Uncured

The loss

What I Feel I've Lost:

my childhood, my friends, and my happiness that most people experience when something goes right.

I gained many online friends from the chronic illness community who truly understand my pain, and although it warms my heart, it's upsetting that I have gone to strangers, instead of those who I cared for as a friend. The people who I would talk about my crushes with, share snacks with, tease, and try to make laugh so that they'd look bad in a photo. Just basically 99% of the people I had been close with. Losing them hurt more than my normal pain. Becoming isolated is something that many people with chronic illnesses experience, and it can sometimes be even worse than the illness.

There is this honeymoon period in childhood, when you wear what you want, possibly even nothing, eat ice cream with chocolate on your face, and run outside until you drop of exhaustion and your parents carry you to bed.

I remember my sophomore year in high school I was so happy, my friends and I were making our tie-dye shirts for homecoming, Halloween was coming up, I had a new crush (who we found out liked me back), and it was just a good time!

Why Kids Like Me Can't Get Any Help:

I was supposed to get so many tests done on me, go to many different hospitals that are supposedly the best, but my insurance decided at the last minute that I wasn't worth it. Kids deserve to get whatever they need to help them survive. I know many families who have gone into debt trying to afford their child's treatment, it's just not right. They risk their house, car, other funds because they have to put a price on their child's life.

I will not try anymore for myself, I was supposed to go to Lucille Packard Children's Hospital, recommended by many of my doctors, but then the insurance canceled it just a few days before the appointment. The tests I needed badly, went down the drain with that. My other doctors weren't allowed to do a certain procedure/test on me so they said Lucille Packard would be the best choice, they are allowed to do the procedure, unlike themselves. I was given many chances at possibly recovering, but those chances were all taken away from me. At a young age my pain was ignored and taken as a joke, but now as an 18-year-old, I've been told that it would've been better to ' handle this early on " as if I hadn't been fighting for that opportunity from the moment I started speaking. What breaks my heart is that kids are never given a chance, don't doubt us because we're young, just LISTEN! My goal is to fight for the change in pediatric health care because we have a bullseye target on us say