Autoimmune: This Is My Story

Endoscopy

Being part of the senior prefect team in my school, I was called on to come into the school for the opening night and serve as a tour guide for the prospective and incoming first year students. The opening night fell on the same day I was scheduled to have my endoscopy test. I knew I'd end up not being able to go. Even though I'd be out of the hospital on time, I'd have been sedated, making me too sluggish to take part. The prefect team is fairly big, so I had plenty of people to cover for me, but it just irked me that I seemed to be missing out on everything important going on within the school. 

I was fine for the most of the day leading up to the scope test. Until I was actually brought into the room. Despite the sedation, I really started to panic when I saw the doctors leaning over me. The sensation of the camera making its way down my throat really made the panic worse. I remember willing myself not to struggle, but it was almost like it was an involuntary reaction. I almost felt like I was being choked. It was really very uncomfortable. I had to be held down by one of the doctors. By the time it was over, I had squeezed my eyes shut to stop tears escaping my eyes. But one still managed to slip from underneath my eyelids. 

After the test, I was brought to the day care unit to rest for a couple of hours. With the sedative still in my system, I fell asleep pretty quickly. When I awoke a few hours later, I was brought to speak to a nurse about the results. Nothing had shown up on the endoscopy test. I wasn't coeliac. They still didn't have a definite answer. The nurse told me my consultant had booked a liver biopsy, to be performed in two weeks from that date. 

The tiredness was continuing to get worse. I was missing more and more time off school. And even when I did manage to come in, I couldn't really concentrate. As well as being stressed about missing so much time, my mindset was beginning to deteriorate. Weighing on me was the fact that I was rarely getting to interact with my friends anymore. 

Weighing on me even more than that were the bitchy remarks that were starting to circulate at my expense from a certain number of people in my year group. I had heard of riling comments that were being passed about me behind my back. Things along the lines of what's even wrong with her? and she doesn't even seem that bad and why is she missing so much school? and she's just an attention seeker who's playing on the fact that teachers like her to gain their sympathies.

I know, I can't prove that these things were actually being said about me, but let's just say, considering the people who were supposedly to have passed these comments, I wasn't surprised. I'm not going to name these people, but, having known them for five and a half years, I can confidently say they're the type who would say just those kind of things. And I know it's stupid to even allow those kind of comments to get to you, especially when you know the people passing them are malicious and catty and really not worth focusing on. But, I was just so infuriated by them. 

The one thing that annoys me more than anything is people not knowing the ins and outs of a situation, not understanding what's really going on and passing ignorant judgments, having no idea what they're really talking about. I was really really ill, and they didn't know the half of it. I tried to ignore these comments, but I found it hard. It riled me. It upset me, that people, who were healthy and well, were going out of their way to target someone who was really struggling in such a manner. And I know this was probably more so due to my own deepening insecurities, but I was starting to feel like everybody was against me.