I'm A Little Worried About Your Guarding, Because I Don't Think You're Smart Enough To Close Your Mouth When You Jump In

I went into my second semester of that year in a really good place.  I was now dating a really great guy, Josh, and my classes were extremely interesting.  I'd also made a friend in three of my classes, Ian, and had my other good friend, Mike, in another.  I had my surgery planned for reading week, and was hoping it would turn out well.

Josh and I progressed in our relationship extremely quickly.  I was shocked at how easy it was to talk about my health problems with him, because he really seemed to understand and sympathize with me.  We almost immediately began seeing each other daily, and told each other we loved each other in only two weeks.  Leading up to February, we even started talking about moving in together.  He'd lived in Vancouver previously, and so he was ready to leave his parents house again.  I'd never lived without my parents, and I knew that it was way too soon, but everything seemed right, so it was looking like a good idea.

One day I had to get an MRI on my shoulder, the MRI that would show my orthopedic surgeon exactly what he was going to have to deal with when he went in there.  Dad drove me to the hospital and went in to wait with me.  This MRI was a lot different; I needed to have dye in the joint so he could see exactly what was going to show up.  So we went it, and I changed into the hospital clothes and answers the zillions of questions to the MRI technician guy.  Then I went into the room where they were to insert the dye.  I really had no idea what was going to happen here, and am happy I didn't, because otherwise I'd have freaked out beforehand.  I laid down on the table, and the put a bunch of sterilizer over my left shoulder.  The doctor who got to deal with inserting the dye came in.  He was a pretty nice guy, very funny, which is always nice.  They put the freezing into my shoulder first, which involved a massive needle going into my shoulder, and local anesthetic being put in.  If you've ever gotten a needle put in your arm, it was kind of like that, but the needle was about a foot long and you couldn't look anywhere without seeing it.  After that, we started up the xray machine that would show him where the needle was the entire time.  I decided to stare at the room and chat with the man, so I only got to see tools when the guy lifted them high up (which did happen a couple of times).  I did get to see a few images of my shoulder with a giant needle going into the joint, which I considered making my Christmas card, but other than that it just looked like there was a huge hole in my shoulder that he was shoving needles in and out of, like a bunch of straws into a really thin glass.  My shoulder got filled up with dye, and it really did hurt.  Keep in mind, I still had raw bone in this shoulder, and there was needles bumping against it and foreign liquid caressing it.  Anyway, once that was over, we had to wait a little while, and then got the MRI.  On the way home, I told Dad that Josh and I were thinking of moving out, expecting a bit of anger.  Dad told me I just needed to think things through, and that he wouldn't be mad at me and loved me no matter what.  Best dad ever.

The MRI ended up showing a little tab on my bone, which could get caught and lock ever so often, and also a big bit of bone hovering around the joint, which would cause pain and a fun clicking noise.  The last thing I asked the doctor in the appointment before the surgery was "Can you give me the pictures from inside the joint?"

School was going great at this time!  I had told my teachers that I would be away for a little while, and they all really understood and were willing to help in any way I needed.  Ian and Mike both were very willing to help me with anything I missed or didn't understand while I was gone, which was really nice of them.  They're both VERY good people.

Work wasn't going so well at this time.  I was a Shift Leader at this time, and another Shift Leader decided to start telling everyone that because of my health problems, I couldn't save anyone and was unreliable.  This was a ridiculous statement; I've always been very careful about how much I can do, and if for some reason my health was bad enough to make saving someone difficult, I would ask someone to cover for me.  However, word got around and I looked like an unreliable idiot.  I ended up pulling the Shift Leader into the First Aid room and told him there was obviously some problem, and that if he felt that he should confirm it with me instead of telling everyone else about it.  I asked what he was concerned about and shot all the issues down.  However, he enjoyed being a massive drama queen and continued to spread the lie.  This got me very upset, as I really liked working there.  I was a good lifeguard, and it hurt me to think that people thought otherwise.  Since then, I've vowed to not work in a place that was primarily women and catty men, as it seems to cause problems, and I'm an easy target.  Being a computer scientist, this is going to be a pretty easy vow to keep, kind of like vowing to breathe.  The place I work in now is amazing, full of supportive and fun people (all men!) and I don't really ever want to leave.  Anyway, I digress.  I had my leave time planned with my boss for when I was going to get surgery.  I wanted to be back pretty soon, as soon as I could, because I did like it, and I needed the money.  Everything was working out quite well.

I went into the start of reading week feeling very confident that things would turn out like they should.  I felt like I'd have enough bad luck, and it was about time things went my way.

I'm Sorry, I'm Busy Being A Vampire

I'm going to quickly switch back to my education, specifically in the start of the second year of engineering.  I had tried to get into Mechanical Engineering (to make cars), Civil Engineering (to make buildings), or Train Engineering (because trains are important too guys).  I didn't get into them.  Instead, I got into Software Engineering.  At the time, I was pretty upset by it.  Even though it was high on my list of concentrations to go in, I had spent the first few years of my life wanting to make cars or buildings.  However, once I got going on Software Engineering in my second year, I found I actually really liked it.  Software Engineering got to take classes with people in Computer and Electrical Engineering, so I was in classes with Mike, another one of my good friends, and another guy who I hung out with sometimes.  There were a couple of classes that I had to take because of Engineering that I really didn't want to, such as Differential Equations.  Seriously, what software engineer ever has to know differential equations?  Since that class, I've never even had to use math.

It was around this time that my boyfriend of the time started being kinda mean to engineers.  He kept saying that everyone was in it solely to get the iron ring at the end, and you could do any engineer's job with any different degree (ie. Chem degree instead of a chemical engineer, architect instead of a civil engineer, etc.) This is pretty wrong, otherwise they wouldn't have an engineering degree.  However, with software engineering, there is an equivalent degree in computer science.  He was taking an equivalent class to what I was taking at one point, and he was learning a lot more theory and things that I actually wanted to know compared to what I was learning.  I decided to look into it, and I found that there were a lot more classes in computer science that were applicable to software engineering, such as computability.  I started asking a bunch of professors in both engineering's software engineering and computer science's software engineering.  Basically, the best response I got from the head of engg's software engineering as a reason to not switch is "but you won't get your ring."  I was annoyed, and so I switched.  Best decision I ever made, and one of the best things that came out of that relationship.  After I did that, my interest went higher and higher, and my grades went up accordingly.

In my second year, I found out I had to get my wisdom teeth out.  It seemed like a good time, since I was having a lull in health issues, so we agreed.  I got my teeth x-ray sent to this guy by market mall (he was crazy as a bat) and we went to see him.  We told him all about my health problems, and he was all like 'oh yeah, no problem, this will go fine, I'm crazy' and stuff, so we felt good about it.  We scheduled it for reading week of my second year, and I was all ready to go.  Two days before reading week, I got a phone call.  It was the nurse in the guy's office, telling me that I needed to go for an appointment with the anesthetic guy before my surgery.  This was Thursday, and my surgery date was on Monday, so I was like 'well, can I get into an appointment tomorrow?' and she said 'no.'  This got me so mad.  I said it was ridiculous, that was the only time I could go get it because I had to work over the summer, so I couldn't get it for another year, and this was stupid.  She's was like 'whatevs, sorry, bye' and that was it.  I called my parents in a rage.  Then I called the guy's office back and told them it was extremely unprofessional, if they wanted me to go for an appointment with the guy they should have called ages ago after I had the appointment with the surgeon, and they were obviously just frightened of my health problems and so didn't want to do it.  I told them again they were unprofessional and asked them to send my xrays back to my dentist, because I would never let this surgeon touch me, and I planned on telling not only my dentist but everyone I know about this stupid situation.  It was so stupid.  So then I found this other place in the south of the city I live in (I'm in the north) who wouldn't even need to see me before the surgery, I just had to tell them about my health problems on the site and they would know.  It was great, I had a date booked for right after school (because I could actually do it then).  I went to an appointment with my rheumatologist and told her about it.  She told me I couldn't get it.  I asked why.  She said that if I get oral surgery while on the infusions, I could get the bone disease in my jaw.  I was super upset, so she called the surgeon for me and told him.  He then told her that he was planning on giving me a steroid after, a steroid called Decadron, the one that gave me the bone disease in the first place!  She basically said 'like hell, stay away from her!' and my appointment was cancelled.

Around this same time, I stopped getting my infusions.  My rheumatologist looked at my bone density tests and MRI's and decided that the bone disease had stopped killing more bone, and some maybe even grew back a little bit!  But we were at a point where it wouldn't help anymore, so there was no reason to get it anymore.  At that time, I was no longer getting kidney stones quite so much, so that was awesome!  I was quite happy to not have to get two blood tests and an IV every month, so that was great.

In 2009, I went back to my rheumatologist, and I got an MRI of my shoulders, just to check up on things.  It still hurt in that weird, pinchy way, but I wasn't concerned because it'd been doing it for a year and I was kind of used to it by now.  However, when I went into her office and we looked at my MRI results, she started reading it and said "oh no.  This isn't good.  This isn't good at all."  It turned out that the feeling of pinching in my shoulder was actually the feeling of a collapsed joint.  The dead bone and some cartilage around it had burst apart, leaving a super raw point in my shoulder exposed.  I needed to get it fixed.  I was pretty upset by this, because I had had a good run of a few years with no health problems.  I got a referral to a shoulder surgeon, and a "that sucks, sorry!" in the nicest way possible (she really is a great rheumatologist).  I got in my car in the parkade and called my parents, and then my boyfriend, bawling my eyes out.  I remember a car waiting behind me in the parkade, and I didn't notice for a while, so he just patiently waited for me to leave.  After a few minutes, I shut my car off because I wasn't going to drive while on the phone and crying like an idiot (that seems a little distracted driving-y), and he got all mad and drove off angrily.  I was very upset.

