I've never really been popular, in-fact rather the opposite, yet the friends I have had, have stayed with me a number of years.
The primary school years were rather bleak, I had two great friends who stayed with me throughout the primary school years, Hayley and Marie. I remember often having to run behind the primary school shed and hide during games we played together as I suddenly got bouts of stomach pain. I was also bullied throughout primary school and took too much notice, this greatly affected my school work. I also had huge issues in concentration and random pain spasms throughout the day --- I wonder it these are all signs of my Crohn's having started at a very young age. I did sometimes have accidents at primary school during break times; luckily the teachers at primary school were great and as far as I know, no one ever realised! My school exams at primary school had low grades and the prospects for me did not look good. I decided to do my final year at another primary school, where I made a couple of other friends; one girl Sarah sadly passed away from Lupus in 2010. Her 2 beautiful children are watched by a very special angel. I had finally got back in contact with her a couple of weeks prior to this to arrange to meet her as we lost contact when she left school. Again, I was bullied at this primary school too, but I did have a couple of friends who were good to me. I really miss Sarah, there are so many happy memories which I hold in relation to her!
Secondary school didn't fare any better for me, yet I did make a few more friends, some in my class, and some in the year above (who I am still in contact with and remain my friends today). Sarah was in the same form group as me in secondary school and shared nearly all the same classes with me, so our friendship remained. Due to my primary school results I was pushed into the lower grade classes and this meant that the work taught to me was for the lower exam papers, however within months before exams when they handed us mocks, they finally realised that actually I was up to a higher grade paper. Having done no revision for the higher grade papers I had to independently cram study to catch up. I certainly surprised the teachers. I made 3 very good friends during secondary school from the year above who I spent my lunchtimes with, Sophie (who now has M.E - and I have since lost contact with), Rachel (who I only contact on the odd occasion through facebook) and Katie (who remains my best friend to this day). In my own year group there was another Katie (who I seem to have lost contact with), Sarah as mentioned above and a couple of others who left school early with no contact details! The fatigue started to creep up on me during secondary school, to the point that I'd occasionally fall asleep in class or daydream to the point where I had no idea what the teacher had said to us! Despite this, my GCSE's went much better then I had anticipated.
At aged 16, I bunked off school to go to the doctors as it was becoming obvious that something wasn't quite right with me. Blood tests for diabetes were done and this was the end of that!
One thing that stands out clearly to me from secondary school was that even a couple of the teachers bullied me. Firstly there was the drama teacher, she once singled me out in class when we were asked to work in groups and said for people to not pick me because I was too shy; little did she realise that although I was shy, acting meant that I took on a totally different persona where I certainly was not shy at all. I however studied A-level drama and got fantastic grades in this subject!
Secondly, there was a sports teacher, children very rarely like sports - that is a fact. To be honest, I quite enjoyed it, but there were a lot of warning signs that maybe something wasn't quite right with my health here that got overlooked. I remember in the changing rooms the teacher doing pulse checks on everyone and got us to sit down and take a resting pulse, then do star jumps and do another pulse; I listened to everyone's results and noticing my pulse was totally wrong I gave something to sound in keeping with everyone else (this was probably a sign of my POTS). She would often get us to do the warm up of running around the edge of the field, I was the only child who could not manage to do this - general uncontrollable fast pulse and also pain in my stomach (possibly a warning sign of Crohn's). My hand-eye co-ordination was useless, when it was the summer and we were doing tennis lessons, I remember the teacher singling me out where everyone else was made to work in pairs and I was left to hit the ball on my own against the wall. That summer on a family vacation, it didn't take me long to be able to return the ball to dad and build up a good rally; just a shame the teacher never gave me the chance.
Starting college seemed great, until I found that the one person I had wished to escape had chosen the same college as me, so a month later I switched and did subjects that I didn't really wish to do as a result. During this first year of college (now sixth form) I had huge bouts of fatigue where I fell asleep during most of my lessons. No teachers complained and although I was struggling to keep up with my lessons as a result of exhaustion, no one questioned the reasons. I should have known that this was an issue. At lunch-breaks I got severe pain when I ate normal sized meals, as a result my meal sizes went down. I often ended up being sick unable to keep anything down. (This again should have been a warning sign of Crohn's). People assumed I was anorexic/bulimic, even mum had noticed plates of mostly uneaten food in my room. The fact was that it HURT to eat. It hurt so much and I couldn't tell anyone. I soon started to believe that everyone was right and yes, I did have an eating disorder, there was no other explanation, so they had to be right....
