Managing my medications is a big production. If I didn’t have a pill case, there’s no way I could possibly remember to take all eleven things each day.  Every week, I sit down and fill the case for the week. It takes half-an-hour. It used to take longer when my OCD was worse and I had to check and re-check everything a ridiculous number of times. I only check it once now.

As you can imagine, I am over at the pharmacy a lot between the Prednisone, Nuvigil, Augmentin XR, and all the over-the-counter medicines and supplements I take. You know it might be a little out-of-hand when you walk up to the counter and the pharmacist says, “Oh, it’s you again.” True story.

A few days ago, as I was lining up all the bottles and getting ready to put everything in my case, I got to the Augmentin XR and realized I only had a few days left. I needed to go back to the pharmacy… Again. The problem is, the pharmacy is a mile away from where I live. If I drove there, I would lose my good parking spot. Walking would take too long.

So I did the only logical thing: I decided to turn my trip to the pharmacy into the destination for my first ever 10 km run.

Do you realize the irony here? I was about to run six miles to go pick up the medicine I need to take because I’m sick. Hmm… How sick can I really be?

I put on my running gear, grabbed my pepper spray and medical ID, and headed out across town. When I had run one mile, I was hardly tired at all. By the second mile, I was barely sore. By the time I reached mile three, my joints were complaining a little bit, but I thought to myself, “I’ve only gone three miles. I feel great!”

Only three miles. Just a few months ago, I could hardly run one mile. The fact that I’m now thinking of three miles as a short run is incredible.

At mile five, I took a wrong turn, and I realized I was lost. But hey, I had 1.2 more miles to get to the 10 km goal, so I kept running. Unfortunately, when I finished, I ended up 1.5 miles away from the pharmacy. I felt like I could have kept running to get the rest of the way there, but I didn’t want to push it. Besides, I had done it—I ran 10 km (about 6.2 miles).

When I got sick in 2006, I had been training to work my way up to running a 10k race. And then PANS hit me like a train, and I had to stop running altogether before I got past running four miles. But I had done it now, albeit eight years later. Take that!

As happy as I was for this victory, I also realized that I was in quite a predicament. I didn’t know the area I had ended up in, it was getting dark and cold, and the pharmacy was 1.5 miles away. Should I wait at the bus stop? Should I call a friend to pick me up? Should I get a cab? I decided to walk and use the time to call my parents.

The amazing thing is that the worry that I physically wouldn’t be able to walk 1.5 miles because of my falls never even crossed my mind at the time. I just started walking, and the whole way there, I didn’t even have the slightest knee-dip or feeling of paralysis. I was just a normal, tired runner walking home (and stopping at the pharmacy on the way there).

On my good days, I often start to think, “Hey, maybe I’m better now!” But then I look at my pill case and realize that it takes 24 pills each day to feel the way I do—and I’m still not 100%.

Still, even if I’m walking around carrying the pills, at least I’m walking at all. For now, I can dream about the day when I’ve left all the bottles behind and don’t even realize it—just like I didn’t realize how amazing it was that I walked 1.5 miles…