Shortly after this, in the summer between my third and fourth year, my boyfriend broke up with me.  I'm very ashamed that I'm not the one who terminated the relationship, but oh well.  He told me that for the entire past year, he didn't love me, he was just sticking around because he didn't want to hurt me.  I was really upset.  I had just spent a month helping him get through a cold or something, and then pneumonia because he didn't go to the doctor when it got really bad, and he didn't even care.  Another reason he broke up with me was that, and I quote, 'how can I know that you're a good girlfriend if I've never had another girlfriend? I need to date someone else to know if you're actually good or not.'  So yeah.  A very long story short, this chapter of my life is closed.  For now.  I've learned that things in life are never quite what they seem, and this entire relationship is one of those situations.  But once again, more on that later.

A few months after this, I ended up meeting a guy at work at Cardel and we started dating.

Don't Play Human Foosball Unless You Don't Mind A Soccer Ball In The Face

I'm going to skip ahead in the story to the start of University.  This isn't because nothing happened, just that nothing massive happened that pertains to the story, so there's no need to tell you guys about it.  From this point, the story will be on fast forward a bit because of the lull in my health problems.  I'll get through this part as quickly as possible so I can get back to the fun stuff!

Halfway through the summer was an engineering open house.  It solidified in my mind that I was doing the right thing for school.  Partway through the day we played human Foosball, which is where a bunch of people hold onto long poles and face the same way as the people on the Foosball table.  Then they throw a soccer ball in the middle of it.  They put me in the very middle, and I was looking down at the ball right when someone kicked it up and into my nose.  It bled for two hours.  It was hilarious.

The first day of University was called UofC 101.  The basic idea of it is that you run around the uni going to all these fake classes practising for the real thing.  I was put in a group with this girl that I'd met a few weeks before at an engineering open house thing.  I spent some time too with some friends from my lifeguarding job.  It was weird for me because I was almost the oldest, a full year older than everyone else in my year.

When I got home from the first day of UofC 101, I got a phone call from my boyfriend at the time.  Things happened a while ago that I couldn't remember (my psychologist has told me I was experiencing dissociation at the time) and we broke up.  It was difficult for me because I couldn't remember doing it, so I had to just accept the fact that it had happened and was my fault.  I never tried to pass the blame off, because I hate when people do that.  Our relationship ended at the point of one year and eight months, and my family and I were alone again suddenly in the health problems.  I still had my headache.  I decided to not go to the rest of UofC 101.

After a few days I was pretty ready to get over the whole ordeal and move on with my life.  If there's anything health problems have taught me, it's how to deal with things and put them behind me.  The guy was still calling and asking me questions about what had happened, which bothered me because I didn't know any of the answers.  I wanted him to stop so I could move on and focus on school.

School was awesome!  I'd waited since grade 8 to be in University, and it didn't disappoint me.  I had six classes, which is a very heavy course load.  One thing I want to stress about this: it wasn't necessarily hard, it was just a lot of work.  The people who drop out probably aren't dropping out because they don't understand the material, they're dropping because they haven't or didn't want to keep up with the course load.  The first year, I did pretty good with sticking to it.  I had to get my infusions still, once a month, and I had to fit it around my classes, which got a little difficult.  I was at a good point with the pain though, and so luckily that didn't get in the way too much.

I had a few friends in this time.  I found out that Mike, the guy from Chinook (my 27 year old friend) was in engineering too so we hung out every so often.  I got a few friends in my block in engg, one girl and a bunch of guy friends (I've always got along way better with guys).  I found that I didn't really like how some of the people in engg acted towards engineering.  Some were being very competitive about it, which is ridiculous; you're not going to make it out being the only engineer, so you may as well try to take as many of your friends with you.  The friends I made were people who where all for helping each other, which was great.  One major thing that happened to me in this year was I started playing World of Warcraft.  From now on, I'll refer to this game as WoW.

At the end of the first year, I was hanging out with one guy a lot in particular, because he was pretty down to earth compared to a lot of other people in my block.  He introduced me to one of his friends, and the friend and I really clicked.  He was in number theory or something.  We started dating at the end of the first year of university, on May 7, 2007.

About in the middle of his and my relationship, my left shoulder started hurting.  It felt like I was getting pinched in the shoulder joint, and would sting.  I noticed it most while I was lifeguarding, but thought nothing of it other than a pulled muscle.  I went to the doctor for it, who said we could do an MRI, and I denied.  In my opinion there was enough wrong with me.

Well You Shouldn't Have Become A Teacher, But Unfortunately You Are

My year of Chinook had a couple of significant occurrences.  One thing that is really important is that I turned 18.  I was dating the same guy, so he was 19 at that point.  He was a huge drinker, and so I ended up going out with him and drinking every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  I was a lightweight, and was making a buttload of cash, so I could easily afford it.  Our main stomping grounds was the old Cowboys.  It's gone now (which makes me feel ridiculously old) after closing, reopening, and then closing again, so if you ever decide to take a tour of Kelli's life in Calgary, you'll have to skip that part.  I liked the ability to dress up and look cute, because it made me feel like everything that happened to me didn't matter and I was fitting in like everyone else.

Around the same time, I found myself losing my thought a lot.  By this I mean I would start driving home, would kind of space out, and then would come back a couple minutes later headed for Edmonton.  This happened a few times, and I'm still not sure why it happened, but oh well.  I didn't tell many people because I didn't want to freak anyone out.  I actually mentioned it to my boyfriend of the time, who told me not to tell him about it because he didn't want to know.  That was kind of a bad call (hindsight is 20/20). This problem will come back later, so sit tight!

Another thing that happened was I moved far enough away from my surgery that I was able to get a piercing!  One day, Mom was like 'let's get your nose pierced!' and I was like 'ummmmm' and she was like 'yeahhhh!' so we got in the car and went.  I was a little worried about it, because it's not every day you have a sharp metal rod punchered through your face (hopefully).  So we went into the shop in Kensington that looked super sterile, and jumped up on the bed to get it done.  Mom held my hand so I didn't start bawling, and she told me to shut my eyes.  She punched it through and it barely hurt at all, I guess because I had had and was having enough pain to minimize all other pain.  My eyes started watering like mad however, almost like I got punched in the nose.  It looked great though!  So we went home all happy.  That was on January 7, 2006.  I remember the date because it was mine and my boyfriend's one year anniversary, and I didn't tell him I got it.  He didn't notice until we were going up an elevator somewhere that night and was like 'whoa! What is that!'  It was awesome.

The second semester of Chinook started shortly after this.  I was in Math 31 and Physics 30.  I was worried about Physics 30 because I'd taken Physics 20 two years prior through a workbook only.  I, by chance, was in this class with the girl that had the chest tumour, and also with a guy who I'd started calling my 27 year old friend (I'm pretty sure he was 27 at the time), both of whom were in my Chem 30 class the previous semester.  The girl and I went up to the teacher shortly into the first week to tell her about our health problems because we would be away often, either from pain or from appointments.  She asked us what we wanted to do after, and we told her (engineer for me, something for the girl, maybe nursing?).  She gave us both a funny look, and then said 'you know, some people in life just can't do what they want to through no fault of their own'.  We both went 'um. Okay.'  It was so upsetting!  She had no right to say it.  We both decided to start hating her (because we were teenage girls).

Leading up to the end of the last semester at Chinook, Kyle and I discussed possibly getting tattoos together.  We had gotten quite close as a result of my health problems, and we wanted a way to symbolize it.  We chose the Red Cross because we had taken all of our lifeguarding courses.  We decided to do it, so we booked it, and on the fateful day Mom, Kyle and I got in the jeep and drove down to the Smilin' Buddha, a reputable tattoo shop in Marda Loop.  I got mine on the back of my neck, about a centimeter down from my scar, and Kyle got his on his left pec, right over his heart.  I had gotten freezing from the nurses from my infusions, so I couldn't even feel it.  They turned out great!  We got them covered and went to get some beers at the Regal Beagle.  A couple of days later, I was lifeguarding during lessons.  A teacher decided they weren't going to teach that day (douche), so we needed a lifeguard to teach for them.  Somehow, I was the lucky guard.  I was worried about my tattoo, but wore my wet suit so I thought it would be okay (that makes no sense).  Later that day, my family told me my tattoo faded terribly.  I realized I'd have to get it redone.  I went in a couple of weeks later, and he redid the entire tattoo for no extra cost.  I had no freezing on, however, so I got to feel the whole thing.  Though it was over my spine, it actually wasn't that bad.  To quote my mom, "It's not brain surgery."  It looked great after, and it's held it's colour beautifully, even now, 5 years later.

Sometime around now, I got my acceptance letter for early acceptance to the University of Calgary for Engineering in the mail.  I was ecstatic!  So was my family.  They actually called me at work when the letter came in the mail.  Kyle opened it and read me the whole thing, and the four of us were screaming and jumping up and down.  It was awesome!  I actually got in based on Extenuating Circumstances (or something... it was 5 years ago, give me a break).  I had to get two letters from teachers (one teacher form Chinook and one from my high school) saying that they thought I would do well in University despite my health problems.  I was pretty proud when I got in because I did it despite all my problems, and I saw it kind of as a middle finger to how my life had been so far.  It was great!

Looks Like You're Going To Have To Pick Up The Fork

That summer was pretty uneventful.  In fact, the timeline here speeds up a little.  I went through a few years of relatively good health (well, if you can call it good health), but a few crucial things happened in this time.

