soooo for this weeks post, I want to post and explain my and my family’s life before HD came about.. Growing up, my brother, my sister, and myself had a pretty good childhood. We grew up in a pretty safe neighborhood with a single mom who did everything she could to get up want we needed and wanted. My parents divorced when I was 4 I'm pretty sure then my mom married my step dad.. didn't last too long, he ended up in jail not too long after my mom had my sister. At around the age of 8, I really had to grow up. Being the oldest, I learned fairly quickly that I was not able to be like all the other kids because I had to help out around the house more and start helping to take care of my siblings. Fast forward a little bit, middle of my junior year of high school in 2011, I decided to move from Pittsburgh with my mom to Monessen with my dad. A few things played apart in the move and on the way people hated me and were just very cruel teenagers.. My mom and myself were really starting to argue because at 16, I felt I was an “adult” and I could do what I wanted because I did do so much to help with the house and my siblings. At this time also, I felt I had no friends at school.. the thing was, I did have friends but something was always telling me I didn't. When I left Brashear, I lost everyone I thought I had since 1st grade.. really with no explanation. It hit me hard for a long time because I put so much trust in love into my “friends” for them all to drop me. After a little bit of realization and starting high school at Monessen, I realized obviously they were never really my friends and I did not need the negativity in my life. Rewind to the start of this little story.. I decided in a day to move from my mom’s. I had everything packed that night and I was out. My mom suffered a lot of depression and anxiety from it but, she understood and worked through it.. After graduating from high school, my brother decided to move from Pittsburgh with my mom to Monessen for high school with my dad. This time, it hit my mom much, much harder. She went from raising her kids alone for almost 12 years to all of a sudden 2 of them deciding to leave. My brother had his reasoning and felt this was the best move for him. Now when I look back, I can’t even begin to fathom what my mom was feeling. Now having a daughter, I could not imagine her just packing up and leaving really without too much reasoning. I never regret anything and believe everything happens for a reason BUT if I could go back, I would have changed the nature of the leave.. Anyways, This was the “BOOM” when the HD symptoms started to kick in.. Obviously, we did not know this was HD, we just figured it was her anxiety and depression. Her symptoms started very lightly like settle movements at first which turned into not being able to sit still for more than 30 seconds, to anger outburst, always crying, losing things, and not having motivation. This was hard to watch because we had no idea what was going on and it began to get frustrating. “Stop mom” or “why do you keep doing that mom?” were phrases on repeat. None of us understood why she was doing these things, especially because of how smart and educated she is. My mom received her bachelors from Slippery Rock University in Childhood Education and her Masters in Special Education. My mom never would let things bother her because she knew who she was and where she was going, especially with us. Again.. lol fast forward to about September 2016. My mom and sister were still living together and my sisters therapist decided that my mom and sister needed a in home social worker to visit. This social worker was amazing. She worked so well with my mom and sister when she noticed my mom’s symptoms. She took my mom to see this neurologist (another story for another day) and in short, my mom was diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease...
