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.