As I said, the summer went by without much happening.  At least, nothing that sticks out in my memory.  I went to some friend's houses a couple of times, but that was all.  My main worry was school.  I had to finish off Physics 30 and Math 31 in order to get into University, and I decided to also take Math 30 online to boost my grade, and Chem 30 again because I wasn't pleased with how I'd done on the diploma when I took it previously.  I had a couple of options: I could go back to Queen E (my high school) and take a 13th year, or go to Chinook college.  I took the Chinook route, because I never wanted to be in that school again.

When September rolled around, I was bumped from my receptionist job at Metro Ford because my boyfriend was back in school and needed to work at the desk again.  I took this opportunity to move to the Parts department as the Parts Girl.  Basically I was setting up for inventory, and also helping the shipper/receiver that was there.  I got to wear a metro shirt that was about a league too big for me, and I was supposed to wear steel toed boots (as I found out when I dropped an F-350 rotor on my foot), but I opted to switch from my normal heels to running shoes instead.

I was working in the Parts department part time, so I decided to take only one class at chinook that first term.  I took Chem 30.  I don't remember all too much about this class, except that there was a girl in it that had gotten a tumour in her chest taken out.  I wasn't doing that well in it because I was more concerned about working, and my energy level from my hip surgery hadn't come back yet.  I ended up raising my mark by ten percent, so that was a pretty good achievement.

One thing I should mention about this time.  Around when I started school, I started getting pains in my abdomen every so often.  It was confusing, but I figured it was because I was pigging out like I'd never seen junk food before.  Until one day I realized that actually, I was getting kidney stones.  I was still getting infusions at this time, and I had to take a bunch of calcium and vitamin D because of it.  For some reason, my body decided it hated me and didn't want to put calcium in my bones.  Instead, it wanted to inflict the most pain possible on me.

One night it got really bad.  Up to this point I had just waited it out, because it was painful but not as bad as other pain I'd gone through (or was going through).  However, Mom and I decided that I should go to emerg to try to get help passing this thing, as per the instructions from my rheumatologist.  While I was in emerg waiting to be put into a bed, I passed the stupid thing.  Have you ever seen a kidney stone?  They're tiny!  The size of them definitely does not make you feel triumph over passing them.  They actually make you feel like you're a giant wuss.  So, once I passed it, Mom and I discussed going home, even though we'd gotten a bed.  One doctor came in and insisted doing an exam, which we refused (considering how the exam when when my bones were hurting), and we demanded to be allowed to go home.  We won.

From then on, I got a ton of kidney stones.  I worked with kidney stones, I went to Chinook with kidney stones, and so on and so on.  It was great times (it really wasn't great times).  I got so good at passing them that I could just pop a Tylenol 3 and just deal with it.  Some other stuff happened with this, but to be honest, I'm not super comfortable talking about it, so it's getting cut out.  I'll maybe put it in if I get to make this into a book.

Another great thing that happened around this time was that I found out about my low blood pressure.  When you have low blood pressure, you body all of a sudden decides its going to feel like it has no muscles and is going to try to shut down.  I had the pleasure of having this happen while I was driving.  Good times!  I was told that, to deal with this, I was going to have to eat things like chips more often. Num num num.

Why Are You Following Me?

A few days after I got off my crutches, I got to graduate.  The Jubilee was under construction, so we got to graduate in the gym of the University.  Our whole graduation (ceremony, reception, aftergrad party) was on the same day.  I wore a blue dress with a jacket over it I think, and these really cute flip flops that had a little bow on them (flats, because I wasn't allowed to wear heels yet).  I was looking like a weird upper body builder who forgot she had legs, because my arms were ripped and my legs were tiny stick legs, so I didn't really care what I looked like.  I hated high school anyway at this point, and didn't mind that I was probably never going to see any of the people again, so this wasn't special for me at all.

We got to the University, and we went through all the "oh my god, we're pretending to be friends, lets take a thousand pictures that we'll never look at again because we're pretending we like each other" thing.  We went through this pretty quickly, and I went back to hanging out with my parents and grandparents.  A little while into getting there, we got to go downstairs and get our gowns on, and then got a few more pictures of that.  Click click click.

Finally, we got to get all lined up to go into the gym.  I got to stand at the front of all the people, even though my last name starts with an N, because I was going to leave right away after.  We decided I probably wouldn't be able to sit there for the whole 3 hours without pain or discomfort, so we decided that was the best option.  We walked in, and I sat down in the chair beside my dad (he was there for me to hang onto while walking to and from the stage).  They went through a couple of speeches, and then the first round of diplomas were given out, which included me.  Dad walked me up, then went around the back to the other side of the stage.  The guy read out my name, and I walked over to shake the people's hand and get it.  The picture of this is actually really funny, our principle had to lean down really far to reach my hand (because I'm only about 2 feet tall), and my face is white like a sheet because I'm already getting dizzy.  Then I walked to the end of the stage and down the stairs, where Dad was waiting.  We walked down the aisle and out the back door, giggling because we got to leave early.  Then we turned around, and saw that the next person had followed us!  I was like "what are you doing! You're supposed to go sit down!" and he was like "Oh!" and ran back into the gym.  It was hilarious.

So then we handed the gown back in and met up with my mom and grandparents, and we went to Boston Pizza.  We had a niiiice lunch while all my classmates sat in the warm, stuffy gym listening to boring speeches.  Then we went back to my house and got ready for the reception.  Once I got dressed up, we took a couple of pictures in the living room, and then all went out back for a beer.

I had on a blue dress that hooked up in the back (so I wouldn't trip on it while I walked backwards, apparently), and black gloves, and a rhinestoned top hat. I also had on a bunch of jewelry that used to be my great nana's.  I brought my Mom, my Dad, Kyle, Kyle's girlfriend at the time, and my boyfriend.  Our goal was to fill up 90% of the table (succeeded!)  Se we all had a beer together, and then all jumped in the jeep (someone else had to have driven...maybe we took Garth the van? Oh well) and went to the Telus Convention Centre.  I don't remember much about when we got there...probably because it was so uneventful.  For some reason when we went in, we all went in a big line and walked around the room, as if no one had ever seen us before.  Then we stood there for a couple minutes, extremely awkwardly, and then all sat down at our tables.  While we ate our terrible meal, a "slideshow" went up on the screen, which was literally just our pictures out of order to a lame song, and it was on repeat.  It sucked.  I hope the guys who made it didn't get a job making slideshows.  After the meal, my boyfriend told me that he'd brought rum, so we drank some of that.  Then we danced for about three songs, and we went home.

After that, my boyfriend and I got ready for the aftergrad.  This literally involved a change of clothes, and another beer.  Then Dad drove us to the aftergrad.  I was still 17 so my 18 year old boyfriend got a wristband and I did not.  We danced a bit and hung out with some people (his friend, who's now a cop, was also there, feeding beer to his 17 year old girlfriend through their mouths...it's as gross as it sounds).  Then, one of my friends who know the owner got me a band, so I had one beer, and then danced the night away.

That was the last time I saw most of the people from high school.  I went back only one day, to pick up my yearbook, and I snuck in and out so I wouldn't see anyone.

Is It Just Me, Or Is It Kind Of Warm In Here? Oh, Now It's Cold. Soooo Cold. Now It's Hot! Ahhh!

Finally, the date come for the two-month-after-surgery appointment with my orthopedic surgeon.  We were pretty sure I'd done well enough for him to know what I was going to be able to walk.  Instead of waiting in the office for three hours, my mom called about an hour before and asked how far behind they were.  Then we sat at home and kept busy until they caught up, which was about two hours.  Then we drove to the hospital and rolled into orthopedics.  We still had to wait a bit, but it wasn't super long, so it wasn't so bad.

We rolled into the examination room and parked me in the corner (facing out) by the bed.  The doctor came in.  He checked my most recent MRI's, and told me that I was going to be able to walk!  Then he asked if we brought the crutches, which we didn't.  So he said no problem, stand up!  This was terrifying.  I think Mom's exact words were "What! No! Ahhhhhhhh!"  So one parent stood at the other end of the room, and the doctor and the other parent stood beside me in case my hips suddenly shattered like your dreams when you parents told you that you can't live in their basement and play video games for the rest of you life.  So I put my hands on the arms of the chair, and used my now super built arms to push myself up.  You know when you work out and you take it past the last rep and your arm feels suddenly like it's never going to lift anything again?  That's how my legs felt.  I got to the maximum reach of my arms (four inches...well more like twoish feet) and went "oh my god" and sat down super heavily in my chair again.  I lost so much muscle in my legs!  I thought they actually weren't working.  He told me to try again though, and I got up and managed to waddle over to the person across the room, toddler style, and back again.  Then I sat down, exhausted.  He told me I could start crutching around when I got home.  I was so pumped!

So then we go into this one room where they usually cast kids, because he wanted to see the incisions, or something.  While we were in there and he was looking at them, I asked him how long it would take until I could get my nose pierced, and how long until I could get a tattoo.  He started ranting that I was too young for both, and then grabbed my transfer board and pretended to hit me.  It was hilarious.  He told me quite a while, because if either of them got infected, it would go straight to the rods in my hips, which would be terrible.

Then we went to physio.  They taught me how to walk with crutches (crutches first, then one foot, then the other), and also how to walk up stairs (foot one, foot two, crutches).  Then I went in my chair and we rolled back home, where I had a terrific, long nap.

