Working through my past isn't focused entirely on the bad. It's also focused on the good. As I mentioned before, there is a silver lining to my life-story. A very obvious one. Not just in the fact that I'm now alive and healthy, but that I had the strength to fight my health issues tooth-and-nail so I could still look and live relatively normally.
Of course, fighting for what little normalcy I could get was anything but easy or straight-forward. To the outsider looking in, it appeared I handled (and handle) my issues with grace and dignity, but that's not all that true. Truth is, things often got pretty fucking terrible and chaotic. I've gone through unimaginable pain and hardship, much of which I don't consciously remember. But, subconsciously, the memories are there and they are powerful. Interestingly, my subconscious memories way more powerful than most of my conscious memories, despite the vividity of my conscious memories.
Perhaps, it's because I'm able to write clearly and confidently about the things I can recall in my mind's eye, allowing me to work through my trauma that way. While my subconscious memory isn't nearly as clear, which makes it much harder to write about and process.
Consciously, I remember what it was like to almost die of a major Pseudomonas infection in high school. I'm comfortable discussing it both in my writing, and with others. Especially with those who experienced it with me.
I can still recall the salty taste of decay as I coughed up bits of my own lungs along with copious amounts of mucus. I still remember how downright demonic my barking, hacking coughs sounded as they rattled and tore through my airways, and how painful it was to endure those hellish coughing fits. I still vividly remember looking at myself in the mirror before a shower, being able to see every bone and tendon clearly through snow-white skin, then stepping on the scale to only see that I weighed 110 pounds dry and naked (which was well below a healthy weight of a minimum 128 pounds). I still remember spending hours online researching bacterio-phage viruses, and how they could be used to combat my antibiotic-resistant lung infection, before getting on a plane to meet with scientists in Portland, Oregon who were interested in using me as their guinea pig. I remember the courage it took me to inhale and ingest those vials of viruses, knowing it was my only shot at staying alive and healthy. But if it went wrong, I would suffer an excruciating death.
When it worked, I was honestly quite shocked. I'd prepared for death, but I hadn't prepared for life. Also, I wasn't expecting the aftermath to be so hard to deal with. The pain of the infection was gone, but my airways were suddenly full of dead bacteria chunks, and I had lost another five pounds. The only way to get over that was to force myself to exercise, eat five thousand calories a day, and cough all of that nasty mucus out. But, I needed some extra motivation to do that. So, back to school I went. This time, through Homebound.
I don't know if I was really ready to go back to school when I did. Mentally, I absolutely was. Physically? That's very questionable. Perhaps, I should've listened to my mom and put on another five pounds before going back to school.
Regardless, I was sick of being cooped up doing nothing and of being, well, sick. I also really wanted to get my diploma. After all, I was three semesters away from graduating high school. I was definitely not ready to quit. If anything, my latest brush with death only spurred me on. Fueled almost purely by spite towards my circumstances, I launched back into high school. Amazingly, with Eric's guidance, it went very well, and the rest is history.
Though, I will admit, for the first week or so of walking a mile to the library and a mile back home, I felt like I was dying. But, my body rapidly regained the physical strength I so desperately needed.
Even though my health rapidly improved in Homebound, I never felt like my old self again. That damn Pseudomonas infection did one hell of a job permanently damaging my airways. On paper, my numbers were pretty good. Back then, my FEV1 numbers were in the mid 90's on a good day, though they dipped into the 80's whenever I got sick; still remarkable for someone with CF my age and condition, but not where they were before the infection. It was my weight and digestive system I struggled with the most, though. Even though I walked two miles every day, five days a week, and forced myself to eat several hefty meals per day, I only gained about a pound a month if I wasn't actively fighting some sort of infection. Whenever I got sick, I would lose weight I couldn't really afford to lose.
