My Journey With Illness

Sometimes I ask myself how I overcame my disease. Many people with lupus experience fatigue, memory loss, loss of appetite. Usually younger African, white, and Asian men and woman develop that disease in their teens. It all started that night when I was laying in my mom bed. At that time I felt like it was my time to leave this earth. When I turn 15 years old I saw so many changes. . I experience so many symptoms while I was in my second semester. All the symptoms that I experience were hallucinations, fever, nausea, and nose bleeds. At that time I seen myself getting really sick. I caught strep throat and it was hard to focus in school because I missed so many days.

My personal goals are centered on healing. In this world of decreasing resources and increasing and ever diverse populations, there are unmet needs, confusions, and misunderstandings—the very stuff of conflicts and wars. It has been my experience and observation that what the world (and especially me) needs most is a transformation that involves healing, which I believe can lead to a greater measure of peace. That is to say, I have come from a heritage that is troubled with addictions and the abuse and generational cycles of violence that so often accompany addictions. However, I am a survivor, and I continually strive to go forward healing from this past. In time, I came to acknowledge my need for skills in conflict transformation and peace

I fight for my health every day in ways most people do not understand I lay in bed struggling just to get up in the morning only to get faced with a new day of troubles. All I think about is the day that being a normal eighteen year old ended for me. I was responsible went to work every day, and was trying to figure out my first year of college until everything was flipped upside down.

It’s a struggle to get out of bed sometimes, I often just sit there struggling to comprehend the sequence of events which have taken place over the past year. I mean, I’m used to this now, its normal to me, but the fact that this has happened and that I am now ‘disabled’ as people would put it is hard to get my head around. And every time I look down I’m reminded of the pain and the struggle I faced, it’s a physical scar which links me to my grueling past, a physical and emotional journey.

At a very early age I felt called to heal people, and the calling has not changed. That same calling became intensified when I was ten years old, I was brought to Emory Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta where I was diagnosed with type one diabetes. Over the course of a week, I was taught how to live a new way of life with my diagnosis. People have the tendency to feel sympathetic or sorry towards a teenage girl living with an incurable autoimmune disease; however, from the moment I was diagnosed I knew God was going to use it to shape my future as a way to glorify him. Over the course of a week, it was inherently noticeable that the professionals spending time with the patients were the nurses on the floor, not the physicians or the physician’s

Sometimes I inquired myself how I lived this far in life after we were invaded by the vikings and my siblings killed and captured. As days and weeks go by, a plague appears in Europe, where we lived. People said it originated from ships coming into port that transferred contaminated rats but nobody is sure. The last week in August, both my mother and father got the plague or also known as the Black Death. Their skin soon became black which causes the skin and flesh to die. Two days later, my mom and dad went to another world. I cried for an hour straight, thinking about how I’m going to be to survive. I have nothing. It was a tragedy for me and multitudinous people who lost their loved ones, especially that parents that were

Days dragged on and a sundry of treatments began. Relief escaped me upon acknowledging others close in age. Day by day sadness was vacated and replaced by hope. Words

Goal #: Continue in obtaining information about developed illness. This goal will be a short term to medium goal for the client to research information to become acknowledge about their illness. The client will continue as before to gain knowledge about illness, its symptoms, and treatments that are beneficial for the client's health. The information that is obtained by the client can be discussed in the presence of health care provider and/or clinician. A health care provider and/or clinician will also provide information to the client about the illness, symptoms, and treatments. The information is important to be told and know for the client's well being to maintain a healthy lifestyle before and after symptoms arise.

At that point all I would ever hear from people was, “oh you poor thing”, or “I’m sorry!” The only thing I heard was people pitying me, but in contrary, those words and moments only sparked a strength that I never thought was achievable. I promised myself to turn those words that represented sorrow into drive to fuel that strength. The first memory that I realized that inner strength was when I was first told that I had cancer. I heard the door click open, five doctors appeared in their white coats, they would come in surrounding me at the hospital bed. I just laid there confused about why all of this was happening. None of them spoke for a minute. My guess is that they were trying to figure out how to tell a fourteen-year-old that she has cancer as if they expected me to start breaking down sobbing. Instead, my eyes refused to shed a single tear as just hearing the words, “ You have cancer.” Those three words turned my life upside down in a matter of a second. Then I proceeded to process them in my mind. Trying to calculate a solution as if it were a math problem. As if it was that easy, but I still managed to ask the question that I never

Being chronically sick is like being on a roller coaster. When you first get sick everybody's there but once they realize that the ride never ends. They wait until it gets back to the easier part of the ride and they jump off. Some stay by your side helping you when it gets to top knowing that you're afraid of heights but after a while they expect you to get used to it. What they don't know you will never get used to

I wondered how my life would have unfolded had I not been so sick these many years. Who would I have been if only there had been biological dentists to remove my wisdom teeth when I was twenty? Where would I be? What would I be doing with my life now? Would I still have fainted and fallen on my face which ultimately caused me to need root canal surgery? Strong emotions of sorrow and grief began to surface. I allowed myself just to feel and observe as my body shivered in order to release these emotions one by one. I focused on my breath as I slowly inhaled and exhaled to the rhythm of the twinkling

Since I completed this form my conditions have become worse. My new present illnesses, consists of obstructive sleep apnea (CPAP), heart condition (PTCA STENT), cardiac catheterization, hypertension, and cholesterol/dyslipidemia. With all of this and including my other illnesses, this could cause serious problems in the workplace, and have limited my ability to work. Because of my sleep apnea, (it effects my mental abilities like memory, concentration) I reacted slow when it comes to time, have vision problems, sleep problems, (causes me to fall asleep during the day) and my fatigue, (tired, sleepy, and can only walk 10 to 15 minutes) all affects and limit my ability to work and I have another impairment such as heart condition that limit my ability to exert myself physically. Without adequate sleep, I have more difficulty concentrating, learning, and communicating. Memory lapses have increase; my problem-solving ability and social functioning) have decline. I Can be moody and less tolerance of people, differing opinion, making me more prone to outburst. According to my doctor my driving ability I have to be caution. Also I have hypertension, the doctor limit me to lifting only a few pound.

Everything started when I was 6, when I got cancer at least that’s when I started noticing what’s going on around my world. It took 9 years to get the cancer “out’’ because it’s not really out of your body, cancer stays in you. Cancer was terrifying experience. It’s weird because one moment you’re in the house and from nowhere your life changes. The doctors told me I wasn’t going to make it, what kind of “doctor’’ tells a little kid that she is was not going to make it alive. My world stop I believe it is funny because at that point I didn’t knew what cancer was, so I was confused. I could only see my parents crying and I couldn’t understand why. After I couple of months a became an expert in this cancer subject. I knew my way to each room and the name of every doctor in the floor and the process a had to go through every day a 6-year-old that could tell what kind of quimioterapi they were putting inside her. Is in it weird?

When I turned 11-years-old my whole childhood began to change my life went from being perfect to everything but perfect. One day I came home to hear the news my father, my best friend; my hero was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. Not knowing the struggle my family was about to take on I just began to cry. I had a million things running through my head what’s going to happen? Will everything be okay? Why him? What is going to happen? With all these things rushing through my head all I could do was cry not knowing this was least worse to come.

The seen environment present when reading The Death of Ivan Ilych story is the way Ivan’s family lived and the way Ivan treated everyone with coldness. The unseen was depicted by the atmosphere present in Ivan’s’ room, making friends and family members uncomfortable to be there. The storied environment is when Ivan realizes that his life has been a mistake and he converts religiously, he finds God and Ivan repents from all his sins, it is not until then that he found peace in his mind.