There was still about a month left of school, but I didn't go back.  I'd pretty much finished my social 30 by this point I think (and was exempt from the diploma exams again, for medical reasons... I think I actually had only taken the Chem 30 diploma the year before by the time I graduated), and there was no need to go back for friends.  I missed a lot of stuff in regards to graduation stuff.  I went in one day with mom to drop stuff off, and I caught a glimpse of the graduating class board that had all of our pictures.  I saw that my name was spelt wrong, and I chuckled at it.  This guy who worked there was like 'what are you laughing at?' and I'm like 'oh, my name's just spelt wrong.' and he goes 'well you should have told us a long time ago!' and I was like 'well that was at the top of my priority list, so...'  I missed all the grad rehearsals.  I'd actually managed to get one in before my surgery, which involved me getting a massive panic attack (my first!) and bawling in the office until Kyle came and picked me up.  Apparently my friends all saw him come in and said hi, and he didn't even look at them.  So I spent this month healing at home, playing The Sims.

I realized I was going to have to start thinking about work.  At this point I'd been lifeguarding since October (this was May), and I obviously was still going to need time to heal before I could guard or teach lessons.  My boyfriend at the time worked at a Ford dealership as the receptionist as he went to Mt. Royal in business or something, and for the summer he was going to move to the service department, so he got me a job as one of the part time receptionists.  I remember them asking me how long I was going to be on crutches, kind of in an annoyed tone.  It bothered me, because it's not like my weak legs were going to somehow stop me from answering phones and paging people.  Except for those times that I answered phones with my feet, but that was pretty rare.  However, I told them that when I started (in a couple of weeks), I was going to be up and walking, so they were happy.

At this point, my rheumatologist decided I was going to go on a new drug, Pamidronate.  The point of it was to get my body to stop eating the dead bone in my joints to try to give my body a chance to revascularize it.  It wasn't very widely used, and actually was mostly used in cancer patients.  I would get it over three days every three months for eight hours a day.  Before I could take it, I needed to go in for an EKG.  We went into the children's again to get it.  I've always liked the EKG tests, because they put a ton of sticky things on  you and then just start the test up, there's no effort involved by the patient whatsoever.  This test, as with all the blood pressure tests I get, still made me freak out a little (I'm always waiting for an "Oh my god, what is wrong with your heart!!!!"), so I controlled my breathing (in for four, out for eight).  And, as usual, they asked if I was athletic, because I had a really low heart rate.  I'm not.  In fact, the first time I was asked this, Mom laughed her head off.  The EKG came back good, so I was a go for the Pamidronate infusions.

I'm not sure why, but during this time people always asked me how the blood transfusions were going, which would make me have to explain all of it all over again.  I'm not sure what people were thinking, because as far as I know, I didn't and don't need blood transfusions.  So remember: Pamidronate Infusions, not blood transfusions.

We went into the day surgery ward to get this infusion, at the time it was ward T.  I was warned that I was probably going to get a fever from this, nausea and slight discomfort too.  Then I was hooked up to the drug and settled in to watch TV for the next 8 hours.  Then the fever started to hit.  Throughout the day, my temperature went from normal (37 degrees Celsius), to 39.6 degrees Celsius (103.28 degrees Fahrenheit).  Not only that, but my veins really started to hurt.  At the end of the eight hours, they put me in a wheelchair because my arms hurts too much to use crutches, and we rolled me back to the Jeep.  We actually have a picture of me sitting in my wheelchair in our driveway with my blue downfeld blanket wrapped all around me so you can only see my angry eyes because my fever was making me so cold.

That night, my arms started getting red streaks from my wrist to my shoulders.  I was holding both arms up, holding on to the other shoulder, to try to keep them elevated (at some time throughout the day they'd changed the IV from one arm to the other), and they were both hurting a lot.  My parents kept asking if I wanted to go to the emergency room, and I kept saying that I could wait it out until the morning, when we'd be going back for more infusions.  Finally, at about 11pm, I said that yes, we should go to emerg.  We got into the jeep and went back home, oh I mean to the hospital.  We went into emerg, and got into a room right away again.  They said that though it's likely inflammation (phlebitis, they called it), it's impossible to tell the difference between inflammation and infection, so they were going to have to pump an antibiotic into me intravenously, through the already super painful veins.  This was when I started getting IV's in my wrist.  There's a few IV scars on the front, and they're all from this trip.  That was the only vein that would take the IV without just rejecting the drug altogether.  They put a bit in me, and then told me I'd have to go back in a few hours when the infectious disease clinic opened.  We did as we were told, and when we came back we were put into the orthopedic unit, which doubled as an infectious disease clinic on the weekends.  I got to lay on an all-to-familiar bed, and I got more antibiotics pumped into me.  Then, when we were done, we got to go back to get more infusion.  After all this, besides being extremely hydrated, I was questioning whether or not this drug was worth it.  We were assured they were, however, and I was told that in the future, I was going to be doing one day a month for about 13 hours a day, because if the drug went in any faster, my veins would get mad again.

Coming up to the end of my crutch time, I was feeling a lot better and was looking forward to my upcoming graduation.  This was in May of 2005.

Kickstart My Heart....Not What You Think

Time went by pretty slowly for me for the next two months.  Mom would come downstairs at all hours of the night if I needed anything, like painkillers or a glass of water.  Have you ever tried to drink a glass of water while you're walking?  Now try it when you're using both hands to push your wheelchair.  Not so easy now, eh?!

During this time, I remember mostly Kyle's band coming over and jamming in the basement while I was rolling around upstairs.  I was happy, because it made me feel like I was out at a concert, something I missed while in my wheelchair.  At one point I asked Kyle if I could learn the bass while in my wheelchair, and we took the arms off the chair and put it on me.  That was when I realized I couldn't ever learn to play the bass because my hobbit arms were too short.

This was the point that The Sims really took a big part in my life.  Mom and I took one of my few trips out of the house to go to the mall to get an expansion pack.  We'd already spent my graduation money on a laptop for me because we realized that I wouldn't be able to do much else, so I was all pumped to put this expansion on it.  We rolled into Compusmart in Market Mall, got it, and came home.  I tried to install it and watched as the progress bar began to fill.  30%, 40%, 50%, 60%... and then it didn't move anymore.  It got stuck at 60%.  I was super upset, and already pretty exhausted from our previous outing, so Mom made me have a nap while she took it back and got a new one.  Well, that one did it too.  And so did the next.  Finally, Mom just returned it and went to EB Games.  That copy worked.  That's the reason I only get games from EB Games now.

I couldn't get upstairs to shower (except for one time, where Mom and Dad made a sling with their arms and lifted me up... I've been trying to get them to do it again ever since, but to no avail), so Mom and I had to go to my pool (because I was a lifeguard at this point) to shower.  So one day, Mom and I got ready to go out to this pool to shower.  We put the ramps out the back door (because it was less of a slope, and thus less likely that I would take out the person helping me down going 60km/h) and we got me down it.  Then, for some reason, Mom decided we would roll around the house at a full out run.  Did you know that wheelchairs have seat belts?  I found out why.  We hit a hole, and if I hadn't been holding on as hard as I was, I would have gone flying off my chair and shattered my hips.  Hilarious at the time, but now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure she was trying to kill me.  Well, you haven't succeeded yet Mom!

The only time that I remember negatively in this time had to do with my high school friends.  None had visited me in the hospital again, which sucked, but I had my boyfriend at the time so it wasn't so bad.  Well, they decided that they were all going to pile into a couple of cars after school one day to come and visit me while I was at home.  However, they failed to tell me about it.  Mom and I happened to be headed for Market Mall at this time, and it took me about a half an hour to get into my car.  So I got a phone call from one of them telling me they'd be there in about 10 minutes.  I was upset, because this was the first time they were visiting and if I managed to get back into the house in the allotted time, I'd be so tired already that'd I'd just fall asleep when they got there.  So I told them the truth: I wasn't home.  They got mad at me and decided it was my fault.  I hung up feeling pretty low.  I felt it was unfair that I already had so much troubles healthwise in my short little life, and now I was getting mega rejection from my friends because of it, even though neither of those things were my fault.  Mom cheered me up with a good ole' "buck up, buttercup" and we were on our way to the mall.

Two concerts happened while I was in my wheelchair: Velvet Revolver and Motley Crue.  They were two of my favourite bands, so I had to go.  My boyfriend and I got my handicapped placard and went off to the Saddledome.  The band's were awesome (at the VR concert, Kyle even got me Slash's cigarette <3 because he was in the front row, the place that I would also be had I been able to walk).  When we were at the Motley Crue concert, I had to go to the washroom, so I pushed myself into the women's.  As I was washing my hands, I heard someone go "hey, you can't be in here!"  I turn around, and there stands an extremely drunk Kyle.  There was a line for the men's room, so he came into the woman's (wearing his friends shoes, for some reason).  As the women in it started to get angry, I said "it's okay! He's my brother!" and everyone kind of went "ohhhh okay" and calmed down.

Another new thing we got during this time was our Jeep.  Mom and Dad's car at the time was the Opaz, which I was using whenever I could, and Kyle had Garth the van, so they needed a new vehicle.  They bring it home one day, and took me and Kyle outside to see it.  To get me into it, however, Dad had to lift me up from the chair and put me in the Jeep seat, because it was wayyyyyy too tall for me to transfer into.  It was a cool vehicle, and I got to claim the front passenger seat because it was easiest.

During this time, we thought it would be good for me to get my hair cut.  It would be hard getting me into my hairdressers house, so my hairdresser decided she was going to come to me.  She came and cut my hair in the middle of the kitchen, like Mom used to do when we lived in Ottawa.  It was really nice of her, and I'm super appreciative of it!  She's the best hairdresser I've ever met, so caring!!

The last awesome story I have about this time is when we went to Hys, this really high end restaurant.  I'm quite the steak fan, so I was immediately stoked to go.  We had a great time, and at the end they asked if we wanted deserts or speciality drinks.  My family all chose Spanish coffees or whatever, and I, being a tea lover and under 18, ordered a blueberry tea.  The waiter kind of looked at me, then at my parents, and then said okay and walked off.  Then he returned with Amaretto and Grand Marnier, poured them together, and told us to enjoy.  We all looked at each other.  None of us had heard of this, and I had successfully ordered alcohol underage because he didn't want to ask me for ID!  Too bad I wasn't a drinker.  I had it anyway though.

