Three weeks after I returned home from Minnesota, I found myself stepping into my new school for 11th grade. I didn't feel as good about it as I thought I would. The students and teachers were very friendly, and the school was easy to navigate, but I wasn't feeling good. I was very tired, and lacked enthusiasm. I figured I was coming down with a minor cold, and it would quickly pass.
I settled into a new routine. I had to take a bus to and from school everyday. It picked me up and dropped me off at school and home everyday. Sometimes it was late, and sometimes it was early, but I could usually count on it. I really didn't like it though. It was uncomfortable in a lot of ways. But at that time, I hardly liked anything anyway.
Just a couple short weeks after I started school, what I'd thought was a cold was much worse than expected. I was weak, cold, snorting and sniffling, and losing weight, so my mom stepped in and forced me to stay home until I got well again. I went to the doctors for some tests a few days later, so they could determine what was wrong with me. They listened to my lungs, had me do a few PFTs, and stuck a cotton swab down my throat so they could wipe my sputum on a petri dish and see what grew.
A few days afterwards, the tests came back. My lung function was a few points lower than normal, and my lungs were a bit wheezy. The cultures confirmed that I had a Pseudomonas infection in my sinuses. Pseudomonas (pronounced: Sue-dough-mon-as), is a dangerous bacterial infection only people with Cystic Fibrosis can get. It thrives in warm, damp, stale places, and my lungs and sinuses were perfect for it. Pseudomonas is very hard to get rid of. It becomes antibiotic-resistant very quickly, and burrows deeply into my lungs and sinuses. It's a flesh-eating bacteria, and is often to blame for the quick deterioration and death of a good percentage of people with CF.
Knowing this, as well as the fact that my infection was not responding to antibiotics, I was convinced I was finally nearing the end. After everything I had gone through, every pain I had suffered, every miracle I had encountered, every defeat and every victory, it was finally over with. This was the end, and there wasn't much I could do about it. To say I cried would be an understatement. I sobbed myself to sleep every night, as I slowly got sicker and sicker. I had no hope. I had no faith. CF finally had the upper hand, and I couldn't fight back.
I was no longer attending school. Each week, my mom picked up more assignments for me and added them to the growing stack of papers on my desk, but I didn't have the will, or even the energy, to deal with them. My health deteriorated really fast. I went from wandering the school halls with almost no clue that I was sick, to being in the ER with dangerously low oxygen levels within just a couple short weeks.
I was supposed to be hospitalized, but God had other plans. Months earlier, I had asked God for empirical evidence of His existence, and He answered. My oxygenation at home was 85% and decreasing. My oxygenation at the ER started at 94% and increased to 100% within an hour, and stayed there until I left. Because of my heart condition, my oxygenation is always in the low 90's. I never got my oxygenation above 95% in my life until that point, and with a oxygenation of 100% at the ER, over a mile above sea level when I was very sick, was nothing short of a miracle. It was so awesome, that every doctor and nurse in the ER just had to take a quick look, and I was hooked up to three different monitors throughout my time there, and all of them read the same 100%.
After that, while I was still terrified and convinced I wasn't gonna live much longer, I had hope, and even better, I had faith. I still didn't trust God all that much, and I wasn't even sure if He existed yet, but I decided to stick to my faith and give God some time to reveal Himself further.
Back at home, my mom and I looked at our little pulse-ox reader we'd bought off Amazon that sent me to the ER in the first place. She wanted to play with it, but I wasn't about to stretch my luck. I ended up taking it from my mom and throwing it into some random box in the basement guestroom closet, where I hoped it would remain undiscovered for years.
I still didn't feel like anything had changed during the ER visit or when I returned home afterwards. I was so tired, that all I wanted to do was sleep. My mom made huge batches of chicken soup for me every few days or so, that I could heat up in the microwave and eat while she was gone at work, instead of staying up to cook things on my little Foreman grill. I also got into a habit of drinking a lot of bone broth, which my mom bought from the store in little boxes. I'd pour a box of that stuff into a coffee mug, put it in the microwave for a couple minutes, dump a bunch of salt into it, and just chug it. It kept me warm and hydrated, which made my suffering just a little less harsh.
Sometimes, I had my good days. I'd still be very congested, but at least I had enough energy to venture outside for a walk around the block. As sick as I was, I knew moving around was still very important. I didn't want to remain entirely bed-bound, because that could give the Pseudomonas a chance to cause my lungs to fill up with even more mucus, resulting in a Pneumonia infection. Also, moving around helped me maintain the strength I needed to continue taking care of myself while my mom was away at work.
