Hospital Stay

I come home from school, super sleepy, and my mom asks me what's on my neck.  I reach up to feel for what she is talking about then I feel it, a big bump. My mom and I agree that if it gets any worse we will go to urgent care the next day. As I am trying to fall asleep my head spins with the  possibility of this thing on my neck being only the beginning of a scary journey.     

When I arrive at school,  the next day I am insanely tired and decide to take a quick nap before class starts. I end up sleeping for a while before my teacher wakes me. I try really hard to focus, but I can barely keep my head up. Somehow I make it through and head to my next class, which is math. Math so happens to be my worst subject, so it was a recipe for disaster. 

I push myself through another class and call my mom, asking her to pick me up. I show up to chemistry shaking, and my teeth chattering. Around halfway through the class the teacher asks if I'm sick. I say no, it's just a bad day for me. My mom then picks me up and brings me home. We headed to the urgent care and the doctor dismissed us and said it wasn’t major and if it got worse to come back. We head home and I rest for a few hours later that night I get this bright red itchy rash. We called the doctor and she told me she thought I had scarlet fever and gave me antibiotics but they didn’t seem to work just my luck.

 A few days pass and I'm beginning to feel a little better so my mom takes me to get my homecoming dress which is on saturday. We go back home and I take a small nap but when I wake up my mom is freaking out. My neck had become puffy, my lymph nodes had gotten worse. My mom rushes me out  of bed and into the car. We go back to urgent care for the second time and they send me  straight to the ER. I go to my car and in my head I'm freaking out because I've never had to go to the hospital. I was terrified of what was to come, mainly because no one, including me, knew what was wrong. I was shaking the whole way there and it became harder to breathe .We arrived at the ER,I waited  for a short time before I was hooked up to an IV, which would not stop beeping at me, contributing to my anger. Around 12am a different nurse came in and told me I was going to be admitted but it would take a few minutes before they moved me to the room. Finally after 3 hrs they moved me  to the room where I could sleep.  Unfortunately every 4 hours they would wake me up to check my vitals. I have never felt more frustrated.

The next few days are a blur until Saturday came along. The doctors had figured out I had an allergy to sulfur, which was in the pills I had been taking for around a month. I sit up and the doctor comes to check on me. He tells me I'm improving a lot which eases the panic bubbling up inside of me. Then he tells me that I could be released today and I can go to homecoming. I get really excited and decide I should get some rest before I get released.

I woke up to  3 people hovering over me, they kept asking me questions. I tried my best to answer them but I was still a little bit asleep. The room had a view of the city and the constant beeping of car horns and my IV began to give me a sharp pain in  my head. The main doctor asked me to try and eat because I hadn't eaten in a few days. I tried to eat it and stayed down for about 30 minutes before everything just fell apart. They check my temperature and it is 103.  Because I had a fever and was extremely lethargic  I could not go home, or to homecoming. I was already upset enough,but then everything got worse. I  was moved to an immunocompromised room and at the time I had no clue what was going on because, once again, I didn't know a thing. My parents started to get more and more worried and I wasn't sure why. 

The next few days passed slowly and painfully. I had edema also. More doctors came and left a   few new ones but one stood out.  The new doctor comes in and examines my neck then she says it's worse than she thought. Then precedes to ask my parents to step out of the room so she can talk to them privately. My heart starts to beat fast and i begin to panic then my IV starts beeping really loudly which makes my anxiety skyrocket. My parents come back looking terrified. I ask what's wrong and they dont answer. I let it go and went to bed. In the morning Another new doctor comes in saying he was a partner of one of the doctors. He is saying I need surgery, not only that but he's also telling me everything that might go wrong. He was so calm when he told us that and he had a few medical students with him. They seemed completely numb. I get scared because he tells me there is a small chance the biopsy goes wrong and would have fatal effects. My parents freaked out because the surgery was so close to the throat and the doctor, following his usual procedure of giving bad news, said it might be cancer. I got the surgery the following day. I remember waking up to a sharp pain in my neck and in an unfamiliar room. I was confused and wasn't entirely sure what was going on. 

Later that day my friend came to visit which brightened up my day after having a terrible one beforehand.  She walks in with a little bouquet of flowers which it thought was really sweet.  When she walks in I see the look of shock on her face, her mouth drops and her eyes go wide. My heart starts to beat fast. I don't want her to laugh at me or think I look weird. That's my insecurity talking then she tells me she feels so bad for me. Normally I don't like people feeling bad for me or pitying me but this was a different type of pitying. She genuinely cared and wanted me back to normal which felt nice to know that I have people who truly care. We got told to be quiet a few times because we were being way too loud I finally had  some energy.

As I waited for results for my surgery I hadn’t been able to eat much and whenever I did, it always came back up no matter what I tried.  Even more days pass and it's now Tuesday. The cancer doctor returned and immediately my parents became nervous. 

 My heart started to race and my palms became sweaty,luckily though it was the first good news I got in a while. They didn’t figure out all of my issues, but I didn’t have cancer. I was extremely relieved until the doctor continued speaking. “We're going to have to run a lot more tests on you because we're not sure what a few other things are but after that you can go” 

The next day comes. Its discharge day. I had to get more blood drawn before I could leave but then I was free to go. I was so happy and relieved to be out of the hospital, I could finally do what I wanted and I got a break from everyone crowding me. I should be alot more grateful for what I have. I realize now that things could have been alot worse.