Coming to the end of the two months, I was healing pretty well.  I still couldn't put weight on my legs, but I was close!

Are They Moving? How About Now?

The time in the hospital for my hip surgery was okay.  Because I couldn't put any weight on them, I was given a transfer board, which is pretty much just a wooden board that's about a foot long.  I had to use it to get from the bed to my wheelchair, or from my wheelchair to the toilet, etc.  I couldn't put any weight whatsoever on my hips.  It was pretty hard.  My arms aren't giant pipes by any stretch of the imagination, so I got tired pretty easily.
The feeling in my limbs took forever to come back.  They slowed the flow of the epidural to try to give me some back.  It's super awkward trying to figure out if the feeling is coming back by wiggling my toes.  It's like trying to wiggle your ears when you don't know what it feels like.  You have to think "wiggletoeswiggletoeswiggletoes" and then ask someone if they moved.  They didn't want to just yank the thing out of my back because then it'd get the worse pins and needles feeling ever, and the pain of the surgery would hit me like a truck.  So we eased into it.  I was super excited once it finally came all the way back.

This time my roommate was an 18 year old girl named Ashley.  She had something quite bad.  Her side of the room was papered with posters and teddy bears, and she could do a lot of the stuff by herself without the nurses help, not because she wasn't that bad but because she was used to it.  She was really nice, and it's another case where I feel much worse for her than I ever will feel about myself.  I really hope she managed to get out of there and got to start her life.

This time I had a nurse name Julie.  She was sooo nice.  We chatted and stuff, she was really attentive.  Sometimes you get nurses that care so much that you think they should be the role model of all nurses in the world, and Julie was definitely one of them.

The fourth day in, I got moved to a four person room because they needed our room for an isolation.  Ashley had to take all her stuff down and pack up so she could put it up in whichever room she was in next.  My parents asked if she wanted help, but she said she was used to it, so she did it on her own.  They wheeled me into my new room and I transferred onto my new bed.  Being in a four person room is completely different from a two person room; it's more like waking up in the recovery room, but then having to stay there and sleep there.  The kids around me were a lot younger, so I needed to have lights out pretty early and got a pretty sucky sleep.  The next day I got to meet a physiotherapist, who taught me a little more of the transfer board and made sure I could actually transfer myself and move myself in a wheelchair well.  Then I was allowed to go!  I got the IV ripped out of me, and we rolled our way to the front of the building where dad had pulled the car around.

Getting into the Opaz was a little difficult, but the seats are pretty worn in and low, so it wasn't ridiculously hard.  I found it difficult to sit in the car though, because my hips were still extremely sore and I hadn't ever sat up for that long a time.  We did it though, returned the chair (mine was at home), and drove off.  It was a pretty rough ride for me, but no where near as rough as the brain surgery.  Once we got home, we took out my chair, I transferred into it, we rolled me up the ramp and into the house, and then tucked me in to my guest room bed.  Then I went to sleep.

Are My Knees Bent? Cause It Kinda Feels Like They're Bent. No? Okay, My Bad.

Leading up to the hip surgeries, we had a lot of preparing to do.  I would be wheelchair bound for a little while, so we needed to get some sort of lever/pulley system rigged up to get me out of the house.  Just kidding, we just used a ramp.  However, getting ramps for people in wheelchairs is harder than it sounds.  We got this woman to come in and measure whether or not a ramp would work in our house.  Apparently you need to have a certain ratio of height vs. distance (or slope, for people who are a little quicker than me) and our house definitely doesn't have that.  We were like 'oh no, guess I won't be able to leave the house, thanks for you help' until she left.  Then we went out and rented some metal ramps and set them up ourselves.  My dad, being dad, constructed a wooden box that we put in the middle of the garage to use as an intermediate level so that I didn't just go flying down the ramp and plummet head first into the floor.  They then put the two pairs of ramps on it so that it was just wide enough to fit my chair.  It was pretty awesome, and I kind of wish we got a picture of them (and a picture of Kyle when he tripped over them on the way to get a beer, because that was hilarious).  Anyway, good work Dad.  We also rented a wheelchair for me, and bought some crutches.

The next step was more complicated. I had to move from my room upstairs to the dining room/Mom's office/part time guest room.  The bed was already down there, but they pushed it against a wall and put a TV in so I wouldn't be lonely.  Then they put all my sheets on it, and my teddy bear, then shoved me in and locked the door.  No, they didn't, but it kind of felt like I wasn't ever going upstairs again so they may as well have.  We were now all pumped and ready to go.

On the big day, Mom, Dad, and I walked into the Children's and went upstairs to the Day Surgery unit.  Once again we went through the questions, and we sat down to play some crib.  And we waited.  And waited.  I wasn't even allowed to chew gum, and I was extremely hungry.  The waiting room slowly cleared out; the young kids always go first for surgeries because they can't handle the hunger and stuff as well.  After a little while, we found out that some kid was carsurfing and came in for emergency surgery.  Once he was done getting fixed, it was our turn.  So we sat and waited, and got angrier and angrier.  Don't get me wrong, I feel bad for the kid.  The truth is, he shouldn't have been carsurfing.  I was super upset because I didn't ask for what I was there for, and I had to sit on hungry pins and needles because he decided to throw caution to the wind and failed.  I stick by this thought, as mean as it is and as bad as I feel about it.  Anyway, the situation was worse than we'd figured (or the doctors, for that matter) because around 6, when I was the last one waiting in the room, my surgeon came in.  He was working on this boy too, and it looked like he wasn't going to make it.  My surgeon was still in weirdly high spirits though, and when we asked him why he told us that the rods that were going in my hips were actually flown in from Ontario.  He'd never done this surgery before and he was all excited about it.  I remember my Mom saying "I hope you have an instruction manual!" and him laughing, and then her saying "no, really.  Make sure you have an instruction manual."

Anyway, because of that kid, I got pushed to getting surgery three days later, on the following Monday.  On the bright side, I would get to bypass the waiting room stuff because I was getting admitted to the hospital the night before.  The weekend went by relatively fast, and on Sunday night I checked in for another night in Hotel Children's.  It was weird walking in and feeling relatively healthy, yet still having to climb into the hospital bed and get my vitals checked.  My boyfriend came and saw me while we were there, so him and I went for a walk around the hospital a bit.  After a while, he left and my parents left and I was ready for lights out at 7pm.  Okay, maybe not that early, but being a children's hospital, you can't really have a party in one of the rooms because there's kids sleeping next door.  I spent the night reading and trying to not panic about the next day.  I slept pretty well, especially considering my sleeps before later surgeries.  That seems to be something that gets worse with age.

The next morning, my parents were there again.  They told me they loved me and all that jazz.  A nurse came to get me, and together we walked to the back elevator that they take the beds down in.  I wasn't allowed to wear my glasses, so everything is a little foggy (ha).  I said bye to my parents, and walked with the woman to the operating room.  I climbed up on this tiny freaking bed and was positive I was going to teeter off the edge.  I got gas again, which is always fun, and off we went.



When I woke up in recovery, a nurse asked me if I was going to get sick.  I said 'yep', half leaned up, said 'nope', and laid back down.  I was freezing.  They put this blanket on me and filled it with hot air, it was actually pretty awesome.  They asked if I was doing okay and I said yes, and then asked one of the nurses if my knees were bent.  She kind of gave me a weird look and said 'no.' and I said 'ok, cool, thanks.'  I couldn't feel my legs.  I was positive that I was actually now paralyzed from my waist down.  I accepted this as truth without asking anyone, and spent the rest of recovery planning out my new wheelchair-bound life.  Then they towed me back to my room.  This is where the nurses informed my family that I had an epidural in, which no one had warned me about before.  I couldn't even wiggle my toes or feel anyone touching my legs.  Kinda freaky when you don't know why.  The bandages I had on felt massive when I touched them, but I found out after they were only about a half centimeter thick.

I did way better with this surgery as far as nausea went; I didn't throw up once.  The only problem was that shortly after I woke up, I decided it was a good idea to have some licorice.  I love red licorice, but I still had the taste of the anaesthetic in my mouth, so that's what it tasted like.  It took me a while before I could eat it and not taste that.

The doctor came and told us the surgery was a success, as far as we could tell.  The rods went in and I didn't die, so I guess that's really all I could ask for at the time.  We wouldn't know if the rods managed to revascularize the joints for a while, so we were to just play the waiting game and focus on healing.

Well, The Only Thing You Have To Be Stressed About Is My Doctor's Foot Up Your

One thing I've neglected so far in this story is my social life.  By this point I'd managed to get back into school.  I was taking English 30-1 in a "go at your own pace" class, Bio 30, Math 30P, and German 30.  Because of my headache and bone pain, I missed a lot of school.  I'd learned how to drive at this point, so I inherited the Opaz and would drive my friends, or drive on my own to school.  I needed to do this because at any point during the day I might have had to leave.  English was really fun for me; I was using poetry to take my upsetness at my whole situation out, and I've always loved reading.  Other than when I would drive my friends to school, I wouldn't see them an awful lot.  I was still pretty upset about them abandoning me during the brain surgery, so I'd already realized I couldn't count on them for much other than someone to talk to at school.  I'd gained my weight back by this point because I wasn't throwing up everything, so they were back to pretending nothing happened.

