khaliajohnson
New member
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2013
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- English
- Home Country
- United States
- Current Location
- United States
I’m sitting in the emergency room in agony. Five years ago when I was at my aunt’s house for a family get together, all of the family and I were eating at the dinner table having a good time, when I suddenly felt sick. “Do you want to lie down?” asked my mother. I got up and went to the couch to rest. I figured I had eaten too fast or maybe just the wrong combination of foods. I began to feel nauseous, I broke out into sweats, and I felt a big rush of vertigo crash into my head like a freight train. This is when I knew that there was a huge problem. My mother gave me a few teaspoons of medicine to alleviate my pain and to bring down the fever she felt when she laid her hand on my head. She then leaned close to my face and said “You’re going to get through this, just have faith”. The bad news is that it kept coming back throughout the next couple of weeks. My mother already excluded the idea that I had food poisoning, just for the simple fact that this illness kept coming back. This was the beginning of my worst endeavor.
I wake up about 3 am house in tears. My face feels heavy and my eyes feel swollen shut. I was having the hardest time breathing. I tried yelling but my throat and face were sore and achy, then my dad bursts into my room asking if I’m ok. I’m just hysterical at this point. So I jump up and get dressed and I realized that as I try to put on my shirt my face was sensitive pulling the shirt over my head, almost tender like. When I went to the bathroom, and turned on the light I gasped in absolute shock. I’m looking in the mirror at a face that wasn’t mine. My cheeks, eyelids, throat were elevated, almost protruded off my face. It was swollen beyond recognition. When my father saw this he rushed me out the house and we were on our way.
The car ride was unbearable. Being as though my father was exceeding the speed limit, going over many bumps in the road was such a painful thing to bear. Little did I know we were at the hospital in Wilmington already. I had nodded off a couple times on the way, but when I had awaken we were just pulling up and my father looked over to me and said “How was your power nap? “, Indicating that I hadn’t been asleep for long. My body was way too exhausted to move so my dad has a nurse bring a wheel chair to the car and from there they wheeled me into the er. While I sit in the room, I can hear my father in the hall talking to the nurse nervously asking many questions almost simultaneously. “Why is my daughter’s face as such?” “Can you help her?” “When is the doctor going to see her?” At this point I’m in a daze and can’t really make clear of what the nurse’s responses are. The last thing I remember is a nurses assistant pulling sheets up to my stomach and a sharp poking in my left arm.
For the third time I woke up not really knowing my surroundings and I look to my left and I notice an IV pumping fluid into my arms. A lot had happened to me in the last 48 hours, but I remember my mother telling me to keep my faith strong. I tried but really how could I keep faith when I was at the peak of my worst nightmare? My doctor and father walked in the room, and my doctor told me that I had an internal disease called systemic lupus. To relieve the pressure of telling me he began to explain really fast what this condition was. I recall hearing that it was a systemic disease that is incurable. My nurse came in to tell me about my condition and its risks, how to sustain it, etc. Once she was done she gave me my pills that I’d have to take for the rest of my life. Then ironically she leaned forward and whispered in my ear “Just have faith and do as we tell you, and you will live a full wonderful life young lady “. I actually began to cry tears of joy because my mother told me the same thing and she was right. I also came to the conclusion that this was sort of a wakeup call that I was going to have to start taking much responsibility for myself, from now on and surprisingly I was okay with that. I’m sitting in the emergency room waiting to be discharged, and as I leave I prepare my mind for the new life ahead and inside I’m smiling.
I wake up about 3 am house in tears. My face feels heavy and my eyes feel swollen shut. I was having the hardest time breathing. I tried yelling but my throat and face were sore and achy, then my dad bursts into my room asking if I’m ok. I’m just hysterical at this point. So I jump up and get dressed and I realized that as I try to put on my shirt my face was sensitive pulling the shirt over my head, almost tender like. When I went to the bathroom, and turned on the light I gasped in absolute shock. I’m looking in the mirror at a face that wasn’t mine. My cheeks, eyelids, throat were elevated, almost protruded off my face. It was swollen beyond recognition. When my father saw this he rushed me out the house and we were on our way.
The car ride was unbearable. Being as though my father was exceeding the speed limit, going over many bumps in the road was such a painful thing to bear. Little did I know we were at the hospital in Wilmington already. I had nodded off a couple times on the way, but when I had awaken we were just pulling up and my father looked over to me and said “How was your power nap? “, Indicating that I hadn’t been asleep for long. My body was way too exhausted to move so my dad has a nurse bring a wheel chair to the car and from there they wheeled me into the er. While I sit in the room, I can hear my father in the hall talking to the nurse nervously asking many questions almost simultaneously. “Why is my daughter’s face as such?” “Can you help her?” “When is the doctor going to see her?” At this point I’m in a daze and can’t really make clear of what the nurse’s responses are. The last thing I remember is a nurses assistant pulling sheets up to my stomach and a sharp poking in my left arm.
For the third time I woke up not really knowing my surroundings and I look to my left and I notice an IV pumping fluid into my arms. A lot had happened to me in the last 48 hours, but I remember my mother telling me to keep my faith strong. I tried but really how could I keep faith when I was at the peak of my worst nightmare? My doctor and father walked in the room, and my doctor told me that I had an internal disease called systemic lupus. To relieve the pressure of telling me he began to explain really fast what this condition was. I recall hearing that it was a systemic disease that is incurable. My nurse came in to tell me about my condition and its risks, how to sustain it, etc. Once she was done she gave me my pills that I’d have to take for the rest of my life. Then ironically she leaned forward and whispered in my ear “Just have faith and do as we tell you, and you will live a full wonderful life young lady “. I actually began to cry tears of joy because my mother told me the same thing and she was right. I also came to the conclusion that this was sort of a wakeup call that I was going to have to start taking much responsibility for myself, from now on and surprisingly I was okay with that. I’m sitting in the emergency room waiting to be discharged, and as I leave I prepare my mind for the new life ahead and inside I’m smiling.
