Post by sweetiegail on Nov 7, 2005 18:46:40 GMT -8
Okay, I'm going to put this up here and hope it doesn't depress people. I have a chronic illness and sometimes I need to get it out and I suppose this is how it came out.
A girl sat in the window and thought over the past few years of her life. Every year, every season, every month went by slowly at the time but at the end it seemed like the days had breezed by. She counted on her fingers how many schools she had been to in the past five years. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. There were probably more but she was too tired to count them.
As the doctors discussed her brother and how he had been having fevers and his cheeks were flushed she breathed a bitter laugh for as she looked on the wall’s mirror she too had burning cheeks and only now was she noticing her temperature changing. Curious, she simply let them talk amongst themselves. It was as if she was invisible…
Her tenth birthday was one to remember… she felt like maybe there was a glimmer of hope for this life. Maybe all the emotions and the headaches and the painful gym classes would simply dissolve into thin air! How naïve… her strength grew at least ten fold over the next couple years as she strove to keep up with her age group. Did anyone feel weary from their lungs’ endless piercings as they breathed in and out? I guess not, she would think and absent-mindedly try harder.
That was when things grew more complicated; schooling got harder and her mind was always somewhere else. Assignments never made it in on time, and teachers made her cry. The creeping insomnia that had unfolded in her childhood fully blossomed and her little ‘mind wanderings’ threatened to become daytime naps.
All of a sudden an entire network was opened as she was put into home-schooling and given therapy for what doctors could only describe as ADD. Test after test was thrust upon the girl and her confidence was once again trampled as she learned of the many different things that could be plaguing her. Oh, sure, she would find some test had labeled her as ‘beyond her years’ and it would swell again but now her confidence was fragile and crumpled.
Her anti-social nature took over and for an entire year she allowed herself to pass on friendships that could’ve been. That was when she became sick. Very sick. In fact the few weeks she was sick, in and out of the doctor’s for them to take more blood from her, she didn’t even mind it. So sick was she that nothing else mattered except getting through the day. And that’s what she did until the results came and it changed everything.
More schools ensued; many more doctors came and went trying to help her, pills were put in front of her, a line now ran through her arm, more trips to doctor she hadn’t heard of came then she would’ve liked. Heck! She even had surgery. But her illness remained and she trudged through a move with it still hovering over her. Lyme Disease. Chronic Lyme Disease to be more precise. There was a large difference.
She’d had this disease ever since she was much younger: five years ago. And from then on there was no looking back, but as she watched the doctors and her family speak about another condition they thought she had all she could do was just that: watch. And like a flower with ignored beauty she would wait. And like a pressed flower she would hurt, later to be hung on the wall as a prize. When the pain would be lifted from her she didn't know. But she looked to the day when a spot on the wall would be hers.
A girl sat in the window and thought over the past few years of her life. Every year, every season, every month went by slowly at the time but at the end it seemed like the days had breezed by. She counted on her fingers how many schools she had been to in the past five years. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. There were probably more but she was too tired to count them.
As the doctors discussed her brother and how he had been having fevers and his cheeks were flushed she breathed a bitter laugh for as she looked on the wall’s mirror she too had burning cheeks and only now was she noticing her temperature changing. Curious, she simply let them talk amongst themselves. It was as if she was invisible…
Her tenth birthday was one to remember… she felt like maybe there was a glimmer of hope for this life. Maybe all the emotions and the headaches and the painful gym classes would simply dissolve into thin air! How naïve… her strength grew at least ten fold over the next couple years as she strove to keep up with her age group. Did anyone feel weary from their lungs’ endless piercings as they breathed in and out? I guess not, she would think and absent-mindedly try harder.
That was when things grew more complicated; schooling got harder and her mind was always somewhere else. Assignments never made it in on time, and teachers made her cry. The creeping insomnia that had unfolded in her childhood fully blossomed and her little ‘mind wanderings’ threatened to become daytime naps.
All of a sudden an entire network was opened as she was put into home-schooling and given therapy for what doctors could only describe as ADD. Test after test was thrust upon the girl and her confidence was once again trampled as she learned of the many different things that could be plaguing her. Oh, sure, she would find some test had labeled her as ‘beyond her years’ and it would swell again but now her confidence was fragile and crumpled.
Her anti-social nature took over and for an entire year she allowed herself to pass on friendships that could’ve been. That was when she became sick. Very sick. In fact the few weeks she was sick, in and out of the doctor’s for them to take more blood from her, she didn’t even mind it. So sick was she that nothing else mattered except getting through the day. And that’s what she did until the results came and it changed everything.
More schools ensued; many more doctors came and went trying to help her, pills were put in front of her, a line now ran through her arm, more trips to doctor she hadn’t heard of came then she would’ve liked. Heck! She even had surgery. But her illness remained and she trudged through a move with it still hovering over her. Lyme Disease. Chronic Lyme Disease to be more precise. There was a large difference.
She’d had this disease ever since she was much younger: five years ago. And from then on there was no looking back, but as she watched the doctors and her family speak about another condition they thought she had all she could do was just that: watch. And like a flower with ignored beauty she would wait. And like a pressed flower she would hurt, later to be hung on the wall as a prize. When the pain would be lifted from her she didn't know. But she looked to the day when a spot on the wall would be hers.