At some point in September or October, we went back to the neurosurgeon to talk about my still-there headache.  He said that it may have become a chronic headache, but it would probably go away.  In the meantime, I could take certain medications to try to relieve it.  I was up for anything, so they put me on an anti-epileptic medication called Gabapentine.  I was supposed to ween up to two pills three times a day.  The day after the appointment I started taking them, but I accidentally forgot to ween up and took two pills at lunch.  I went into German and told my teacher, who thought it was hilarious.  I ended up being high as a kite from it, and he decided that I would get to read a section of the textbook.  I don't know if you've ever tried to speak German, but doing it while hoped up on anti-epileptic medication is impossible.  My teacher thought it was hilarious and everyone laughed the whole time.  The only problem with this medication is that it was known to change the mood of people.  I didn't notice at the time, but I started getting really antisocial and getting really mad about the things my friends would say or not include me in.  My parents talked to me about it when I started crying a lot, and we went back to the neurosurgeon.  At this time, we decided to add a neurologist to my team of doctors, so she sat in on this appointment.  My parents were trying to explain that the drug was negatively impacting my life when I burst into tears and started telling them that not only was it making me hate my friends, but my headache was still there, just as bad as before.  I'd never cried in a doctor's office before, no matter how bad the news was, and I haven't since.  They agreed that I needed to get off of it.

After that, I was put on Amitriptalyne.  Some people actually use this as a sleep medication, but it's actually an anti-depressant.  However, to have it work for depression you need to take 200mg or more, and I was no where near that.  I was to ween on it and up it.  This medication went pretty well, and I evened out emotionally pretty quickly, though being in grade 12, the damage was already done between me and my friends.  There ended up not only being zero support from them at this time, but they added a ton of stress on me.  They made me feeling bad for being in pain and for being different. I couldn't really stop talking to them though, because I wasn't at school enough to start making friends with other people, and I needed someone to talk to while I was there.  I decided I was just going to have to suck it up.

As I got towards the end of the first semester of grade 12, I started talking to my brother's friend a lot.  He was a nice guy and had actually liked me for a while, so we started seeing each other.  I started hanging out with him and his friends (when they weren't at the bar, obviously, being that I was only 17 and wasn't really one for underage drinking, another difference between my old friends and I).  He was very understanding about my health problems, something that's apparently extremely rare in people.

As we crawled towards the hip surgery date, we went to see my orthopedic surgeon.  He decided to refer me to a rheumatologist (a bone doctor who deals with things like arthritis and other bone related diseases).  We went into that appointment and met her.  She, like my other doctors, was amazing and super nice.  She's would always compliment me on my heels.  They decided that soon I would have to do a drug infusion which would hopefully make my body stop eating the dead bone, which would maybe reduce the odds that my joints would collapse (where the dead bone and possibly the cartilage around it crumbles apart, leaving a big gaping painful pit of dead bone hell in it's place).  We agreed, but I'd have to wait for my hips to heal from the upcoming surgery to do it.  In the meantime, she suggested we go to a psychiatrist in the hospital to help deal with the stress this was putting on me and my family. We agreed, because we thought any help would be good help.

We were wrong.  Apparently there are people in the medical industry who actually suck at their jobs.  We went to one appointment with this psychiatrist.  Mom, Dad, and I went to see her together, and about the first 50 minutes of the hour long appointment were rocky.  Then she decided to open her big stupid mouth and say "What do you have to be stressed about?"  I'm pretty sure we walked out.  In fact, we said that we won't be going back to her ever, and then walked right into my rheumatologist's office and told her what this woman said.  She wasn't pleased.  It took me a couple of years after that to feel comfortable with going to any type of psychological help.  It's amazing how a bad apple can ruin the batch.

I started the second semester of grade 12, and had only one class.  I knew what would be happening as far as the surgery went, so I took only what I needed to graduate school with my year.  We went to get my graduation dress in about January because I wouldn't be able to shop for or try on a dress until about two weeks before actual graduation.  I felt like it was the calm before the storm, or like I was walking for the last days of my life, knowing it was only short term.

If You Can't Handle The Heat, Run Away And Get Someone Who Can

The hardest part of getting the bone disease at the time was that I wasn't able to see Kyle graduate.  My grandparents came in and had to stay home with me while my parents went and watched him graduate.  I know that they had wanted to see him graduate as well, so I felt like a giant douche sitting there asking them to get me drinks while they were missing out on their first grandchild's big day.  Before they left, Kyle gave me a hug and said "Don't worry, high school graduation doesn't matter.  It's the University graduation that's important, and you can see that."  I cried when he said it, and I'm tearing up now as I write it.  It takes an amazing person to play down something so big because they know how much it means to another person that can't see it.  Once they left, my grandpa handed me the remote and told me to turn it to whatever, and my nana sat in the other chair and started reading.  Every so often, they'd ask how I was doing, if I needed anything, if I was okay, and they'd always make sure I didn't have to get up.  They're really great, and it's nice to know that if we need them they're there.  I have an awesome family.

At this point it was still extremely hard to walk.  It took a long time for my pain tolerance to go up, and even longer for my knees to stop hurting so much.  Mentally I got used of it, and I accepted the fact that I was going to have this for the rest of my life.  I knew I had to keep fighting, because I had so much in life that I wanted to do, and I couldn't let something, even something as serious as this, hold me back.  Life goes on, and if you focus on what you're missing, you don't go with it.

The appointment with the orthopedic surgeon came pretty quickly.  We came into the waiting room, a solid 30ft from the neurosurgery waiting room, and we sat down for a long wait.  I'm pretty sure this was the time that we found all the magazines for university, colleges, etc. in the waiting room.  I'd wanted to be an engineer since grade 8.  We went through them half-heartedly, mostly wasting time (though it was good I did, because it helped me out later in the story).  Finally it was our turn.  We went into the examination room, and I climbed up on my throne.  I'd gotten an MRI at some point in between then and here, so my images were up on the screen.  A woman doctor came in and introduced herself, then looked at the screen.  Then she goes "Oh.  Oh my god.  This isn't good.  This really isn't good."  She looked at us and said "this isn't good."  We all just looked back at her with a look on our faces like 'thanks, tips.'  She turned and went running out of the room.  We all looked at each other, a little surprised at this.  I'm not really used of people running from me.

A few minutes later, in walks a man orthopedic surgeon.  Apparently the woman before got super intimidated by my awesome bones and got someone else to come and look after them.  He was a lot more positive about everything, and didn't make me feel at all like an alien just jumped out of my MRI.  He started telling us (really excitedly) about this surgery that we could do, where we put tantalum rods in my hips in an attempt to stimulate the blood flow to the head of the joint.  They hadn't done it in western Canada yet, but they did in Ontario an so far they'd had good results.  We were pretty skeptical, and justifiably hesitant.  He was really pushing for it, not because he wanted to do it, but because he really thought it would help.  We said we'd think about it.

We had an appointment with my neurosurgeon a little bit later.  While we were in the appointment, the orthopedic surgeon knocks and comes in.  He told the neurosurgeon about what he wanted to do, and together they tried to persuade us. Then he told us that he was going to make an appointment for us with a really well known orthopedic surgeon in Foothills to get his opinion on the situation.  We agreed to go, mostly because the whole thing was hilarious.  We accepted and got an appointment with the guy.



Because of all this, we decided that we would indeed to ahead with the surgery.  It got booked for February of 2005, the last semester of grade 12.  At this point, I still had the headache.

At Least It's Pretty Much Empty Right Now

At this time in our story, the school year was winding down to an end.  I was coming to the end of grade 11 (which really isn't that great a feat), and Kyle was coming to the end of grade 12.  This, of course, means graduation, and diploma exams.  I was less interested in his diplomas (I'd actually done my Chem 30 diploma in the Fall semester, after an MRI, so they were really nothing new), but I was pumped about his graduation.  It's not every day that your only sibling graduates.  I used it as something to look forward to, to keep pushing towards even though I was still in pain.  Obviously my world doesn't ever work out how I want it to though.

I was about 7 days into my steroids for the meningitis when my knees started hurting.  They were too bad, kind of like how it might feel if you went running, except instead of running at a nice pace you stomp each step for an hour, and your knees start saying 'eff you' for the next couple of days.  By this point I was used to a little random pain here and there, so I thought nothing of it.  Sleep that night was really uncomfortable, the pain got a little bit worse and I was squirming like mad trying to get in a spot that would make it either hurt less or not make it hurt more.  I finally did, and got to sleep.  When I got up in the morning, it was even worse.  I had no idea what was going on, but I am fantastic at denial, so I decided I was fine.  I got through the day and went to bed that night.

That night was terrible.  Sometimes people will say they were up all night doing stuff, and usually that's an exaggeration; they probably got to bed at about 3 or 4 am.  I was up all night in pain.  I've always had insomnia, so when 2am rolled around and I wasn't asleep I wasn't very worried.  It was the same as the night before, but worse.  There were no positions where it didn't hurt.  I stopped looking at the clock after 2, because that always makes it worse.  I didn't realize how bad it was until the sun started coming up.

After I saw that the sky was pretty light, I chuckled to myself.  At this point I had already realized that I never seem to do things the way normal people do them.  I shimmied to the edge of the bed and leaned over the edge.  I used my arms to lower myself to the ground and started crawling to mom and dad's bedroom, dragging my legs behind me (which was probably better than dragging them in front of me).  I knocked on their door, they said come in, I opened it, dragged myself in, and said 'Hey guys!  I think we might need to go to the emergency room!'  We chatted about it for a minute or so, and then we all went to get dressed (I needed a little help).

We got to the hospital and got put on a bed immediately, either because of need or because there was pretty much no one in the emergency room at 8am.  They put some liquid Ketoralac in me before they even started an IV.  Then I got a bunch of tests done.  I'm not going to really talk about this part, because this is really the only point of my story that I've actually disagreed with what they did.

