It wasn't too difficult figuring out what I wanted to write about for my personal narrative. I haven't had too many significant events happen to me in my life, so it was a fairly obvious choice. In late 2009 I was diagnosed with a chronic disease called Crohn's Disease, which is a form of IBD. I guess I'm happy with this piece as a whole, but it was a little hard to write. Despite what my introduction on the home page suggests, I really struggle with telling people all about myself, especially if it's personal. When others start sharing personal stories, or just stories about themselves in general, I tend to clam up. However, this was an assignment, so it had to be done. It's not my favorite, but that's just due to the fact that this is non-fiction, so there's nothing I could or would really change.
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Pain. It had started as a twinge, a mere stomach ache that begged for attention, apparently believing itself to be more serious than it was. Then the pain became overwhelming. A sharp pain, feeling like a rough punch in the stomach. A burning sensation came along with the relentless punches, intensifying the agony that was taking control of my life. I couldn't think. I couldn’t stand. All I could do was submit; I had to curl into a tight ball and wait for the pain to do as it pleased until it finally passed. One day in September of 2009, it didn’t simply pass. It only grew worse.
It had been like any other morning when it happened. I’d been getting ready to go to school, trying to shoo away the pain with my thoughts.
“You’d better hurry!” Mom called from the living room, prompting me to get ready more quickly.
“I’ll be ready in a minute,” I replied, throwing on a hoodie. I winced, the movement intensifying the growing pain. It’ll pass, I assured myself, it always passes. I scurried down the hallway and into the living room, where my mom stood waiting with my backpack.
“Cutting it close,” she remarked with an amused smile. I smiled back tightly as I threw on the backpack and tried to force my feet into my shoes. It was getting really bad…
Suddenly, it hit me; it was the most intense pain I’d ever felt in my life. I instantly dropped to my knees and doubled over. Strange as it was, it was my natural reaction. I really didn’t have control over it.
“Brianna?!” my mom cried in alarm, rushing over to my side. She helped me make my way over to the couch, where she instructed me to lie down. Despite my protests, she called my dad and told him that he needed to meet us at the hospital. I was in pain, yes, but going to the hospital seemed almost worse. My opinion didn’t matter though, my mom was going to drive me to the hospital whether I liked it or not.
I spent the day in the emergency room. It was a miserable experience filled with minor, completely unhelpful testing and no food. The majority of the day was spent rolling around in pain. After wasting nearly the entire day in the hospital, I was directed to a gastroenterologist in Munster, Indiana. As it would turn out, the long wait was due to the fact that I was only thirteen. No one wanted to work on my because I was so young. After a brief examination, he had me shipped off to a children’s hospital in Illinois.
I didn’t really realize how quickly my health had deteriorated until I was walking into the children’s hospital. Why, you ask? It was at this time that I realized I could barely walk. Every step was unstable and labored. I mean, I had barely eaten at all that day, but that wasn’t the primary source of my issues. No, the real problem was discovered when I was weighed: I was five feet and five or six inches, but I only weighed eighty-nine pounds. Needless to say, I was promptly admitted. Through a series of rather unpleasant tests that I would rather not recount, I finally was able to put a name to the pain.
“You have Crohn’s Disease.”
By no means was it a death sentence, there are countless other conditions and disorders in the world that are far worse. Yet, when you tell a thirteen-year-old girl going through the most awkward time in her life that she has an incurable disease, it’s still earth-shattering news.
I only spent three days in the hospital, but I can honestly say that not only were they some of the worst of my life, but they collectively seemed to last an eternity. It certainly didn’t help that they’d wake me up every few hours during the night to weigh me and take my temperature! I mean, how do they expect you to get better if you can’t enjoy a restful, healing night of sleep?
Despite the overall bleakness of those days in the hospital, I still managed to find some humor in it. To this day, I smile every time I remember how I pondered over the wristbands worn by the patients and their parents. It perplexed me that in a children’s hospital, I had to wear a dull white bracelet with all of my information printed on it while my parents got to wear bright pink bracelets with a scale-like pattern that shimmered brilliantly in the light. Finally, I had to ask, ”Why is it that the parents get to wear the awesome bracelets?” I had asked my mom, a little disgruntled.
