Got to get this out
I've really got to get all of this out. For the past couple of months I've been having dreams. But they're not really dreams, they're memories of things that have already happened to me. Things I'd forgotten about, but things that really affected me at the time. And almost all of them are to do with my ME.
Last night was the worst. I woke up sobbing and mum had to calm me down.
I'm going to write down all these memories that are bothering me. I hope that then maybe they won't come to me in dreams.
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- I remember when I first became ill and nobody knew what was wrong with me. My GP told my mum that I had to go to school and that she shouldn't just give in to me if I cried and said I was ill. One morning I had an awful migrane. One of those terrible heachaches were just to move hurts, light is almost unbearable. I was crying my eyes out and told mum that I couldn't go to school but she wouldn't listen. I was rolling around on the floor in agony, clutching my head, with my eyes shut tight to block out the light. At the time everyone thought I was just being dramatic. They thought I was school-phobic.
- I was admitted to hospital when my legs became so bad that I couldn't walk to the bathroom by myself. My mum had phoned my paediatrician without my knowledge and didn't tell me until and hour before the ambulance arrived that I was being taken in to hospital. I was so exhausted and couldn't really understand what she was telling me. I wasn't scared. I didn't cry. I just went with it. The ambulance crew came up to my bed room and carried me downstairs and strapped me onto one of those bed-things. I think I must have passed out because I don't remember much after that. I remember being unloaded from the ambulance and taken into the hospital. And I remember the first nurse who came to see me. It was then that I started getting scared. I cried when the nurses weren't around and told mum that I didn't want her to go. But the staff made them leave after about an hour.
- My first night in the hospital was terribley humiliating. I couldn't support my weight so I had to call for the night nurse to talk me to the toilet. She wheeled me there in a wheelchair which was a new thing for me. I was so embarrassed that she had to help me go to the toilet that I just cried.
- My first morning in hospital, the staff brought me breakfast at my bed. They helped me to get to the bathroom again and helped me wash. Then they told me that from now on I was to make my own breakfast in the morning. I tried to tell them that I couldn't stand up long enough so they said they'd put a chair in the kitchen for me. I was scared and didn't know what to say so I just agreed. Then they told me I had to go to hospital school everyday at 10:30am. Then two physios came to see me and made me do some exercise. Then made me lie on the bed, bend my knees and try to push up so that my bottom lifted off the bed. I cried and told them that it hurt too much but they made me carry on. They told me they had arranged daily hydrotherapy sessions for me at 9am that were to last half an hour each. When they left I was in so much pain and my head was so foggy that I just fell straight to sleep. I was woken up by a nurse who said that I wasn't to sleep all day and that she wanted to see me sitting in a chair rather than lying in a bed.
- The two physios came to see me everyday. They made me walk on the second day and I collapsed. It took me 20 minutes to make a bowl of cereal in the mornings but the nurses wouldn't help me. Then they banned me using a wheelchair on the ward and told me I could only use it for when I was going down to hydrotherapy or if I had a visitor and I wanted to go out into the gardens.
- My cousin became quite bitchy towards me when I first became diagnosed with ME. She had recently had trouble with anxiety and she had trouble getting to school. One day she came and sat with me and suddenly said that she couldn't understand why I was diagnosed with ME and she was only diagnosed with anxiety when what we were going through was basically the same. I got so angry but I had to bite my tongue. I told her that this difference was that she was better now and I wasn't and that she didn't want to go to school but I did. We didn't talk for a while after that.
- When my legs were bad I had to stay in the Special Educational Needs room at school. It was on the first floor so my mum used to have to help me up and down the stairs. I always made sure that I arrived and left before breaktime so that I wouldn't get caught in the rush of students. But one day mum was late and so when she got to me it was already lunch time. She helped me down the stairs as usual and we made our way out of the school office. That's when I noticed that all ym friends were in the playground and they were staring at me. My ex-boyfriend looked absolutely horrified. I didn't have any feelings for him but it was still humiliating for him to see me like that. I was leaning heavilly on mum and my feet sort of dragged along the floor becuase I couldn't lift them very much. I'll never forget that.
- My head of year was not very understanding when I first became ill. She thought I was faking it. She embarrassed me in front of the class. I do remember when mum phoned her one day and yelled at her and told her that if I came to her and said I was ill then she HAD to let me come home.
- My head of year told me I couldn't go home when I said I was ill so she put me in the medical room. The school nurse said she'd check on me in 20 minutes but noone ever came. I was left alone in the medical room for 2 1/2 hours.
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I'm sure I'll be editing this post later on. But it feels kinda good to get all this stuff out. Some of it I've never told anyone.
I really don't know why i keep dreaming about this stuff though. :(