Eventually they realized something happened with the steroids.  To check, they asked me to have a bone scan.  I don't remember how long it was between the emerg visit and the bone scan (two days maybe? Actually it was probably the same day) but soon enough mom and I were waiting in the hospital for the bone scan.  First they have to put the radioactive dye in you, and then you wait a half hour, and then they scan you.  Mom rolled me in in a wheelchair (I still couldn't walk because my knees hurt so bad), and they gave me the dye.  We rolled out and went to the cafeteria for a half hour.  When we went back they told us they had to wait.  Apparently the girl in front of my was refusing to get her dye because she'd had an incident where someone had stuck a needle in her neck, making her justifiably afraid of needles.  We sat down on a couch outside the room (by we sat down I mean mom sat down, and I transferred from the wheelchair to the couch), and Mom tried to get me to go to sleep while we waited.  Eventually they called us in.

I got to lie down on this huge table that had a massive camera over it.  They gave mom a chair beside it and put some cartoons on the TV (the perfect thing to occupy a 16 year old's mind).  And then they taped my legs together.  If you've seen me now (and I know some of you haven't), if you know something is hurting me you'll see me squirm.  I try to be subtle about it, but I tend to crack my joints or move as if I'm stretching a muscle when I'm hurting.  When they taped my legs together and told me not to move, it was as if a tiger was seeing if my face would fit in it's mouth without me being allowed to flinch.  Mom was holding my hand, I was trying to hold back tears...it was terrible.  The camera was being moved around my body, and it took an insanely long time.  At the end, I was exhausted, and both Mom and I were in really low spirits.  Whenever she sees me in massive pain it gets her down.

We were rolling back towards the emergency room when mom sees a computer on it's screen saver.  She's like 'oh look!' and points at the image of two cute kittens hugging or something.  At the same time, we both go 'awwwwwwwwww.'  Then the image changed to a picture of some horses.  At the same time, we both go 'oh.'  Then we both start laughing.  Like mother like daughter!

We roll into the emergency room and wait.  Some doctor, I can't remember who she was, some on call person, comes out to talk to us.  She tells me that I've gotten a rare side effect of the steroid called Avascular Necrosis.  This is where the blood flow to the head of the joint has stopped, causing the bone at the head of the joint to die.  Eventually, the body eats the dead bone, which can make the joint collapse.  The "hot spots" that showed up in the bone scan were my knees, hips, and shoulders.  I can tell you now, after having had it for a few years, that I also have it in my elbows, wrists, ankles, some fingers and some toes.  The pain feels like bone on bone pain, or like a person sticking a needle into the raw part of the bone.  That's actually pretty accurate, the feeling comes from the dead bone rubbing against the live bone I think.  If you've never had the pleasure of that happening to you, imagine the feeling of someone pinching a really small amount of skin, you know the tiny amount that hurts the most?  Then imagine that inside your joint.  It's a permanent thing, and they don't have a cure.  She leaned in and told me that there's a chance I won't be able to walk.  Cue the world crashing down around me.

She left and Mom and I sat there in shock, looking at each other.  This was pretty bad news.  Then my neurosurgeon comes trotting down the hall with a big smile on his face.  He says hi and starts joking around with us.  We told him the big news.  I don't really remember how he put it, but he made it seem nowhere near as serious as the other doctor had said, and made it pretty clear that I was going to be walking again pretty soon.  He asked where it hurt and I told him, right under the kneecap in both knees.  He goes "here?" and squeezes my right knee on either side of my kneecap.  I half laughed, half died (oops I mean cried), and he starts laughing, and mom goes 'stop!'  In hindsight it was pretty funny.  He told me he was refering me to an orthopedic surgeon in the children's.  In slightly higher spirits, life went on.  I still had the headache, all day every day.

I'm going to take this moment to tell you that as of right now, I have nothing against my doctors, and I didn't, don't, and never will want to sue these people.  It's true that there were complications with the brain surgery that caused my spinal cord to be inflammed, but that was my own body that caused that complication, not the doctor.  It's also true that I got a side effect that they did know about and didn't tell me about, but had I not taken that drug, I'd be dead.  They weighed out the need for the drug against the possible severity of the side effects, and the need won.  I'll never feel resentment for that, and I hope that none of you will either.  When it comes to my health, if I'm in a do or die situation, I'll almost always take the do.

The story continues...

This Is Spinal Tap

Being home from the hospital felt great.  It felt like it had been years since I slept in my own bed.  My head still hurt really bad, so I had to have extra strength Tylenol every four hours and extra strength Advil every six.  Mom would make sure, and would literally wake me up at night to give me some.  This may sound excessive, but if I didn't have it I would wake up from the pain and have to wait for more pills to kick in.  I would nap a lot.

School at this point wasn't really feasible.  I was still in grade 11.  I was really lucky they had those workbooks in most of the classes, because I was able to do most of the classes at home.  The school knew about my situation, so my teachers were all extremely understanding and were willing to help me finish the semester.  Right when I returned home and found out that I wasn't able to finish school, I was pretty upset.  I wasn't going to be able to see my friends everyday.  I'd already gone almost two weeks without seeing them, and I was needing some support from them.  So I tried to get some of them to come over.

First a couple of guys that weren't in my main group of friends came over.  Before they got there, I was really wanting to feel up to seeing people.  I got dressed, put my makeup on, everything.  Then, about two minutes before they showed up, I threw up again.  It was the same thing as always, where I had to flex every muscle in my body in order to handle it, and then after I was extremely exhausted again.  Mom put me in her bed and laid me down with a cold washcloth on my forehead.  When my friends got there, Mom told them to wait a few minutes in the living room because I wasn't doing great.  Then she helped me down the stairs (which I almost fell down).  They weren't here for that long, probably because I looked like death on a couch, and after they left I had a long, awesome nap.

A couple of days later, two of my best friends came over.  They brought a couple of things to make me feel better, like a giant card that people signed, and a six pack of mini-cokes.  It went well, until the end where they told me that I had gotten too skinny and looked like a skeleton, so they didn't want to see me anymore because it scared them.  That was a pretty big shock to me, and that's actually the reason that I find it really hard to get close to people now when I'm going through health things.  These people were my best friends, the ones who promised they'd be there for me, and they told me that they were scared of me and didn't want to see me anymore.  It hurt worse than the headache.

Once again, I'm extremely happy for my family, and for the friends of my family that supported me so much.  I'm not going to name names for privacy reasons, but I really couldn't have done it without all these amazing people by my side.  My parents and brother (Kyle) and I all got really close.  I remember Kyle coming home from school and playing guitar with his amp on while I was sleeping in the room next to him.  I'd always be like 'aaaaargh!!!', but I found it a little funny, and he was actually good at it so it wasn't so bad.  He could have been trying to learn to play the violin.  It's the small victories.  When I would get upset and cry, at least one of them would always be with me, crying with me and trying to make me feel better.  We even stopped eating fish, because for some reason the smell of salmon cooking would make the nausea even more pronounced.  Thank god that didn't last long, because my family cooks a mean salmon.

Shortly after I got home, my mom noticed that I was still throwing up a lot, and was just generally not doing well.  This is usually how it works for me; I don't ever notice if I'm looking terrible or am doing worse than I should be, someone always needs to tell me.  So Mom decided we were going back to the hospital.

We walked back into the Children's, and instead of taking me to the emergency room, Mom dragged me right into the neurosurgery clinic and told them that my surgeon needed to see me.  They said okay (because no one will get in Mom's way if she's on the warpath) and sat us down in the room.  This was a pretty funny appointment, because I mentioned the bed being kind of high and Dad tried to step on the little thing to make it go down.  Instead of going down, it made this huge bang and did nothing.  Dad then tried to figure out what went wrong and tried fixing it (I get this from him, by the way).  We had to make him sit down so I could get on the bed before the doctor came in.  Once he came in, he took one look at me and said "somethings wrong."  He tried to take my temperature, but couldn't work the thermometer (it was also pretty hilarious).  Eventually they just decided that it was time to admit me and get this fixed.

I was put back in the neurology ward of the Children's (unit N, I think).  They had to start an IV on me again.  To do this on kids, they sometimes freeze it with topical freezing, but it can make the veins hide, so I didn't get it this time.  Instead, I got a warm towel wrapped around my arm for a while.  They came in and tried to start an IV.  They started trying in my hand.  Every time they put the needle in, the vein would roll or dive, and they couldn't find it.  They tried three times before they decide to wrap my hand again and call someone else (they can only try three times a person).  That person came in and tried it on my hand closer to my wrist.  They got it! She asked if it felt okay, and I said yes, so she taped it and walked about.  About five minutes later she came back and I told her it was a little sore, so she unwrapped my hand and my wrist looked like a balloon.  The vein had blown.  They took it out and got ready to try again.  While they were setting up, I asked if it was okay if I slept while they tried to put it in again.  The nurse looked at me like I was crazy, but said yes.  One the sixth try, the IV finally stuck and I was allowed to sleep.

The next day, my surgeon and another guy came in and told me I was getting a spinal tap.  To do a spinal tap, they have to freeze your spine, and then put a tap in between a couple of vertebrae and let the spinal fluid drip out.  If the guy misses, it hurts like sticking a giant needle in your spine without freezing.  Probably because that's what happens.  So we got all prepped.  I had to push my back out to separate my vertebrae as much as possible.  I had to put my feet on Mom's feet, which were on the bottom bar of my lunch table tray (I swear I'm shorter than half the kids in that place) and push as hard as I could to get them separated enough.  He put the freezing in first.  I'm not sure how to describe how painful it was.  It hurt at the spot he put it in, and then as the fluid moved in me the pain spread up and down my back, and all over my head.  Once that kicked in, I had to push back again so they could tap it out.  Thank god, he didn't miss.  My legs were shaking from pushing so hard for so long, because it takes about a minute to tap it all out.  I'm sooooo happy I couldn't see the tap, because Mom said it literally drips out and that just sounds disgusting.  They went off and tested it.  It came back saying I had non-bacterial meningitis.  This happened because my spinal cord became inflamed.

