I am quite familiar with hospitals.
When I was five I broke my elbow and received a hot pink cast. The doctor
didn’t believe I’d broken my elbow until he saw the X-ray. When I was thirteen
I was having problems with my hearing. I went to audiologists time and time
again but they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. They said it was like when
an old person loses their hearing; the cochlea understands it but it does get
deciphered by the brain. Yay! Medical anomaly they made me go to way too many
doctors for. Then I started to lose the movement in the right side of my face
at fourteen. We went to my main doctor for him to basically send me to another
doctor after saying I’m not old enough to have Bell’s palsy. Yay! Anomaly 2!
The new
doctor he sent me to was a neurologist. He did a lot of silly tests. He had me
smell different things. He tested if I had feeling in my hands and face. He
tested my hearing. Ha! Join the club!
He tested my reflexes. He made me run up and down a hallway about 15 times.
After the fifth time I started looking to him like “can I stop?” He motioned
for me to keep going and around the tenth or eleventh time he told my mom that
most teenagers would swear at him by this time. After all of his weird tests he
ordered an MRI. If you’ve never had an MRI they suck. I mean it’s nice to lie
down but that makes you want to fall asleep but if you move too much they have
to take that image over. Also, it is super loud! And if you have
claustrophobia, you better ask to be sedated because the MRI is a tube they
insert you into and the top is barely five inches away from your face.
Because
they scheduled the MRI on the 23rd of December, no one was around to
read my MRI results. The doctors had all gone on their Christmas vacations. So
my mom made an appointment with and ear, nose, and throat doctor as soon as
offices opened up again which was well into January. The ENT told me that there
was a tumor in my brain. As it happens, a pediatric neurosurgeon was in Reno
that day. He’s from California and only makes the trip to Reno once a month. I
was able to meet with him after waiting for all his other appointments to
finish.
This
neurosurgeon said that he would do my brain surgery but we’d have to go to his
hospital in California. They used this brand new state of the art equipment
that I didn’t understand very much. Probably cost my parents a pretty penny. He
got what he could of the tumor then did a biopsy to find that it was cancerous.
However, I was out for that. I was in an induced coma for two or three days.
When I started to wake up I felt like I was in a Walmart because in the ICU you
can hear everyone’s heart monitor and it sounded like all the check-out
machines in a Walmart. The next thing I remember was having these compression
things on my legs and I hated them. I
wanted them off immediately! However
I’d have to be able to walk to get them off thus they stayed on until I got out
of the ICU.
When I
got into an actual hospital room they started talking about cancer treatment.
The hospital that did my treatment offered two different protocols but did not
offer me the choice to choose. In both I would lose my hearing and only had
50%chance of survival. One treatment was nine months and the other was two
years. My mother researched other options and saw that a different hospital
offered a 65% chance of survival. 15% more is a lot better than nothing. So she
emailed the doctor that headed up that protocol and he promised he would do
everything in his power to save my hearing and my life.
At that
hospital I went through 33 round of the most intense radiation a human can
receive and 4 rounds of in-hospital chemotherapy. The cancer had spread to my
spine so they had to radiate my whole torso as well as my skull. When my white
blood cell count was still high they siphoned off me stem cells so they could
inject them into me when my counts were really low to help my body recover
quicker. I probably vomited more during those 8 months than the average human
does in their life. I totally want to put on my resume that I am a professional
barf-er.
During
my cancer treatment my legs acquired neuropathy which means my muscles didn’t
respond to the messages my brain sent through my nerves. That meant that I
rocked leg braces and a walker for a year of high school. It also meant that I
got cast as the old lady in all of the plays that year. After I graduated from
those things and could walk without them I received two facial surgeries in
Boston. From those surgeries I got about 12 scars. I’d look pretty garish in a
bikini without one of my wigs on.
If that
isn’t enough proof that I know my way around hospitals, I could tell you about
all the checkups had after cancer treatment. For thirty-six months after cancer
treatment I had checkups every three months. For the next two years I had them
every six months. Then, for the next five years I’d have them every year. I’m
proud to say I only have three more before I’m truly free of this cancer
hospital.
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