I was pretty much a walking skeleton. I wore almost exclusively skinny jeans that didn't look like skinny jeans when I wore them, and I wore heavy, baggy clothes not only to keep my perpetually-cold self as warm as possible, but to keep strangers from asking me if I was anorexic. I was also very weak, though I didn't really know it at the time. At least, I didn't realize the extent of my skinniness until I was no longer so frail.
Of course, I hid all of this to the best of my ability. I didn't complain about my circumstances that much (at least, not about the problems that mattered, though I loved to complain about the stupid shit). I tried not to think too far into the future, and instead just focused on getting through high school before I kicked the bucket. The only way most people could tell I was sick was by my deep, barking cough and my nasally, hoarse voice. However, those closer to me were much more aware of just how sick I was, even though I frequently and severely down-played the seriousness of my illness.
Still, I stubbornly pressed on. I wasn't a quitter, though I did sometimes wonder why I was still in high school. After all, I didn't see myself going to college. Not only did I fear I'd be too sick to go, but after years of shitty teachers and exceptionally cruel peers, I was certain I was far too stupid to make it in college, let alone in high school. Thankfully, Eric was pretty damn quick to prove me wrong, even though I was sure that he was wildly overestimating my ability to pass Physics or Algebra Two (spoiler: I did, in fact, pass both classes with flying colors).
Miraculously, I not only graduated high school. I graduated on-time with A's and B's, and was able to buck another Pseudomonas infection in the process. Better yet, in the fall of 2019 (a few months after I graduated high school), Trikafta was approved by the FDA. The sickest patients got it first. So, I got my first box of the medication just after Christmas of that year (several months after the FDA's approval). Within hours of me taking my first dose of Trikafta with a steak from Outback, the Trikafta Purge began.
I was no stranger to taking experimental drugs and experiencing crazy side-effects as a result. However, Trikafta was an entirely different animal. It evicted the mucus from my body like a bug bomb thrown into a house infested with cockroaches. I had mucus pouring out of every orifice for about a week straight, including from places I didn't expect there to be mucus. I quite literally gave birth to a mucus baby in the shower one night, and doctors later told me about the Trikafta "Baby-Boom" after it cleaned out everyone's uteruses. Women went from not being able to have kids at all (due to the build-up of mucus even in the uterus and fallopian tubes), to giving birth to healthy, normal children on the first attempt at it after starting Trikafta.
Even my tear ducts expelled a few greenish strings from time to time, and a few mornings I couldn't open my eyes because my eyelids were crusted over. And, after being constipated for five days (for which I probably should've gone to the hospital, but I instead just chugged an entire bottle of prescription-strength laxatives with apple juice and begged God for help), my bowels were exorcised of every drop of mucus they'd been accumulating for over eighteen years within less than fifteen minutes.
It. Was. Gnarly.
But, it was all worth it.
I had, in a pretty literal sense, been reborn into a brand new body. On the outside, I was still... well... me. But, because I was suddenly and shockingly nearly completely cured of my condition, I was a much better, healthier version of myself. Especially when my appetite finally kicked in after the Trikafta Purge, and I raided the fridge like a bear multiple times per days for several months, eating a diet rich in salmon, beef, wild game, berries, greens, and whole grains, putting on almost thirty pounds. Only then, did my body finally realize I didn't need to eat four or five thousand calories per day to put on weight, and my appetite subsided (along with the grocery bill).
Of course, shortly after the Trikafta Purge, the anxiety and depression settled in. I suffered from daily panic attacks for a few months before I finally agreed to try some medication for my anxiety. Why did I wait so long? Frankly, because I was scared and upset about needing another pill or two to be more "normal". But, when my panic attacks were getting to the point they were seriously disrupting my daily life, I knew I had to get on medication for them. Needless to say, the medication helped tremendously.
Just in time for covid to rear it's Godforsaken head and pelt everyone with one giant monkey wrench after another for two years now.
And now, people are losing their shit over the prospect of World War Three and Nuclear War, as though we're back in the 60's or some shit.
The chaos never ends.
