One Saturday when I was fourteen, my best friend and I memorized the Kryptonian alphabet.
I went to school the following Monday, still giddy from my accomplishment. I scribbled down any and every random thought that popped into my head, just admiring the sharp angles and smooth circles in the foreign letters. Very proudly, I showed one of my closest friends. She stared at me, clearly unimpressed and disapproving, and said something along the lines of, "You have a ton of make-up work to do for school, and you spent the day memorizing a fake alphabet?"
Well... yeah. I did. And I would do it again if given the chance.
At that time, my days were filled with severe, never-ending headaches and my nights were filled with vomiting and wishing I could sleep. I rarely had an appetite and was losing weight—right then I was probably down by five or six pounds, but I eventually lost about sixteen or seventeen—and to make matters worse, my hair had started falling out. When I felt absolutely horrible, I stayed at home, bored out of my mind and longing for company. When I only felt really awful, I went to school, where I was still miserable.
That Saturday, though, I was running on a little more sleep than usual and my headache was not as terrible as it could have been. Anyone in my shoes would have jumped at the opportunity to hang out with their best friend, regardless of the mountain of schoolwork they had building up at home.
My best friend and I had always been fond of walking—walking around my neighborhood, walking around her neighborhood, walking to the park or 7-Eleven or Mazzio's, always with an iPod tying us together, never letting us stray too far apart. On this particular adventure, we walked to the school that's conveniently placed next to her neighborhood.
We sat outside the main doors, on the dusty sidewalk and up against the hard brick wall, completely ignoring the bench that glared at us from just a few feet away. We each had a stash of loose-leaf notebook paper and an English-to-Kryptonian key we had printed off beforehand. I would write a note in Kryptonian for her and she would write one for me, then we would translate them back into English. We did this over and over until we no longer had to look up each individual letter as we translated back and forth. By that point, the hardest part of writing a note was getting the S's and exclamation marks to look right. We were bursting with pride once we got it all perfected.
This may have been one of our duller days compared to some of the other times we've spent together, but it's one of the best memories I have from that year, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
My mom spoke to someone at the nephrologist's office today, and they said that even though they aren't really accepting new patients at this time, they will see me. I suspect this has to do with the fact that if they don't see me, my dad will most likely leave them and see somebody else, and then they would be out two paying patients. So, with my ultrasound results, medical records, and a referral from my endocrinologist, I'm in.
My mom also spoke to my endocrinologist today, and he has been looking further into my situation. Apparently my ultrasound results show indicators of chronic kidney disease, meaning (A) chances are I'll be dealing with this for the rest of my life, and (B) this is something that has been going on for a while and isn't an urgent problem. It's because of that last part that I'm not stressing out about not being able to see the nephrologist until May. MAY.
Oh well. I'm not on my death bed, so I guess I'll be okay.
This has been bugging me since Sunday, so I just want to say that even though my posts may sometimes make me sound like I'm depressed, I'm not.
When I was fourteen, I spent most of my days at home, alone and in a great deal of pain. I felt as isolated as I was, and looking back, I think it's safe to say that I was clinically depressed. Being on my own led to me learning a lot about myself though, and it made a huge impact on who I am today. That's why many of my posts will probably focus on that point in my life. Luckily, I met a handful of incredible people the next year. They turned my life around and continue to be my biggest source of happiness today, so please don't worry about my mental stability. I assure you that I am just fine. (Aside from the whole shy/antisocial thing. But I'm working on that.)
I have very little recollection of my first year of high school.
To clarify, I remember quite well all the emotions I felt, but the details and events escape me. It's true that memories fade over time, and this was almost six years ago, but I remember my second freshman year, and I remember the eighth grade well enough—seventh and sixth too, for that matter. The only explanation I can come up with is that it was such a bad year that I mentally blocked it out.
My most vivid memory, depressing as it is, is the time I was nearly late to class after lunch one day. That day I had managed to worm my way onto one of those abnormally tall chairs placed along a bar rather than at a table; I didn't need a table anyway because I had nobody to sit with. I ate my hamburger and drank my Sunny D and had my trash thrown away before the line for food had even disappeared, because when there isn't anybody to talk to, eating doesn't take very long at all. After climbing back up into that annoyingly tall chair, which actually took me a try or two, I reached for my favorite binder. This was not just any old school binder—this was the binder that I pulled out at every spare moment in class, the binder that occupied my lap for the entire bus ride home each afternoon, and the binder that I took everywhere with me when I wasn't at school at all. This binder was my best friend.
It was an old binder that I had lovingly rescued from the depths of the storage cabinet in the study, and it looked as if it had been shoved into a locker one too many times. I'm sure it had been a crisp white once but it was now a dingy shade of gray. Its corners were bent and the plastic torn, exposing the fuzzy and worn cardboard within. Tucked inside the clear front cover was a folded piece of notebook paper with the quote "Never underestimate the power of eccentricity" scrawled in my handwriting. It looked ratty and unappealing, but I loved that binder. It was the only constant thing I had in my life at that point, and I could always trust it to be full of clean college-ruled notebook paper, pages just waiting to be filled with whatever I chose to write.
