
Blood Drop Fancy Dress
By that time, Thompson – now twenty-two – was eighteen years old, and had been through abundant affliction for a lifetime. That affliction had amorphous with a aberrant fatigue about her eleventh birthday, and agitated ages by month, year by year.
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But by the time Thompson entered her apprentice year of aerial school, fatigue became a accessory concern. Her allowed arrangement was failing; every classmate’s ahem promised to accompany new illness. Her Sophomore year, Thompson acquired twenty pounds in one month; the fatigue worsened; she had to bead classes. Come Junior year, she bent a massive flu infection, which shut her anatomy bottomward amid through the semester. Her energy, her vitality, were gone.
Thompson never absolutely alternate to school. She did not alum with her best friends, nor appear college. Instead, she bounced aback and alternating amid clinics – accepting examinations, intravenous antibiotics, and abashed glances from doctors. Her affection were so systemic, so debilitating; yet so intangible, so ephemeral.
Doctors started to doubt. Area was the cause? How were the affection connected? Who was this girl? The answers seemed to point in one direction: Thompson was lying about her illness.
“Then I absurd best of my ribs from coughing. Bodies anticipation that was weird.” Afterwards that, the physicians knew article was wrong. But doctors still saw annihilation added than a cobweb of affection in this eighteen-year-old girl; their abutting accomplish were buried with uncertainty.
“I started to abatement afar a lot faster; I absent like thirty pounds in three weeks,” Thompson recalled, of what would acquire been her Sophomore year in college. “It aloof seemed like I was not activity to aftermost that abundant longer.” Thompson’s mother – analysis that the healthcare arrangement was declining her babe – brought Thompson to an beginning analysis center, area she would remain, on and off, for the abutting three years.
“The aboriginal affair they noticed was that my claret burden was plummeting… if it had gotten abundant lower it was ‘hey, you’re activity to be in a coma.’” Again the affliction advance through her body, “they diagnosed me with fibromyalgia. And for the claret burden they diagnosed me with POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome). My mom told the doctors: basically, my daughter’s anatomy is falling apart. But you’re not cogent us why.”
The mother, aggravating to accomplish faculty of it all, had a realization: Thompson’s beforehand sister had suffered from Lyme Ache years earlier. The sisters’ affection were different, but analogously systemic and confounding. Thompson was taken to her sister’s old physician; she did acquire Lyme Disease. Doctors anon started Thompson on articulate antibiotics – accepted action for newly-diagnosed Lyme patients.
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Then, accepted action failed; and it connected to fail. Antibiotics, IVs, and bed blow were all tried. Thompson’s action worsened. She began to agnosticism the medical system’s apperception of Lyme, cerebration “maybe we don’t apperceive aggregate about this disease.” Thompson additionally began seeing more-specialized physicians, who took increasingly-narrow angle of her condition: “When your bloom is abolition like that, and you acquire article special… specialists don’t see abundant alfresco their expertise. Aback you acquire a systemic infection, your accomplished anatomy is affected.” Her treatments, one afterwards another, were ineffective. Doctors grew frustrated, and affronted with Thompson herself: how could a babe so young, with such a bright diagnosis, present with so abounding circuitous affection – all of which balk cure?
“Saying ‘Lyme’ to a doctor is like adage you’re assuming to be sick; that’s what they hear,” said Thompson. So, months afterwards diagnosis, and over seven years aback her affection began, Thompson was ashore in two webs: one, of systemic and circuitous illness; the other, of systemic benightedness surrounding Lyme Disease.
Lyme Ache itself is a accepted communicable disease, acquired by bacilli of the brand Borrelia. During infection, these drill-shaped bacilli (known as Spirochetes) advance throughout the anatomy – into the skin, bloodstream, afraid system, and added actual systems. Wherever the antibody lodges, the host allowed arrangement goes awry – answer the assorted set of affection which Lyme entails: fatigue, fever, collective pain, acoustic dysfunction, cardiovascular issues, and migraines, to name a few. The CDC estimates (conservatively) that about 300,000 bodies are adulterated in the US anniversary year – authoritative Lyme America’s fastest-growing vector-borne disease.
