I was worthy of life, my life.  But by then, it was just about too late.

“Just when you think things can’t get any worse, they do.  I have learned that life is like hour-glass sand.  Sooner or later, everything hits rock bottom, but all you have to do is be patient and wait for something to turn back around.” ~Unknown

I am so lucky, so grateful, so extremely blessed to have not let my rock bottom be the ultimate end-all.   Why wasn’t it?  Like I said, I will never know why I am still alive and how almost all of the other transplant patients who had a fungal infection in their brain don’t survive, but whatever the medical reasoning is, I know it is because I had a lot of unfinished business to attend to.

I was beyond the point of repair, but the one and only thing I could control was my attitude, and for some unknown reason to me, I managed to have a very positive, a very patient, and very determined attitude when I was diagnosed with stage-4 liver failure.  I think that is because I knew it was my chance to make my life better, a chance to “start fresh” and lead a much more fulfilling life.  With the love of my friends, family, and top-notch medical attention in my corner, I was determined to live.  My MOtivation had been restored.  The vision in my head of previously living scared with no destination was now replaced by a vision of living, a vision of overcoming this illness, and not only coming out with a new liver, but with a new mind-set, a new respect for myself, and a new “life.”

The new, transplanted self that I wanted to be is something I am trying and working at each and every day. It is a life-long commitment of hard work, dedication, and self-respect, that will always be a work-in-progress.  So far, I am quite proud of myself and how far I have come mentally, physically, and emotionally in the past year-and-a-half.  I have found my purpose in life, and that is comforting to my soul.  All I will say is that my purpose has been revived and it is taken me back to where I started; back to to golf.  I will get into that in another blog, but for now I want to leave you with this.

We are approaching the New Year, a time when people reflect on the past year, and make resolutions for the upcoming one.  According to the University of Scranton, Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2012, 45% of you will make New Years Resolutions for next year, but only 8% of you will be successful in achieving that resolution.  Those resolution odds are against you, just like the odds were against me, but with the right attitude, combined with determination, I believe you are capable of defying the odds and doing just about anything your little resolution-setting heart desires.  My resolution, or my firm determination you could say, is to lead a happy, healthy, and inspirational life.

“The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.”  Leo Tolstoy