My Story
*Disclaimer: in order to protect the privacy of others, this post will not feature photographs or videos.
Hello, hello! This blog post is going to be a little different, because I think it’s important for you to know about who you are reading! I’m going to share with you why I decided to become a social worker. For me, it was honestly more of a calling than a career decision, and it largely comes from how I grew up.
So, if you want to get to know me a little better or if you’re new, keep reading. My name is Brianna Urquhart (formerly Cunningham), and I’m so grateful for your curiosity and acceptance.
I knew I wanted to be a social worker when I was twelve years old. My father was battling Multiple Sclerosis and struggling through another relapse. For those of you who are unfamiliar, MS is an autoimmune disorder where, essentially, the body’s white blood cells attack itself. Everyone experiences MS a little differently, and the thing that always bothered me about MS is that it’s really unpredictable. For my Dad, MS meant a lot of nerve pain 24/7. As a kid, it generally meant that he couldn’t feel one side of his body, struggled to walk, and was really tired all the time.
There’s a few different kinds of MS. My Dad had relapsing-remitting when I was growing up, which basically means that he’d have a relapse, mostly recover, and then would go a few years before having another one. Relapses are brutal, there’s really no other way to describe it. But after, when he’d recover most of his functioning back, we would almost be normal. But there’s no way to know when a relapse will hit, or how badly, or how long the recovery will take. The only thing that you do know with MS is that each time is a little worse, and you lose a little bit less. MS is considered degenerative, because people who have it eventually lose the ability to walk or use parts of their body. It can also involve brain lesions, and therefore often has impacts on cognition, like memory, personality changes, and problem-solving.
My mother was working three jobs to pay for his medication - which, yes, even here in Canada is a very real barrier to proper medical attention. Free healthcare does not mean free pharmaceutical or rehabilitative care. But that’s a topic for another time. She spent the time that she wasn’t caregiving making sure that I could have a happy and relatively normal childhood. We were struggling - hell, we still are. The medical system is a huge spider web, and trying to navigate it alone can be an absolute nightmare. There were some great staff at Soneybrook and the MS clinic here, but we largely had to figure things out on our own. It was tough and, looking back now, there were so many resources or avenues that should have been available to us. But we didn’t know that. Honestly, we didn’t know anything because we fell through the cracks in the system.
It was only at age twelve when things started to become a lot more serious that one of my dad’s team, surprised that this hadn’t already happened, told my mom that they were getting us a social worker. Y’all, my mom thought this meant I was getting taken away. That’s how little we knew about this stuff at the time. She thought social workers meant CAS, that the hospital thought she was a bad mom. This is actually a really common misconception about social work.
But that day was a game changer for me. There was someone who’s entire job was to help a family like mine? To make sure that they weren’t struggling alone? That was something that I felt I had to do, because how many people could honestly say that they’d been through this and understood the intense emotions that come with it?
It’s an experience that’s the opposite of the famous John Green quote: it’s a rollercoaster that rarely goes up, my friend.
If you’re wondering, shortly after a diagnostic meeting where we were told he didn’t have long left, we were lucky enough to get 10 years symptom free for my Dad. I won’t go into the details of that here, because the treatment isn’t available anymore and I don’t want to give anyone false hope, but my family was incredibly grateful for the extra time. But in March of 2021, he had another relapse. His many small lesions amalgamated into one very large lesion, and his diagnosis of MS has changed from secondary to primary progressive. So when I talk in other about caregiving, and living with someone in the autoimmune community, I get it. And it makes me more committed than ever to what I do in my life.
On the flip side, one of my mom’s jobs involved looking after a young child with cerebral palsy. He wasn’t supposed to live past a year, if that. He would never crawl, walk, or talk. I grew up in the world of occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech language pathology, and medical emergencies. And you know what? That kid is now in high school doing absolutely all of those things. My experience with his journey was completely different from that of my dad’s, because his family and caregivers never fell through the gaps in the system. They had a multidisciplinary team as soon as there was a diagnosis. We knew what resources were available, what programs he was eligible for, what funding was available.
It was a no brainer for me. I needed to spend my life making sure that families like mine were supported the way families like his were. I want to help fill the gaps that are still as present in our systems today as they were when I was growing up. I know how life-changing it truly can be. That is my calling as a social worker, and I’ve been striving for that pursuit ever since.
So there it is. My story that led me to become a social worker. Thank you for taking the time to read it.
