Chronically Surviving

My Journey

My name is Kellyn. I am an 18 year old girl who lives with multiple debilitating chronic illnesses. I know, not quite something you'd expect from an 18 year old. I didn't think it would happen to me either-trust me. 

When I was 15, I started getting really bad symptoms. At first I thought that I was just being lazy because I would sleep 18 hours a day. I was exhausted no matter what I did, I was constantly in excruciating pain, I would lose my memory and forget where/who I was, and a lot of days I wouldn't even sleep due to the severe pain. One day, my mom realized there was definitely something wrong. Most "normal" teenagers don't spend their days laying in bed crying about pain. So we called the best hospital in our area, Dartmouth Hitchcock and got a referral to see their best rhuematologist, Dr. Albert. However, referrals can take quite a while to be fulfilled. So we had to wait a couple of months to get in to see him. 

During this excruciating waiting period, I had time to think and reflect and basically see if any of my symptoms matched up with anything, so I did the thing you should NEVER do and i looked up my symptoms. Basically all signs pointed to mainly Fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is a "chronic widespread pain and a heightened pain response to pressure." So basically you're in a lot more pain than the average person and it sucks ass. As I was doing this research, I began to realize that I've had symptoms of these chronic illnesses ever since I can remember. I think they began around 5 years old but who knows, my memory is shit anyways so they could've started yesterday and this has all been an illusion for all I know. 

So eventually we got to go see Dr. Albert. It was early June and I was feeling absolutely awful. The thing about chronic illness, is that we don't regulate temperature well, so extreme heat or extreme cold are very, very tough on our bodies. When we arrived at the doctors office, we waited for around 10 minutes before being called back. We were brought into a very small room where I was told to lay down on the bed. I did this as Dr. Albert asked me many different questions such as, "how long has this been going on?" "what's your average pain level on a daily basis?" "would you say that you aren't functioning well at this point of your life?" etc. After I answered all of his questions, he simply said, "I have an idea." This got my mom and I both excited, yet worried. 

He had me sit up on the bed and he would push random pressure points on my body. With each one he touched, I almost screamed out in pain. I remember one in particular, right in the center of my back, hurt so damn bad that I jumped to the point of almost falling off the bed. It felt like pure torture. When he was finished, he simply looked at me and stated, "You have an obvious diagnosis of Fibromyalgia, and a pretty severe one at that." My mom and I were both so excited! A diagnosis! Of course this excitement was short-lived for me as a few days later, it really hit me that I'd be living this absolute hell for the rest of my life...