“I guess so they can tell which one is the patient,” she had replied, seeming just as perplexed as I was over the strange choice in wristbands.
“The patient is the one lying in the bed!” I had cried with a small laugh. My parents found this hysterical, and I continue to find it funny to this bed. Honestly… we were in a children’s hospital, the identity of the patient should have been obvious!
Anyways, the months following my release were no easier. Because the condition had gone untreated for so long, the disease had damaged my intestines, preventing me from absorbing nutrients from food, and ultimately losing weight. I was prescribed a steroid called prednisone that would help me gain back the weight I had lost, as well as heal the damage. One unfortunate side effect to the drug: I didn't just gain weight, I swelled. The steroid made me feel hungry constantly, causing me to eat more to prevent a painful flare-up, and I would gain more weight. This really was the goal, and my gastroenterologist assured me that the extra weight and bloating would go away almost instantly after I stopped taking the drug, but that was of no use to me at the time. Gossip started quickly. As if I didn't have enough to worry about as a diseased thirteen-year-old, I had to worry if snobby middle school girls would be talking about me behind my back because “my face had swollen up so much.” I wish I was joking, but I’m not. Whenever I wasn’t around, the meaner girls of my eighth grade class would gossip over my sudden weight gain. Many tears were shed those first two months after being diagnosed.
This is really where the story ends. Just like I was told, the extra pounds fell away once I was finally allowed to stop taking the steroid months later, and I grew healthier. The gossiping eventually stopped. The flare-ups became less painful and less frequent. Things just became better in general. However, I will never forget what those first few months were like. It’s an experience that has had a massive impact on my life. In those months, I learned what it felt like to have to really be strong. I learned that life could be unfair while I was young, and it made it easier for me to deal with obstacles I encountered years later. I learned who my real friends were. I learned that people will use whatever they can to try to hurt you, but it only hurts if you let it. Let them enjoy their ignorant little jokes; they aren’t better people for it. My constant battle with Crohn’s Disease has helped to mold me into the person I am, and now I choose to look at it as a bit of blessing. Troublesome as having this condition can be, being diagnosed with Crohn’s made me a better person, and I’m proud of that.
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Pain. It had started as a twinge, a mere stomach ache that begged for attention, apparently believing itself to be more serious than it was. Then the pain became overwhelming. A sharp pain, feeling like a rough punch in the stomach. A burning sensation came along with the relentless punches, intensifying the agony that was taking control of my life. I couldn't think. I couldn’t stand. All I could do was submit; I had to curl into a tight ball and wait for the pain to do as it pleased until it finally passed. One day in September of 2009, it didn’t simply pass. It only grew worse.
It had been like any other morning when it happened. I’d been getting ready to go to school, trying to shoo away the pain with my thoughts.
“You’d better hurry!” Mom called from the living room, prompting me to get ready more quickly.
“I’ll be ready in a minute,” I replied, throwing on a hoodie. I winced, the movement intensifying the growing pain. It’ll pass, I assured myself, it always passes. I scurried down the hallway and into the living room, where my mom stood waiting with my backpack.
“Cutting it close,” she remarked with an amused smile. I smiled back tightly as I threw on the backpack and tried to force my feet into my shoes. It was getting really bad…
Suddenly, it hit me; it was the most intense pain I’d ever felt in my life. I instantly dropped to my knees and doubled over. Strange as it was, it was my natural reaction. I really didn’t have control over it.
“Brianna?!” my mom cried in alarm, rushing over to my side. She helped me make my way over to the couch, where she instructed me to lie down. Despite my protests, she called my dad and told him that he needed to meet us at the hospital. I was in pain, yes, but going to the hospital seemed almost worse. My opinion didn’t matter though, my mom was going to drive me to the hospital whether I liked it or not.
