Someone once told me people aren’t interesting until they experience tragedy. That comment coming from a man I had only briefly encountered affected me more than it should have. Only one year after he said that to me, I could finally call myself interesting. I bet right now, you’re trying to guess what my tragedy was. Maybe I lost a loved one. Maybe I went through my first heartbreak. Maybe I was betrayed by the one person I could trust. Though my story is one of pain and heartbreak and loneliness and fear, it goes so much deeper than that. This is the story of how I almost lost everything I ever worked for because of one small misjudgement. This is the story of how I almost left my family reeling with loss. This is the story of how I almost died.

The story begins on a Wednesday in September, one where there was no school, no alarms, and no obligation to leave my room for anything other than the occasional bathroom or food break. Life was good, great even. Or it was supposed to be. While I did spend the entire day in my room, instead of catching up on missed sleep, I was writhing in pain and holding back tears. As someone who preferred to suffer in silence over airing my grievances, I found myself  hiding away, waiting for the stabbing pain in my back to go away enough for me to move. Even as the pain progressed, I kept telling myself everything was just fine. As I was telling myself nothing was wrong, my body was actually screaming for help. I tried to lull the pain with sleep and medication, but nothing would help for long. Meanwhile the rest of my family continued life as normal. The entire day went by without them catching a glance of me, but no one seemed to bat an eye. To an outsider, this probably feels careless or neglectful, but really, this was welcome on my end. Or it usually is. By eleven that night, my mother had finally noticed she hadn’t heard from me all day and there was no sound or light coming out of my room. Upon walking in, her world completely stopped. She saw my barely conscious body laying on my bed, white as a ghost and burning hotter than the sun. I can’t even begin to imagine the fear going through my mother’s head when she walked into my room. I know she had to have felt guilty that she hadn’t checked on me, but I can’t, and won’t, blame her for that. 

Trying to appear calm and collected, my mother rushed me to the car as fast as I could hobble and got me to the closest emergency room. There, I was misdiagnosed for the first time. I was sent home after an IV and antibiotics for my “kidney infection”. The last thing I can remember of that day is getting back home and falling asleep. From there, everything got fuzzy. I may have fallen asleep in my bed, but when I woke, I was covered in tubes and wires in a strange place with no one with me. A faint beeping grew louder and louder, making my head pound. Almost immediately, my heart rate spiked and doctors rushed their way through the large wooden door. Through the panic, I finally caught a glimpse of my parents in the corner, far out of the doctor’s way. My heart began slowing and the darkness swallowed me once more. 

    My memory regarding the situation is weak to say the least, but according to my parents, I kept getting worse after the first day and had to be transferred to another hospital, one that was more prepared for the severity of my condition. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the beginning of a very long road to recovery. My kidneys were shutting down and I was going into septic shock. To put it in the simplest way possible, my body was on strike. Infection took over in my blood, spreading to my organs. My parents' fears were coming true and if I didn’t start responding to the medications, I would be forced into a medically induced coma. 

    They weren’t ones to pray, but at this point, it was all they could do. Surprisingly, their prayers were answered. After multiple days of treatment, I was finally showing signs of recovery. Pain wasn’t the only thing I could feel anymore and I was more than just an empty shell laying in a hospital bed. Over a week later, doctors were feeling confident enough to talk about releasing me to go home. By the end of the month, I was finally back at home, though I was only a fraction of the person I used to be. Now, three years later, I am back to where I once was. After months of doctors appointments and physical therapy and medications, my life is normal again. If only I could find that odd man and let him know, I guess, in a weird somewhat twisted way, he was right.