The First Hospital Stays

After I was diagnosed with IBS, it slowly got worse. It wasn't unmanageable, but it eventually was labelled as colitis- a worse form of IBS. Then, when I was 15, everything took a turn for the worse. I had begun to have incapacitating pain in my abdomen every once in a while- it felt like I was trying to digest a knife. When I would go to the bathroom, blood would always come out. Finally, I got an infection. It ranked in the top ten most painful things in my life. I could barely walk. I was hospitalized for at least two weeks. They had to do an exploratory surgery and put me on intense IV antibiotics. The surgeon said that on a scale of 1 to 10, I was an 11. He said he didn't know how I was even able to walk from my hospital bed to the bed to take me to surgery.
But some funny and happy stories came from it. When they went to place a PIC line (a super large IV that goes directly to the heart) in my arm, the doctor said, "I've done over 5,000 of these and never missed." Now you know he just set himself up for failure. He wanted to do my left arm so that I would still have my dominant arm completely free. I told him it was a bad idea! I told him that the veins in that arm were wimpy and small. But no. Don't listen to the patient. So he attempted to place the PIC and it didn't work. Surprise surprise! He became so flummoxed and frenzied that he had to walk out of the room to compose himself. I ruined a doctor's perfect record! Haha! I know it wasn't funny for him, but I found it (and his bit of arrogance) hilarious.
Now the happy anecdote was about how much everyone cared. My friends Loren, Cara, Amanda, and Sarah all came to visit me. They brought me balloons and all of the assignments I missed in school (okay- so maybe I didn't want those). But they cared enough to come and that meant a lot to me. Also, all of my sisters came to see me. At the time they were all in Austin. Carina had moved there with Jason. Mercedes and Brandan were in college. But they all came to see me even though their adult lives were so busy. I couldn't ask for a better family.

So that was the first infection and it finally bumped me up from having colitis to Crohn's disease- the worst of the intestinal diagnoses. To combat it they put me on a drug I had to have every four weeks through an IV. However, this drug worked by lowering your immune system response. This was not the best for me. I already had an autoimmune disease that caused my white blood cells not to work so I was already prone to infection. Consequently, infection after infection began occurring. The most memorable for me was the pneumonia I got about a year later when I was 16. My chest began to hurt more and more. Finally, while I was on a regular visit at the NIH, they took x-rays (because they always took x-rays) and found that a quarter of my left lung was covered in infection. Again, I had a hospital stay and a lot of antibiotics.
While those years were hard for me, I had support. I am always thankful for my friends in senior high. They understood that I had issues, but never asked me about them because I think they knew I would be embarrassed. I would go to lunch with Briana, Angela and Christy and often I would drive. But as we came back from lunch I would almost always get pain in my gut and then have to rush off to the bathroom. They would go so far as to drop me at the doors and then park my car for me. They just somehow understood. Once, I went to the bathroom while we were at Chipotle for lunch and they took my keys and pretended they had left me! To get back at them, some of my other friends were at also at Chipotle and hitched a ride with them. It scared them so bad and they called me wondering where I was and I told them I was already back at school. To get back at me they parked my car in the farthest lot! It was hilarious.

So this post was the beginning of the bad/sad entries. And it is not going to let up for a long time. There are always some bright spots though. But there are things you should know before reading the next post. I am one of the bravest- maybe not THE bravest- but one of the bravest people you know. I'm not saying that because I'm conceited or because I think very highly of myself. It's because to go through what I did, I had to be. Also, I think the most important part of my personality that helped me through everything was my stubbornness. When you refuse to give in, it makes it kind of hard to let yourself die. All of this may sound ridiculous to you now, but I hope later you will understand. I also hope that by writing this, maybe one day I will help someone else who has had a lot of health issues. Being this honest with the public is hard, but I think it will help me immensely to get over what has happened, it will help everyone who knows me to understand me better, and maybe it will help someone else one day.