I spent the day in the emergency room. It was a miserable experience filled with minor, completely unhelpful testing and no food. The majority of the day was spent rolling around in pain. After wasting nearly the entire day in the hospital, I was directed to a gastroenterologist in Munster, Indiana. As it would turn out, the long wait was due to the fact that I was only thirteen. No one wanted to work on my because I was so young. After a brief examination, he had me shipped off to a children’s hospital in Illinois.
I didn’t really realize how quickly my health had deteriorated until I was walking into the children’s hospital. Why, you ask? It was at this time that I realized I could barely walk. Every step was unstable and labored. I mean, I had barely eaten at all that day, but that wasn’t the primary source of my issues. No, the real problem was discovered when I was weighed: I was five feet and five or six inches, but I only weighed eighty-nine pounds. Needless to say, I was promptly admitted. Through a series of rather unpleasant tests that I would rather not recount, I finally was able to put a name to the pain.
“You have Crohn’s Disease.”
By no means was it a death sentence, there are countless other conditions and disorders in the world that are far worse. Yet, when you tell a thirteen-year-old girl going through the most awkward time in her life that she has an incurable disease, it’s still earth-shattering news.
I only spent three days in the hospital, but I can honestly say that not only were they some of the worst of my life, but they collectively seemed to last an eternity. It certainly didn’t help that they’d wake me up every few hours during the night to weigh me and take my temperature! I mean, how do they expect you to get better if you can’t enjoy a restful, healing night of sleep?
Despite the overall bleakness of those days in the hospital, I still managed to find some humor in it. To this day, I smile every time I remember how I pondered over the wristbands worn by the patients and their parents. It perplexed me that in a children’s hospital, I had to wear a dull white bracelet with all of my information printed on it while my parents got to wear bright pink bracelets with a scale-like pattern that shimmered brilliantly in the light. Finally, I had to ask, ”Why is it that the parents get to wear the awesome bracelets?” I had asked my mom, a little disgruntled.
“I guess so they can tell which one is the patient,” she had replied, seeming just as perplexed as I was over the strange choice in wristbands.
“The patient is the one lying in the bed!” I had cried with a small laugh. My parents found this hysterical, and I continue to find it funny to this bed. Honestly… we were in a children’s hospital, the identity of the patient should have been obvious!
Anyways, the months following my release were no easier. Because the condition had gone untreated for so long, the disease had damaged my intestines, preventing me from absorbing nutrients from food, and ultimately losing weight. I was prescribed a steroid called prednisone that would help me gain back the weight I had lost, as well as heal the damage. One unfortunate side effect to the drug: I didn't just gain weight, I swelled. The steroid made me feel hungry constantly, causing me to eat more to prevent a painful flare-up, and I would gain more weight. This really was the goal, and my gastroenterologist assured me that the extra weight and bloating would go away almost instantly after I stopped taking the drug, but that was of no use to me at the time. Gossip started quickly. As if I didn't have enough to worry about as a diseased thirteen-year-old, I had to worry if snobby middle school girls would be talking about me behind my back because “my face had swollen up so much.” I wish I was joking, but I’m not. Whenever I wasn’t around, the meaner girls of my eighth grade class would gossip over my sudden weight gain. Many tears were shed those first two months after being diagnosed.
This is really where the story ends. Just like I was told, the extra pounds fell away once I was finally allowed to stop taking the steroid months later, and I grew healthier. The gossiping eventually stopped. The flare-ups became less painful and less frequent. Things just became better in general. However, I will never forget what those first few months were like. It’s an experience that has had a massive impact on my life. In those months, I learned what it felt like to have to really be strong. I learned that life could be unfair while I was young, and it made it easier for me to deal with obstacles I encountered years later. I learned who my real friends were. I learned that people will use whatever they can to try to hurt you, but it only hurts if you let it. Let them enjoy their ignorant little jokes; they aren’t better people for it. My constant battle with Crohn’s Disease has helped to mold me into the person I am, and now I choose to look at it as a bit of blessing. Troublesome as having this condition can be, being diagnosed with Crohn’s made me a better person, and I’m proud of that.