When I was 8 years old, I went from being a mostly healthy little girl, to exceptionally sick. After high fever, peeling skin on my hands and feet, strawberry red throat, and rash could not be diagnosed by doctors from Atlanta... My pediatrician finally concluded that I had Kawasakiis disease. It was too late for some of the treatments by that point and I had to ride it out in the hospital. I have spotty memories of that time, just things that were important to me.
I went back to school, barely, at the end of my 3rd grade year, having missed multiplication and division, but somehow managed to catch up on all my work enough to move to 4th grade.
But that's when things got really hard. No one knows what you face when you're supposed to be "well," but you really aren't. Unlike kids my age, when I came back to school in the fall, I couldn't run anymore; I had a problem with simple exertions. I gasped for breath and turned red in the face trying to jog a mile for PE. I wheezed, but it wasn't asthma. I would be nearly in tears... But still tried to keep pace with my peers.
That didn't really work. I had a really tough time overcoming that struggle because I couldn't play. I felt the fear of being weak then, even though I couldn't vocalize it. I drowned my pain and sickness in books and TV... Sometimes I rode bikes or horses because it wasn't as hard.
In my 20's a friend told me that in 6th grade, as I continued my struggle with my recovery from Kawasakii's - I just felt sick, weak, exhausted, achey, nauseated all the time- that after I left class one day to call home, a teacher wrote a word up on the chalk board and asked my peers if they knew what it meant.
The word was hypochondriac.
I have a hard time believing that story because I just can't fathom a teacher would be so mean (even though I know such meanness exists), but maybe someone said it. Maybe no one understood.
I'm the first to admit I'm dramatic, but I have a hard time expressing my pain. It usually comes out in small pleas of a break, or a minute to catch my breath, or the need -finally- to take an Advil or a nap. I don't do pain well because I have a hard time being weak. I have a hard time stopping, or taking the time to recover.
Maybe it goes back to what I must have felt back then... Or maybe the years of being told that what ended up being serious symptoms of PCOS, hypothyroid, and pituitary deficiency were "normal" and something I'd just have to live with.
I've got a lot of chronic stuff I live with: the above mentioned illnesses, the bum knee because a cab decided a hit and run was the best way to deal with smashing into my leg at a crosswalk (and I walked two miles to the clinic only to have them tell me nothing was wrong), my back which gives me any number of problems, and the pain I occasionally suffer from my c-section scars, the old fracture in my wrist that wasn't caught until years later, the bout with optic neuritis, and who knows what else I'm forgetting,. Would you believe that a lot of this contributes to my difficulty losing weight, keeping a decent metabolism?
People like to say get over it. What they don't realize is that I do. I learned that holding back a little is better than dealing with a bigger problem. I, sort-of, know when to stop.... even though I still have a nasty habit of pushing past my pain and exhaustion thresholds. I just know the line I can't cross so that I can still heal in the end. Unfortunately as I've gotten a little older, time pushes back and sometimes I get hurt anyway.
I hate that health isn't something I am blessed in abundance with. I hate feeling like I'm whining any time I raise the white flag signaling my limit... But most of all I hate that I learned that serious illness is for wimps and that weakness is something to fear.
I promise... That even though I struggle with time, distractions, and health... that I keep on trying to make it better. I keep trying to get healthier even though it feels like it doesn't work, and that the "fit life" is for someone else.
I may never have a bikini body or cellulite free thighs. I might never decide my favorite snack is raw veggies and hummus (it's too good with pita) and then do px90 for my marathon training; but, no matter how I appear... I'm stronger than I seem. I am strong enough to keep going, even if I limp a little and some of fingers are crooked, and my spine cracks, and my joints ache, and occasionally I'm take out by a couple of days of intense pain or sickness.
I hate the world weakness, so I fight it every day.
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