As I was there, I was told I couldn't take Tylenol or Advil because it hid my fever.  After not taking it for a few hours, my temperature went up to 39 degrees, which is pretty close to hyperthermia (the opposite of hypothermia).  We had cold washcloths papering my face, and we got a couple of fans brought in to cool me off.  I, of course, looked freaking awesome.  I was given a steroid, Decadron, to help get rid of the meningitis.  After my fever went down, I went home and felt about a zillion times better.  I had more energy and I wasn't throwing up as much, and my headache was actually feeling better (though it didn't go away completely).  I was put on a 21 day round of this drug, and you have to ween up onto it, and then ween down off of it, which is included in the 21 days.  At this point it was about half way through May of 2004.

Please Move The Banana

I remember a few things from the first couple days in the ward. The faucet was dripping in one of the rooms, and I woke up just long enough to tell them to tie a face cloth from it to the bottom of the sink. They did and it stopped, and I was immediately back to sleep. Another thing I remember was the menu. They gave us the meal menu every morning, and we always optimistically filled the whole thing out, even though we knew I wouldn't be able to hold anything down except water. Someone had given me a fruit basket as a get well present (which was really nice), but my sense of smell was ridiculously heightened, and I couldn't take the smell of the banana. I had to get my parents to take it out of the room.

As the days went by, I got progressively better. I still threw up everything, and every time I did my headache would get so bad that my skin would go bright white, then bright red, and I'd have to tense all my muscles because it was the only thing I could do against the pain. I could hold water down pretty well usually, except for one night where they gave me too much codeine and the water came back up, still cold. One night I had watermelon and it stayed down, so I got super excited about it and had a ton, and then threw it all back up again. I couldn't eat watermelon for years after, and I still get a little cautious when I see it.

My mom slept in a chair beside my bed every night except for one.  That night my dad stayed, and got so angry at the nurse (actually, this was the night of the codeine incident), set her straight, and then sat down and watched over me like an angry wolf watching over its cub.  It was pretty funny.  My entire family was there a lot, even Kyle, who was in grade 12 at the time.  I had a couple of people visit me, including my family doctor and my grandparents.  My friends, however, didn't come once, and didn't even try to contact me until I was well enough to check my phone and text them to tell them I was alive.  Even then, they decided that was good enough and they didn't need to visit me.

One of the highlights of my stay in the hospital that time was when a volunteer brought a laptop in for me.  I was super into The Sims at that time (I hadn't heard of WoW by then) and so I actually sat up for the first time for about 15 minutes so I could play it.  This was probably about day 5.  It was a really big step for me, and after I said I was done I laid down completely exhausted.  The next day the nurse told me I was going to try to walk.  I was pretty against it, but she pretty much dragged me out of the bed and helped me walk around the room once.  I can't even describe what the headache felt like after that.  I've never had a migraine that's come close to the pain, so I don't really know what to compare it to.  After that though, I felt confident that the back of my head wouldn't explode when I got up, so I was ready to do more.

One of those days, my neurosurgeon came in and said that the surgery went well, and the nausea was because of that portion of my brain being too low.  He said he was pretty sure that my headache would go away soon, and if it didn't, they might need to depressurize some of my brain by putting a shunt in the side of it.  Neither of those things happened.

We were really wanting me to get home.  That kid that was in ICU with me that had the same surgery was gone after 4 days, and he was doing awesome.  On day 9, Mom got the nurses to feed me enough gravol to knock me out for 8 hours.  Every so often, she'd wake me up and shove some vanilla Boost into my mouth, and then would let me go back to sleep.  I wasn't awake long enough to throw it up, so by the end of the day I got two Boosts in me, which was enough for me to go home.

Car rides home from the hospital are always hell.  We put me in the front seat of the car that would eventually be mine, the Opaz.  My parents handed me an ice cream bucket and shoved blankets on top of me, and off we went.  I managed to keep my stomach in me the whole way home.

To sum this part of my life up, I went into the hospital expecting about a 4 day stay, to stay steady at 117lbs, and to be headache free when I left.  I was in there for 9 days, lost 11 lbs, and had a headache worse than when I went in.  However, I was alive, and therefore I count this surgery as a success.

Why Are There Scars On The Top Of My Head?

Before we get into the next part of this story, I'd like to tell you a little bit about the social side of my life up to this point.  As I said before, I had a pretty tight group of friends.  We became friends at the start of grade 10.  For the purposes of the story, I'm not going to mention their actual names.  I don't need anyone I used to know getting mad at me.

By the time spring break rolled around, my headache was about a ten out of ten on the pain scale (or at least what my pain scale used to be).  This meant I spent a lot of time at home in too much pain to go to school.  When I was there, my friends were pretty supportive.  One would offer me random pills out of his pill collection, of course in exchange for my own Tylenol 3's (I never took that offer), and another told me she was going to pitch a tent in my hospital room and would camp there for the four days I was supposed to be admitted.  I felt pretty good about them being there for me.  Before I went in for my surgery, I decided a bunch of my friends should go to Tony Roma's for a supper party kind of thing.  I made invitations, and titled it The Last Supper (something no one else seemed to find funny, but personally I still find hilarious).  Everyone came from that group of friends and another group of friends I had, and it all went great.  The day before the surgery, I promised to let everyone know as soon as possible and told them that if they asked at the front desk, they would tell them what room I was in.  I also told them I'd check my cell often while I was in there. They all promised I'd talk to them soon.

On the day of the surgery, Mom, Dad, Kyle and I walked into the Children's hospital and went to the second floor: Day Surgery.  They asked if I'd been sick in the last two weeks, and Mom quickly said 'Nope!' which was a flat out lie.  I'd had a cold which had just finished the day before.  The four of us sat down among the children and their families, and we started playing Cribbage.  One thing about crib, not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty much the best person at it ever.  Just kidding.  I'm pretty good.  Kyle hasn't played it a ton, so we had to teach him how to do it.  Then we played team crib.

After an hour or two, they finally called me to get changed, once again, into the awesome hospital outfit that ties at the back.  We then sat down in the closer waiting area and they asked the usual questions.  They told me I was getting put under by gas, which I'd heard isn't as quick (it isn't, but it's a hell of a lot more fun).  Then we played more crib.  My family and I are extremely close, and this was one of those times that really stands out in my mind when I think of how awesome they are.  When it comes down to the hard parts of my life, my family is always going to be there for me.

Finally it was time for me to go in.  I said my goodbyes, assured them I was going to be okay, and walked into the operation room with a big brave smile on my face.  I climbed up on the bed, and the nurse who's sole purpose at the start is to make sure I don't freak out and run for my life introduced herself to me.  I didn't get any IV's or anything at this point, they were going to wait until I was under (something a lot different then how they do things now).  They asked me to say my name and birthday, and then strapped the mask on me.  The nurse started telling me lame Disney jokes, which I found quite hilarious.  Then I started up a conversation with her about how white the room was.  And then I told her I was going to take a nap.  That's all I remember, officer.

If you're squeamish, you may not want to read this part.  While I was unconscious, they drilled a brace around my head to hold it steady, and then flipped me over so I was looking down.  They shaved a one inch wide strip up the back of my head about six inches ish long, and then cut from halfway up my neck to halfway up my head.  To get to the part that they needed, they had to remove a 2.5 cm x 2.5 cm piece of skull, which is still gone now.  They cut through a bunch of muscle and stuff as well.  Because the tonsil was so big, they had to shave off part of my first vertebrae to get to it.  They then burned the tonsil down to how big they wanted it, and inserted a plastic graft to prevent it from getting bigger.  Part of the nausea part of my brain had actually shifted down too, so they had to "tinker" with it to put it back where it was supposed to be.  Then they sewed and stapled me back up.

From here it gets a little hazy.  I remember bits and pieces of the next few days, but the timeline is a little screwed up in my mind.  A lot of this part is off of what I experienced mixed with what I was told from my family.



I'm told I was in ICU for a few days.  I don't remember even being there for an hour.  I had a window beside my bed apparently, and I was in the corner of the room.  Every time I laid on one side for a while, the other side would swell up and I would have to roll over.  I threw up extremely often, and wasn't awake for a lot of it.  There was a kid one bed over from me who had the same surgery; he was in there for the allotted day and then left.  Good for him, and that taught me that I should never judge my health against someone else's.  I remember waking up one night and telling the nurse I needed to throw up, and she pretty much hit me in the face with the tray thing while she was looking away and yelling at a different ICU nurse.  That's actually the only thing I remember in ICU, the time went by pretty quickly for me because I was unconscious for so much of it.  Kyle wasn't allowed to visit me there, I think only one or two people were allowed to come in, and my parents were beside me every second they could be.

Eventually I got moved into the neurosurgery ward.  I don't remember the trip over, but Mom does and I guess she was over me like a hawk.  This paragraph is from what she told me.  I was in this room with a girl, maybe named Sophie.  She had Chron's disease or something, and she was termed a "frequent flier," something I was also called shortly after.  Mom said that she was pretty sick.  Apparently a while after my brain surgery we were in the MRI/CT/Ultrasound part of the hospital and we saw her, and I started crying because she wasn't better yet.  Thinking about it now, even though I don't really remember all this, I still get pretty choked up.  I hope she's better now, and I hope she managed to beat the terrible cycle we both were in.