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What happened? I still don't know. Sometimes I think I'll never know. I just suddenly became sick with extreme fatigue, enlarged joints, rashes on my face and torso and legs, swollen hurting joints, rock hard growths of skin on my face, hot flashes, night sweats, stomachaches and troubles, bloody stool, dizzyness, passing out, and tons of opportunistic infections. I had pink eye so much and rampant growth of warts, sinus infections, ear infections, blood in my ears and whatever else was going around. I caught every cold and it would nearly run into phenomena. I developed swelling in my eyelids that made it look like there were great big marbles or golf balls stuck under my upper eyelids. My bottom eyelids swelled up too so that my eyes could barely open. My face became very flushed and pale, the skin all over my body dried out and started flaking. The skin of my arms, legs and body was so dry it looked white with tiny flakes. I guess they were flakes, at least, that's what it looked like. My whole face, especially around the eyes and jaw became very swollen. Eventually my entire face developed these great big deep wrinkles around the eyes, mouth and forehead where the most delicate flesh couldn't handle the strain of the swelling anymore. I wasn't much past 17 years old and I looked like an ancient woman. I really panicked. I felt so totally scared and confused and stricken by the pain and the changes in my body. I felt like I was too young to look and feel like that. I couldn't understand what was happening to me or why, how? When I was still 16, right after my birthday, I tried to get help from my parents, but my dad deferred to my mom because I guess he really didn't have time for me. My mom first thought I had a drug problem and when it became clear I didn't and a neighbor lady suggested I had allergies during a tea party, well my mom thought maybe it was allergies after all. In between she joked that maybe I was pregnant because my ankles and feet were so thick and swollen but I didn't have a boyfriend. How could I have a boyfriend looking like that? No boys were interested in me because I looked like a terribly shriveled up old woman! I was losing all my girlfriends too because they couldn't understand. I wasn't interested in going out anymore. How could I even think about clothes when I looked and felt awful in anything I wore anyway? How could I get into the parties and everything when I felt so sick all the time and I was so afraid about what could happen next? I didn't know how far this disease would go. Eventually I began to understand that it was some kind of disease. Still my mom only took me to two allergy doctors. The first one took me into the examining room and then he dismissed the nurse. He then demanded that I take off all my clothes and get up on the table so that he could perform a vaginal exam on me! I was shocked and panicked and I said NO! When he flew into a rage and starting telling me what a horrible paranoid crazy girl I was in hushed growling tones I begged him to send me to a gynecologist. I promised him I'd go right away and that I was so sure a gynecologist could examine me down there and tell him everything he needed to know. This allergy doctor wouldn't hear of it and he kept on growling at me. He was so angry and he started telling me that if I didn't cooperate he'd get me locked up in a mental hospital for the rest of my life. He told me, guaranteed me, he could get it done so fast that my head would spin and he told me once he did it I'd never get out. I was so scared, but I knew for certain that something wasn't right in that situation. So I stuck to my guns and finally he angrily agreed that if he could examine my breasts he'd let it be. After that he had my blow air out of my lungs into a tube and the test showed that I have very little lung capacity. A new siren of terror swept over me -- right before I'd gotten sick I'd been a track star! What was happening to me? The first allergy doctor, the pervert, never tried to find out. He was still mad because I wouldn't let him fondle me in my one most private place, so he ended the exam pretty fast. The only other test was a short skin test to check for allergies. Then it was over. I was back outside of his office and then in the car driving home with my mom at the wheel. I didn't even have a driver's license yet. Later, a couple of weeks later, my mom got the doctor's bill and he charged her about $300. For seeing me and he told her it was because I'd been such a rotten uncooperative patient! I got into a lot of trouble for misbehaving and not treating the doctor with respect. That made me feel really confused because I still thought he wanted to do something to me that was horribly wrong. However, in the end, I was glad that I'd said no to him. No amount of shame from my mom would make me regret saying no! I was learning to be a stubborn teenager, a stubborn child? That's the part that strikes the hardest me now -- I was still only a child. I was just 16 years old and I was so innocent. I'd never even had a real boyfriend, I'd never taken drugs, I'd been to only one party in my life, I'd never even kissed a boy. I was a child. |
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