Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Sickling Turned Social Worker with No Regrets


Since I was young, I always remember myself being sick. I caught everything known to man. I also started having many headaches as a child that continue in my life now. Due to the fact that I was always sick, I would miss a lot of school. This would lead to me being made fun of and being referred to as "the girl that is never here". You can imagine the devastating role that played in my life. The depression that came from the teasing made me sicker and more prone to things. If you are unaware of the symptoms of depression, then you may not get it. In 5th grade mine started and continued through high school. It played a big part of the fact that when I got home from school, I just wanted to go to bed. This isn't normal for kids.

As a senior in high school I had kinda grown out of it, but still struggled with illness. I took the facts into consideration when applying for college. I decided to stay home and attend a community college for 2 years. I thought it may help with transition, and we'd be able to possibly find out why I was sick and mainly flat exhausted all the time. After my first year, sickness had gone down, but headaches had increased. That summer I was planning on going to Alaska to do mission work up there, so we headed to a Neurologist. I was given pills to take everyday. There were huge and the bottle was as big as my head. See below. I wish I would have kept the bottle for laughs. HA!


So I took them for the wholeeeeeee summer. It was very annoying. When I came back, they wanted to do a blood test. When my doctor walked back into the room, he had a puzzled look on his face. He told me that my metabolic number should be at 250, but it was at 19, meaning that my blood was metabolizing my medicine so quickly that it had no time to reach the source. 

ANSWER #1: The reason I was getting sick so much was because my medicine was never strong enough to reach the source, therefore I'd get a little better and catch something else because my body didn't have any antibiotics to fight them off. Mind blown.

After that they sent me back to my primary to do lots of general test that they had never done on me. Why? I wasn't sure. Test after test and we got some results. She walked back into my room with the results and she said she was stunned. My B12 levels were so low that if I had been 4 points lower, I would have been admitted. B12 deficiency is the root of a lot of things:

-Depression
-Continued illness
-Chronic Headaches
-Weakness
-Tired all the time

ANSWER #2: Oh hello there Mr. B12 deficiency. Check all of those and called me crazy, but I had every single one of those symptoms.

It has been an interesting road. The reason I wanted to blog about this today is because I've been in the bed all day. I emailed my college professors and told them why I wouldn't be in class. It's been getting worse week by week for 4 weeks now. 

I was talking to my friend, Audrey, about my life with this. It has never controlled me, but it has made me miss out on a lot of things. My friends in high school never understood and would just tell me I needed to come to school. I would have loved to have just been able to do that; but I wasn't. Now 3 years out of high school and we have found out why I am the way I am, and I can say that if I would have had teachers who cared, I think I would have been more motivated to fight. We need more teachers who are willing to understand that I wasn't missing school because I didn't want to come, I was missing school because I was sick and nobody could figure out why, so it was easy to point the finger at me and say I was the problem. 

Praise the Lord, because He works all things together for good for those who love Him. He used those thoughts I had of always feeling like the underdog, like I wasn't worth fighting for, and turned them into me having a passion to fight for those people and kids in this world who are. I could not be prouder and more excited about the fact that in just a few years, I'm going to get to fight for people in vulnerable situations and show them that they are worth it. 

I know this story was a long one, but it's part of me and who I am today. It's only recently that I looked back and realized that I may not have such a passion for this kind of work had I not faced those trials. Now, are they the same compared to the ones I'm going to be working with? Probably not, but nonetheless, it's what brought me to this place. I'm happy. Even on a day like today when I'm having to be popping B12 like candy. I'm happy because I know what great work lies in front of me. So don't regret your past. Ask God to reveal to you why you went through what you did, and I promise he'll show you. 

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