What is it like being diagnosed with a chronic illness at a young? It's awful being diagnosed at any age, but terrible being young! It has really robbed me of a lot. My story begins in February of 2007. That was my freshman year of high school, but I am first going to talk prior to it. The summer of 2006 I just started lifting weights and got serious about working for football. I've always had a solid build and played sports. I was able to put 15 lbs of muscle on in three months, and I had a great season. Little did I know something terrible was brewing just a few months lster. It all started when I was having repeated trips to the bathroom. I did not think anything of it at first. Then I started to develop sharp stabbing pains in my stomach! My weight was started to drop. I didn't really tell anyone though. Eventually I started bleeding heavily. My mom saw the blood in the bathroom! Enough to look like a crime scene, so she made an appointment with my pediatrician at the time. He wasn't too concerned at first about the weight loss because according to him my weight was correct for my height. Eventually people started to comment how pale I was looking. She took me back, and she told him that he needed to labs. I was anemic. He then referred me to a gastroenterologist. She did a whole workup of tests, including a colonoscopy. We got the diagnosis of ulcerative colitis. My mom suspected it. It hit me like a freight train. I never saw it coming. I was pissed off, and I was scared. I did feel like a normal teenager. I thought I had my life figured out after high school, but boy, was I wrong. I wanted to go into the military. Two years later my GI tested for a liver disease called Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis, but I'll talk more about that another time. They say I'll more than likely need a liver transplant, and that concerns me. I did have a few good years of health after that though, as I was able to play football and workout! Fast forward to 2015, and I was slapped with another diagnois called Gastropareisis. It has severely impacted my ability to eat normally and stay hydrated. Everyday I deal with nausea and vomiting. I am thankful I can still eat though. Being ill has changed me so much! John Lennon said, "Life is happening when we're busy making plans". That's okay though because we are suvivors, and we have to learn to adaot with our situations, and it's certainly not easy being young and ill. Many of you can sadly related.
-Ross |
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