Hopes And Dreams

The start of it all

Elora:
Elora didn't know this but this was going to be her worst year ever. She was at a beach youth group outing and she was having fun. All of a sudden her vision dissapeared, Elora was scared she thought she'd be blind the rest of her life. But a little while later her vision came back.

After that Elora didn't feel quiet right. She felt kinda weak and like she was tired and didn't want to do anything. Elora sat on the beach and the youth group let mum know what had happened to her.

After she got back to church her mum picked her up straight away and took her to the doctor's and the doctor said they thought Elora had an absent seziure but it should be fine.

After a few days Elora started noticing other symptoms like feeling really weak and tired. Every day these symptoms would arise and Elora was scared. After a while of this happening she thought she was going to die and she was scared. Some of the symptoms Elora didn't tell her family till weeks later because she was so scared to talk about it.

After a while of this Elora finally told my family and she went to the doctor's regularly to see if anything was getting better. But it wasn't. It was only getting worse.

Elora mum went to the doctor's and they sent an urgent letter to westmead childrens Hospital so that she could go in and get some tests done. Elora hadn't heard back from them for months and my family and everyone was starting to worry.

Finally a day before Christmas Eloras mum made the decision to go to Norwest private hospital and pay as much as she needed to pay to get her health better again.

At the hospital Elora wasn't aloud to eat anything until the tests were over and she was starving. When she went into the bathroom and looked at herself, Elora was scared at the way she looked because she was so skinny, you could see her bones because Elora was loosing so much weight in the last 6 months of being sick and was loosing so much blood and she knew that this was the case.

The way Elora saw herself in the mirror made her very insecure about her weight. Elora has always been pretty small and skinny and people would always say how skinny she was but until she saw herself in that mirror in the hospital bathroom she became very insecure about my weight and the fact that she had to be weighed every time she went to the doctor's.

It was the day of the test and Elora was scared to find out what was wrong with her body. They knocked Elora out and she went in for the test. When Elora woke up they said they would have the results by the next day.

All night Elora couldn't sleep as she was scared and didn't think she would ever get better because all that seemed to be happening was me loosing weight and blood and getting worse as they days went on.

It was the next day and the surgeon came into Eloras hospital room and told her that she has a bow disease called IBD which causes my bow to be inflamed and have ulcers on it which causes pain and all the other symptoms she had to her bow.

It was now Christmas Eve and Elora was aloud to go home. She felt really weak and could barely walk. She slept pretty much the whole day and on Christmas too. It was the worst Christmas holidays she's ever had.

Once a month Elora would go to a doctor to see how she could help the problem. Elora tried everything possible from tablets to duiscusting drinks but none of this stuff was helping and it seemed to elora like she would never get better.

In the middle of last year the doctor at Westmead children's Hospital that Elora saw found something that worked but Elora could only take it for a month. After she took the tablet for a month she was finally better.

Until a couple days later went the symptoms began to arise again. Eloras mum called her doctor to tell him what was going on and he said to wait a few days and if she wasn't better to go to the emergency room at the hospital, so off she went to the hospital. When Elora got there we had to wait in the waiting room. They waited for hours and hours until finally she got let in. When Elora got into the hospital they talked to my mum about what had been happening to her and she had to wait for hours and hours at that spot in the hospital.

Elora finally got let in and she was put on a drip and had blood tests done. The hospital was packed so she waited ages in the night to finally get a bed. when the bed finally came there were no rooms in the hospital for Elora to stay in. The next morning she finally got a room and felt so weak and tired.

Again for the second time Elora was not aloud to eat anything for a few days to help her bow to calm down and get better. She thought this was the worst thing that could ever happen to her.

It wasn't until a 17 year old girl came into the room she was staying in and mum started talking her the girls mum about how this lady's daughter had cancer as a child and had all this stuff wrong with her body. At that point I realised that there are a lot worse things out there that what Elora have. Although it might seem like it's the worst thing in the world. It's not.

That year Elora visited the hospital two more times where she couldn't eat any food for days. Elora had a lot of time off school and was always sick. It felt to her like she would never be back at school because she was home sick so often. Every time she woke up sick she felt like crying at the fact that she couldn't go to school because she hated being sick and at home bored.

Thanks for reading: xoxo Jena