Farewell 2014

Today is New Years Eve and in less than four hours we will ring in the year of 2015. 2014 has not been kind to me. From the very start to the very end something is always going wrong.

The first half of 2014 I was in constant stress mode due to it being the last semester of my senior year. The stress put on me could both save come at a worse time because season changes always bring a flare up of a flare up(I say that because I have never been in remission). It was a perfect storm that ignited in my body. I also was undergoing family struggles at the time. With each day my symptoms grew as well as my school work. I finally reached my breaking point in February of 2014. My intellectual endurance was running on low fuel and my body? Well it burnt out years ago. I found myself in the hospital, at the doctor's office, and attempting to recharge my energy in bed, more than I was physically at school. Due to my many hospitalizations, I missed quite a few opportunities and wasn't able to participate in as many activities as I wanted. For example, I was in the hospital during the two weeks before prom all the way to the day before. My doctors discharged me the day before prom so I would have the opportunity to experience that mile stone. Although I was sick the entire time & only stayed for a few hours before having to go back to the hospital, I'm glad I took that opportunity to go. If I hadn't, I would still be questioning the "what ifs?"  A similar situation happened the night before graduation. I was in the ER for a horrible flare and I begged them to do as much as they could to discharge me late the night before graduation and I did. Of course I had to have special accommodations but man oh man it felt sweet to walk across that stage. I missed 72 days of school that year, maintained being in quite a few honors classes, graduated with a 3.5 GPA, had Endometriosis surgery in late 2013, I had countless hospital admissions during the beginning of 2014. I worked my tail off but I did what I was determined to do: graduate.

The health problems didn't end after high school. They only got worse. I was in the hospital that summer more than I was at home. I even missed college registration & my first year of classes. I was devastated but looking back, I know God had a plan for me. My Gastroparesis got to the point where I was forced to get a permanent feeding tube in my stomach. Between early October to the present I have had 4 surgeries because of complications of my feeding tube. For now, I am at a bearable point with tube feeds. Certainly FAR from perfect but it's livable. I have to hook up to my feeds for 24 hours a day, every day. We are now even discussing another surgery to place two tubes on my stomach: A G-tube & a J-tube.

As I type this I look at my poor hands. Yes, they are covered in inflammation from the Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis but they also have shingles outlining the curves of my knuckles as well as the surface of my hips treckling down to places covered by undergarments.

My last farewell to 2014 is this: You were crueler than the Grinch on Christmas. You left me with many presents I wish you would take back. But isn't the "new thing" now repurposing old, unuseful, rotten, tarnished things? In 2015 you will see these unwanted thing of mine become beautiful. How? Because I am beautiful. And any trial of mine always looks rotten but by the end I always come out refurbished.