About Me

Gastroparesis Info

 E-mail "Monkey Girl"

Sign My Guestbook

"The Fight for My Life 3"

While I was in the hospital, I had a lot of visitors and they really cheered me up.  My room was decorated with balloons and flowers, and my nurses commented that I had the nicest room on the floor.  It helped to know that so many people cared about me.  My mom spent every day and night at the hospital with me.  It was draining on her, but was very supportive to me. When I was finally discharged, my doctor sent me home on the TPN under the care of a home health agency.  My first day back at school a week later was difficult because of the IV in my arm, but I didn't have to deal with that too long because my arm got infected and they had to take it out.  I was glad I didn't have the IV in any longer, but I knew it meant I would have to try to eat as much as I could, and that was a big challenge. 

A couple of weeks later, at the end of April, my doctor sent me to the University of Virginia Hospital to see one of the top doctors in the country for gastroparesis.  I was there for a whole week having all kinds of tests run.  By Wednesday, I was  so tired of everything and just wanted to go back to school.  I didn't like having so many things done to me.  While we were in Virginia, we spent the week at the Ronald McDonald House and got to meet a lot of other families with seriously ill children. My parents received a lot of support from being in that environment, and they were able to offer some support too.

By the end of my junior year, I was way behind in my work because of missing 74 days of  school.  It took me all summer to finish it, which was hard because on August 7, my family left our home in Tennessee and moved to Pennsylvania.  This move was very difficult on me because I was struggling emotionally from being so sick, and had a hard time dealing with a move right before my senior year.  I attended a local high school for two weeks, but I was too sick to handle the full days, so I dropped out and homeschooled for the remainder of my senior year, with plans to graduate with my class from Tennessee. This turned out to be a good decision because in January of 1996, I got worse and rapidly lost down to 76 pounds.

My Artwork

  Prolonged QT Info

Hot Links

Home

"Art as a Healing Process in My Life"