That particular day, I am not ashamed to admit, I was working on a fanfiction. This was during the height of my obsession with the show Smallville, and I was currently rewriting the events of the third season. It pains me to say that the fanfiction, in reality, was atrocious, but I was proud of it at the time, and it took my mind off of how lonely I felt. That is, it took my mind off of it right up until the point when I glanced up and saw that I was literally the only kid in the cafeteria. I had been so absorbed in my fantasy world that I didn't even notice the loud roar of voices had fizzled out and everybody else had gone off to class. The shock and terror didn't subside until I scooted into class just seconds before the bell rang, and then I was hit with a horrible sense of being completely alone at the school. Not just lonely, but utterly alone.
That's about all I took away from that year. That in mind, I'm actually pretty glad I don't remember most of it.
For the past five—almost six—years, I have been poked, prodded, x-rayed, MRId, CT scanned, shocked, put on a bike, and strapped to a tilting table. I've also had urine collected, and blood drawn countless times. Through all of the tests, the answer was always the same: Nothing is out of the ordinary. It's always beyond frustrating, because clearly something isn't right. However, I had an ultrasound done on my kidneys on Monday, and we finally found something that isn't normal.
I have renal cortical thinning, which is basically just a fancy way of saying a thinning of the outer layer of the kidneys. This can cause low or high blood pressure, both of which I have had, and makes sense when paired with the back pain I have had lately. The endocrinologist who ordered the ultrasound said he doesn't know much about the condition (after all, he's an endocrinologist) and has referred me to a nephrologist. We don't really know anything yet, except I might have a biopsy done. I'll keep you posted.
First, some news: All my lab work (see previous post) was normal, as usual. I'm going in for an ultrasound on Monday just to be sure, though. The doctor says I could have cysts that just aren't big enough to influence the lab work yet.
Now, on to business.
When I was young, I was afraid of the Energizer Bunny.
I'm not exactly sure how old I was, but I know that I was still small enough that I couldn't reach the light switch in the upstairs bathroom at my granddad's house. (That was ridiculously annoying, by the way.) I had the bone mass of a three-year-old when I was six, though, so that still doesn't give a good idea of how old I was... Anyway...
I'm not sure why I was afraid of it. Maybe because it's such an outrageous shade of pink? Or perhaps I just found it disturbingly unnatural for something to keep going and going in such a manner. Or maybe I just didn't like the fact that the deceivingly cute little guy wears sunglasses, keeping not only his eyes but his motives concealed. He could have been plotting world domination, after all! Haha. Whatever the reason, I thought that rabbit was freaky as all get-out.
As I said in my first confession, I keep lots of things to myself. Lots of things. Especially how I feel physically, not just emotionally. I have a happy mask and I wear it often, regardless of how much pain I'm in, because I really don't want people to see the truth. (Admittedly, this is not always wise. When I was applying for a 504 plan in school (for students with special needs/disabilities), one of the reason it was denied was because my teachers and the psycho-logist who interroga—interviewed me said I appeared to feel fine. Oops. Shoulda moaned in agony.) My happy mask is most often in use when I'm hanging out with my friends. Some of the choice gathering spots are the park and the theater. Well, I'm allergic to the outdoors, so the park is not so fun after a while. Also, I'm allergic to both the local theaters. The older one makes me slightly itchy and coughy, and the newer one gives me massive headaches. I put on a smile and pretend it isn't so, though, because I want to hang out with my friends and just be normal.
Generally my complaints are caused by my being allergic to the world and my not sleeping, which everyone knows about, so I don't feel so bad about lying about/hiding how I feel. However, when major things happen, I don't want to keep people in the dark. So, here's an update.
At the end of December, I had an appointment with the endocrinologist who put me on medicine to raise my blood pressure. He did this because my BP was averaging around 90/60 and I was passing out and having all sorts of problems with my stomach because of it. When he took my blood pressure at that recent check up though, my BP was too high. Okay, reduce the meds. "Perhaps you're just outgrowing the hypotension." Well, two weeks later I was off the medicine completely and my BP was still high, reaching 182/115 at one point. I went back to see this doctor today and he said that blood pressure this high is "uncommon and definitely not good in a wisp of a nineteen-and-a-half-year-old like you" and he decided that some lab work was necessary.
Down I trotted to the diagnostic lab on the first floor to have my blood forcibly removed. They wanted urine too but... that was not taken by force. They're going to check for problems in my thyroid, kidneys, and liver. (Not all as causes for the high BP... also checking for damage from all the ibuprofen I've taken in the last six years.) Kidney disease runs in my family, and he seemed to think that that was a very likely cause for my high BP. Depending on what the lab work shows, there may be an ultrasound in my future.
We should have the results back tomorrow. I'm trying not to stress about it.
Seriously. I will spend hours at my computer doing nothing but downloading things just because they're there.
My hard drive is littered with stock photos that I don't even remember, just because I saw them and thought, "I might use that one day! Better save it!" I have hundreds upon hundreds of fonts installed because once I find my way to dafont.com, I go into a dowloading trance and cannot be pulled away until my stomach cries for food. Earlier this week, I visited Amazon.com and sampled their free MP3 samplers. I downloaded 219 songs just because I could. I only stopped because I glanced at the clock and saw that it was after two in the morning and I figured I ought to go to bed.
Is there rehab for people like me? My hard drive will only last so long...