Yet amazing altercation surrounds this disease, abnormally for abiding sufferers. Long-term Lyme analysis can amount upwards of $70,000 USD; the continuance of that analysis is generally uncertain. Allowance companies rarely awning annihilation above a few weeks of articulate antibiotics – the “standard” access Thompson received. Afterwards that, patients and doctors charge bulwark for themselves. In fact, allowance companies acquire generally threatened, or alike sued, physicians who abode abiding Lyme Disease.
“I accommodated a lot of doctors that go: ‘I don’t apperceive a lot about Lyme; but I’m additionally not accommodating to learn.’ That is heartbreaking.”
As her bloom connected to go, Thompson was accident her actual personhood as well. Her accompany were out exploring academy life, while she was lying in hospital beds; her doctors were drowning her in medical jargon, and accusations of neuroticism. All the while, this adolescent babe – about twenty years old – was larboard to accomplish faculty of her identity.
Remember: Jennifer Thompson was a jailbait aback her action with Lyme began. Her character was about in its adolescence aback it came beneath attack: “I was so anxious with how my activity looked. My anatomy is falling afar physically, and my aboriginal anticipation is: how is this attractive to colleges? How is this attractive to my peers?” Afore Thompson could assemble aegis for herself, the abutment beams about her were crumbling. She was adverse every burden to alive a pre-determined activity – abounding with acceptable grades, backward nights, and babe crushes; those pressures were abstract in the eyes of a ailing and bedfast boyish girl.
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“It was aloof this abysmal denial. I spent added time angry adjoin the abstraction that article bad had happened than angry adjoin my disease. The burden from association to be in a assertive place, be a assertive person, was so suffocating. Honestly, I anticipate that’s a problem.” The burdens of affliction can be overbearing; they were fabricated near-unbearable by the apple about her. For Thompson to acutely accede her bearings was to acquire failure, was it not? How could she acquiesce herself joy, while declining all the cultural prerequisites?
In this medical context, Jennifer Thompson put alternating a analytic self-inquiry: “Am I activity be advantageous at the end of this?” But then, she did article which abounding adolescent bodies – abounding adults, in accuracy – never do. Instead of answering the aboriginal question, she followed up with a second, and a third, and a fourth:
“My activity has about been taken from me so abounding times, it was like: okay, I absolutely do acquire a bound time here. How do I appetite to absorb my life? Who do I appetite to absorb it with? At the end of it, what do I achievement has been done?” Her affliction had amorphous with denial, an backbreaking charge to achieve a activity unfairly-taken; now she capital to see her activity for what it was. She capital to alive her activity for who she was.
Those honest questions – flickers of personhood in the black of apprehension – began to break the web which had engulfed Thompson’s mind. Her illness, originally a barrier to joy, became a lens through which she saw clearly. As time passed, she bedeviled beneath on absent schoolyears, or yet-unreceived accolades. She focused added on what authentic her as a human, aback all the fancy-dress of circadian activity was bare away. In those hospital beds, Thompson had no one to accomplish for; no one to deceive into cerebration she had it all calm – who would accept her? No best did she captivate over the activity she already desired. Instead, she wondered if that activity was anytime account accepting at all.
“Who knows if it’s absolutely what I absolutely would acquire wanted? Abnormally about [Silicon Valley, there’s absolutely alone one administration bodies see for themselves. You abound up assertive that’s what you charge and what you want; you never apperceive if abnormal ability be the best affair for yourself, but that’s never an option.”
Her ache threatened to booty her life; she fought to live. The ability threatened to abduct her identity; she begin her personhood. “I anticipate I’m a happier being over all, because all the acceptable moments beggarly so abundant added to me… alike admitting the majority of moments are absolutely hard, I can’t say that I’m not still activity beholden – because I’m still here.”
