“I am not a fan of public restrooms but knew I would be on the road. That ‘smart’ decision changed my life forever.”
‘Less than 10 seconds changed everything. I was unable to get up, despite how hard I tried. Shock settled in. I overheard the words of some hospital tech, ‘SHATTERED!’ What did that mean?’
‘I couldn’t walk without my body feeling like broken glass. How did this happen? All of a sudden I was a vegetable.’
“My head was spinning, my body was giving up on me, and the medications were slowly killing me. If I didn’t take my health into my own hands – I would be dead by now.”
‘We all started to notice I was sleeping, a lot. I didn’t feel ‘normal.’ I started college, started dating, and felt like things were starting to fall into place. Oh boy was I wrong.’
“I answer the age-old question of ‘When are you going to have babies?’ with a smile on my face and a reply of, ‘Oh no babies, I have dogs.’ I see the answer disappoints them, but the truth is so much more depressing.”
‘It’s a good thing you’re pretty because you don’t have much else going for you.’ Those words cut deep. I allowed them to affect how I viewed my worth.
“I was diagnosed with Lyme disease after I began college. I found unnatural amounts of hair coming out in my brush. I stood in front of the mirror in tears.”
‘I don’t use makeup because I’m ashamed of my disease but because I feel entitled to not be defined by it.’
“It’s a way to distract myself and hide the raw emotions of my mental, emotional, and physical struggles. The power of makeup has been a nice reminder that through my suffering, the true me is still in there.”
‘When I brought my daughter home from the hospital after her heart surgery, I was so focused on her recovery – not knowing there was a storm within my OWN body ready to surface.’
“I have never felt so helpless as the day I stood and watched the paramedics stop and restart my little girl’s heart 3 times right in front of me. I sat there frozen. A doctor asked me if I was ok. ‘No, I don’t feel well.’”
‘One thing that’s become apparent throughout my chronic illness is, as a society, we’ve become so conditioned to view disabled people to be ‘an inspiration.”
“For many people, this stage of uncertainty is where they have remained for years. They’ve been diagnosed and discharged, sometimes decades ago, and haven’t been able to leave their homes, or even their beds, ever since.”
‘I am not your average medical student studying to be a doctor. Beneath MY white coat lives a patient.’
“As I contemplate my situation, there is a part of me that hopes I am never cured. Perhaps I am not meant to be a ‘normal’ doctor.”
‘By the time I clock out and leave tonight, I will have been in the building for 14 hours. 3 as a patient, and 11 as an employee. This is invisible illness. This is dysautonomia.’
“I don’t know why I try so hard to maintain this ‘secret.’ Maybe it’s because I stood by as a doctor told her resident, ‘Anytime you see POTS, you know the patient is crazy. It’s made up.’”
‘I wasn’t always this sick. It just fell upon me in the most beautiful possible way.’
“I would faint up to 20 times a day, couldn’t eat more than clear liquids and struggled to even get off the couch. Everyone shed an extra tear at the ‘in sickness and in health’ part of our vows.”
