“He instilled in my mind there was better out there. Someone who he didn’t have to help when I wasn’t feeling well, someone who he didn’t have to go to the ER with, someone who was ‘normal,’ who’s body was not scarred up. I said to my dad, ‘I can’t do it anymore. I can’t take this anymore.'”
‘What now?,’ is all that ran through my mind. ‘How did this happen to me?’ All the voices in the room disappeared. I was washed on a metal table with hoses that hung from the ceiling.’
‘At 12 years old, symptoms began to manifest. I had joint pain in my knees and mouth sores on my gums. Food gave me belly aches. Aside from winter colds, I never was sick.’
“My parents were concerned. I had lost weight and they could see changes in me. I was 13 now, in the hospital to stabilize my 80-pound body. My parents were frustrated I followed ‘the rules.’ ‘If I thought the day of my diagnosis was life-shattering, this day would change the whole trajectory of how I lived my life.”
‘My dad told us, ‘Make someone’s day better.’ I watched him take his last breath. ‘Just because he couldn’t receive my kidney, doesn’t mean somebody else shouldn’t.’ This is for you, dad.’
“I was nervous and excited the morning of the surgery. This was finally happening! We could feel my dad’s presence in the room. We each donated to a stranger, for him.”
‘The doctors were so shocked by what they saw in the first scan, they ordered another to ensure a mistake hadn’t been made. He told me he had never seen anything like it before.’
“I asked myself a million times ‘Why me? Why is this happening to me?’ I was in so much pain and my stay in the hospital felt never ending. It was a difficult mental space to get out of.”
‘It must be stress’. The doctors made me feel I was making things up. This was all in my head, and I’m just wasting their time.’
“It was hard to keep it hidden anymore. The hope that these symptoms would go away was fading fast. I never told any of my friends or my school teachers because I felt too embarrassed.”
‘She’s just a nervous child.’ The words still burn. I was 13, about to start high school. But I was different. My life was consumed with excruciating pain, diarrhea, and the toilet.’
“I was standing in the kitchen alone. My phone rang. Assuming it was my husband, I answered. But it wasn’t my husband. All I could do was freeze. I was in shock. I hadn’t processed his words until I heard the ‘click.’ My body shook as I collapsed.”
‘It’s all in your head. You just need to be happier. Go take a walk, be a ‘normal’ 20-something.’ I had just woken up, still bleary-eyed from anesthesia. These were the words my doctor said to me.’
“I laid there and sobbed, how could it have come back normal? After hearing enough doctors downplay my symptoms, watching them roll their eyes as they told me it was ‘just gas,’ I stopped telling anyone how miserable I was.”
‘There is no medication to help his PTSD like having his son take our last name.’: Thrilled toddler yells ‘Dad!’ after adoption decree is announced
“Tyler and I met before his deployment to Afghanistan. We knew it would be hard, but we also knew it would strengthen our relationship. He was deployed for 9 months, and one month after he got home, he proposed. We tried for years to get pregnant but came to realize it wasn’t going to happen. Because of the health battles we’ve both been given, we weren’t the type of people to just ‘throw in the towel’ and let our dreams of becoming parents get shattered.”
