“‘Were you in a car accident?’ Every single day I get asked how I hurt myself. I usually try to laugh it off by saying, ‘Don’t I wish I got hurt playing sports.’ Sometimes people are okay with this answer. What happens though, when people are a bit more interested, and sincerely want to know what happened to you?”
‘Your eyes were swollen to slits. Your lips looked like they had too much Botox. Your hands were squishy from fluid. I was the silent watcher.’
‘One boy said, ‘Why is she even in here? She’s f—king crippled!’ I ignored it, but it would get worse. My mom and I got into a huge argument. She stopped, and looked at me in shock.’
“One day someone came to talk to me at lunch. I thought, ‘Finally someone wants to be my friend!’ Instead, they cut me off by saying, ‘If I was you I would kill myself because I couldn’t live like that.'”
‘We are having a problem. Your baby is floppy and turning blue. She only has a 50% chance of surviving through the night but we’ll do everything we can.’
“I woke up suddenly to the sound of my husband’s footsteps coming up the stairs to give me his phone. ‘Something has happened to Drew. He’s had a seizure. We were on our way to the park.’ I remember thinking to myself, ‘I have experienced seizures in the past. He’ll be OK.’ Second phone call. Everything was a blur.”
‘It was like bringing up a child to die.’ I still had no diagnosis. The nurse checked if my skin was salty to confirm her suspicions.’
“I was rushed to the hospital into intensive care. I was not expected to survive, but luck seemed to be on my side. The nurse who was caring for me suspected what it was – her daughter also had it.”
‘I blankly looked at the doctor. ‘What does this mean?’ He replied, ‘Hope you don’t go deaf.’ They gave me a discharge note. ‘I could drop dead at any time.’
“Would you ever think a blood clot could save your life? My phone dinged with a new email from the lab, I nervously signed in and opened the attachment. ‘No way!’ I shouted out loud, was I reading this right?”
‘I finally turned to my mother, unsure of wanting to know the truth, and hesitantly asked, ‘Mom, am I going to die?’
“Before me, on a poorly lit screen, was a prognosis I never expected to read. Every website shattered my heart as I scanned the same words over and over, desperately hoping to read a different outcome.”
‘The doctors said, ‘Good luck. There is no cure.’ I didn’t think I was going to make it. My siblings were scared for me.’
“I felt so relieved when class was over. I’d quickly get in the car hoping no one would notice my mom still picked me, a 20 year-old adult, up from school. I was embarrassed and ashamed.”
‘The doctor didn’t even remember what had gone wrong. THE DOCTOR DIDN’T REMEMBER? My surgeon told him, ‘There were complications, but they fixed everything.’
“I lost 40 pounds without trying during the 6 months after my surgery. I was so sick and withering away, but people didn’t know. I just got compliments on ‘how amazing and thin I looked.’ People had no idea.”
‘Shaking, with my daughter, I drove to the gas station. I needed help. I stood there in my slippers, crying with my 3-year-old in the back, convinced he wouldn’t be far behind.’
“He would remind me this was my second marriage and I had two children by two different dads. He told me no one else would want me. Starting over on my own, with a disability, would be impossible. Before I knew it, something came over me. To this day, I don’t know how I managed to do this. I packed for my life.”
‘With tears welling up in my eyes, I was only able to mutter one question: ‘But why does it hurt so much when I eat?’ Nobody answered me.’
“For what felt like an eternity, I laid quietly in my hospital bed, still surrounded by these strangers who were supposed to be some of the best doctors in the country, until a young-looking doctor standing across from the psychologist broke the silence, ‘Your head is messing with you, there is nothing physically wrong.'”