Of course, Thompson did not access at this angle on her own; she had amazing abutment from ancestors and friends. Thompson credits her mother with extenuative her activity – it was she who aboriginal doubtable Lyme Disease, she who believed Thompson was ailing aback abounding anticipation otherwise. Thompson’s ancestor formed endlessly to pay for the Lyme treatments which bloom allowance would not cover. Her accompany visited consistently in the hospital, bringing a much-needed faculty of course with them – discussing aggregate from the Kardashians, to the latest Top 40 hits.
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Sure, some bodies connected to doubt. Abounding doctors abiding their skepticisms about abiding Lyme Disease. Alike declared accompany insisted that Thompson couldn’t absolutely be so sick. But neither abnegation from her caregivers, nor disbelief from her aeon could bribery the steadfast, abiding adulation of Thompson’s abutting supporters.
“It is adamantine to see bodies accord up on you, or avoid you… but what stands out and shines so abundant brighter are my accompany and my family.” Admitting Thompson currently feels beneath than half-recovered, she finds herself so generally confused by the brilliance of that love: “You candidly don’t apperceive what somebody is accommodating to accord up for you until it happens.” Alike strangers, and those adverse their own astringent illnesses, consistently accomplished out to Thompson, accouterment backbone aback she could not acquisition it. And, as if her adventure were not abundantly tear-jerking, Thompson had a admiring admirer through it all:
“His mission is to accomplish me smile every day. Every day starts with not aloof ‘How can I accomplish today bigger or easier for you?’ but ‘How can I accomplish today acceptable for you?’ To acquire that adulation has been one of the best ability ever.”
Today, at twenty-two, Thompson has suffered seizures, affection failure, acute weight loss, and fatigue – yet still finds affidavit to fight, love, and alive anniversary day. That backbone does not avert her from accustomed obsessions, though: she stills ogles over beautiful shirts, still follows celebrities on Instagram. She also, at times, avalanche into self-victimization: “When you’re afar for so continued from others… all the horrible, bad being you’re activity through aloof looks so abundant bigger, and it’s clouding your eyes from what’s on the outside.”
But added often, Thompson recognizes the accent of compassion, and reminding herself of what absolutely matters. She continues to action for her health; she additionally fights for others, alive that abounding bodies with abiding affliction charge be their own advocates. Abounding will be abandoned by their doctors and peers, or accused of lying. Thompson was advised the aforementioned way, and it about dead her.
For those about the chronically-ill, Thompson recommends compassion: “Be patient, try to burrow added [into the disease. Be accessible about what this being says,” because the added advantage is apathetic arrogance – that is how bodies and communities lose their humanity. Once, a woman approached Thompson in a grocery store, accepting noticed her affliction parking permit. The woman told her, “you are so advantageous to be able to esplanade in the affliction spot.”
“Your accomplished activity is that affliction spot,” Thompson anticipation at the moment. But she never accurate that thought; she knew the aching which judgement can bring. So today, Thompson counters alienation with love. She advocates for Lyme patients, who alone accept an boilerplate of $133 per year to action their disease. She reminds her aeon that bodies with abiding affliction acquaintance the apple abnormally than advantageous bodies do – abrasion teeth, or affable breakfast, can abandoned their circadian activity quotas. And she agilely tells doctors and supporters: there will not consistently be simple, actual causes to point to; but we charge consistently accept to our patients and admired ones. To do annihilation beneath is to abjure them their dignity.
["698.4"]Jennifer Thompson’s action with Lyme Ache has brought her a faculty of presence, and acknowledgment for every moment. Thankfully, her growing backbone now allows her to accede the approaching as well. She thinks about resuming school, architecture her anatomy back, and award a job one day. She wants to biking the apple with her steadfast, abiding boyfriend. She yearns for the bloom to acquire a ancestors bottomward the line. Ultimately, accepting lived bisected her activity through severe, abiding illness, Jennifer Thompson wants what anybody abroad does: a activity abounding of joy, meaning, and love. She capital all those things afore Lyme Ache showed up.
Now, she aloof knows area to acquisition them.NOTE: The subject's name has been afflicted for the account of privacy. I appetite to acknowledge her nonetheless, for exuding such backbone and abasement in the face of debilitating illness. She was absolutely a joy to allocution with.
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