It’s invisible illness awareness week, and I’ve already sat in three waiting rooms and had two test run, and have had seizures and seizures but to the naked eye I am not sickly looking, and you might see that as a good thing sometimes I see it as a good thing but other times it’s not so helpful…

 I was sitting in a waiting room at a cardiologist when a man sitting near me said “You’re mighty young to be having heart problems.” I smiled nicely and said “I guess I am.” He then asked what was wrong with my heart, I told him simply that after waking up from a medical induced coma this summer I’ve had very bad chest pain and I have had small heart problems since I was born. I think I overwhelmed this poor man. His eyes got big as he said “Why were you in a medically induced coma?” I told him that I was having uncontrollable seizures and the only way to save my life was to be put in a coma.

   People are surprised when they see young people who are rather sick.. I guess I understand that its rare and it’s weird but to me and in my little world I feel like it really isn’t that rare because I have friends who are going through the same problems as me. We spent weeks in the hospital. We have surgeries and we have procedure  and we have doctors appointments we spend hours doing treatments, taking medicines and doing things to stay at basicline. And sometimes we can’t even stay there.

  We slowly slip into a worse state that causes us pain and problems. We slip into being very sick and being in horrible amounts of pain. And we just deal..

  After talking to the man in the waiting room, I was taken back to a room for my stress test the nurse goes “I just went over your chart and you got a lot going on.” I nodded and she went on telling me about the test, she had sorta indifferent way to me and said “You need to run as long as you can and I’m gonna guess since you’re so young you’ll be able to go a good while.” I got up on the treadmill and my body which is weak, and has never been a good runner, got up there and started walking which turned into a run.

   The doctor and nurse who was running the test went from you are so young you should be able to go so long to your heart is beating to fast, your blood pressure isn’t right you okay? Worry filled their faces as my blood pressure dropped some and I told them I didn’t feel good and they told me I could stop. I ran 9 minutes on a treadmill and my heart rate went up to 179..

  I all the sudden wasn’t a young healthy women doing a test I was someone they were asking if I was okay they were asking if i needed anything and if anything felt bad.  I was someone whose EKG didn’t look as good as they wanted it to.

  As they let me go the nurse told me she liked my bag and I told her where I had brought it and she smiled at me. I walked past the guy who I had talked to in the waiting room and he told me that he hoped I wouldn’t be so sick soon. I told him I hoped the same for him.

  As a young female who goes to doctors appointments who uses a walker to get around who has anaphylaxis reactions on a regular and who lives life happily. I am not invisible but my illness is unseen to the naked eye. I am the beauty of my own life.

Shayweasel out