Again, I went to the doctors, blood tests done for diabetes. I said how I am affected and the issues I have with my stomach and all I was told was that I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome. (I was to go on believing this for 10 years until diagnosed with Crohn's)
I moved college and re-did my second year, this time in subjects which I wanted to do. Creative subjects, photography, art and drama (yes drama). I got fantastic a-level results in all of these subjects and really enjoyed college. I didn't make friends with my own age group but made some lovely older friends. I thoroughly enjoyed college and doing subjects that weren't mentally challenging didn't make me feel tired. I was however still feeling very fatigued and still having eating issues. I would really love to go back to the Drama teacher and say to her "you were the teacher who singled me out and said I shouldn't go in anybody's group because I was too shy" whilst showing her my A-level certificate. I started doing village plays and really enjoyed them. The only issue I have with drama is a poor memory and fatigue, so as long as I'm given parts with not too many words, then great! Also rehearsals for plays have to fit around my ill days and my hospital appointments!
I took a gap year here and went to work at Tesco. That was a job I found very repetitive and with the combination of my fatigue, I did fall asleep often at the checkouts and lunchtimes were just one huge snooze time. Some people tried to persuade me to eat properly, which of course did me no favours at all - food was hurting me so much. I was underweight at this stage and tried so hard to hide it! I made a lot of friends at Tesco, to be honest, all of the staff here seemed lovely honest folk. Some of the older cashiers at Tesco who I made friends with still say hi and ask me how I am when I see them whilst doing the shopping with mum. After one year here, I decided that to get a good job meant upping my qualifications, so I decided to carry on with education choosing to do the H.N.D route with the one year top-up option so that if I dropped out after completion of the first 2 years, I would still have something to fall back on.
The first year I did in Cornwall - some 300+ miles away from my home, I didn't really like being away from home and having no halls of residence meant sharing a student house. Loud noise, late night parties from other house-mates and lack of sleep as a result --- not very good when you suffer severe fatigue. Living on my own did make me realise that I could manage to have lots of smaller meals instead of large meals and smaller snack sized portions didn't hurt me anywhere near as much as proper meals did! Towards the end of this year I had a major pain in my stomach which caused me to have a severe black-out. I was taken into hospital and when I came around I still had extreme pain, the doctors assumed it was appendicitis, they did the tests and found that it wasn't so it was pretty much left at that. I did have a flexi-scope at this time though and if they had gone up far enough they would have found out that I actually had Crohn's disease!!! Thinking back on this, I am amazed that since they found out that it wasn't appendicitis that further tests weren't ran to find out the true cause!
My second year was done in a college near my home, I decided to move with my brother as he was just setting up his own house. The teachers of my HND were very proud of my work and gave me pride of place for the exhibition. I had earned front spot in the exhibition where people would see my work the second they walked in to the art centre. My grades were pretty much straight Distinctions (apart from my essay) but having dyslexia this was to be expected by the teachers. The night of the exhibition was a very late night and driving home I had a "dizzy spell" sensibly I had pulled the car over (on to the top of a round-about) and walked to the nearest house with lights on for help. I had attempted to walk back to my car and blacked out on the way back. Dressed in black on a late very dark black rainy night, I am glad I was found. Unconscious in the resuscitation unit for about four hours - this was to be the start of my blackouts becoming regular. My blackouts soon increased to the point they soon became weekly. At this point I was very glad that I had chosen to do a H.N.D instead of a degree because my health was so bad, to the point where I could rarely stand without blackouts or stomach pain. Misdiagnosis again at this point, I had formerly been diagnosed with I.B.S and the blackouts were now being called psycho-symptomatic! However, my blackouts becoming very regular meant that my brother being autistic (aspergers), decided the best way to wake me up was to kick me. So after a year and a half I ended up back with my parents. I started an O.U course to try and make the points up to a degree, but the point system didn't match that of normal degrees so even doing the equivalent of a year at O.U I wouldn't have enough points. I was put on some medication that was frequently used for people who blacked out and my blackouts although not stopped were reduced to every few weeks.
After two years gap I finally went on to complete my degree, being not to full health meant that I did miss a lot of lessons, but I still finished my degree with a pretty good grade, although not as high as I had hoped. Having a two year gap between my H.N.D and my Degree meant that I was entering the third year as a first year student, which was very challenging due to the fact that they had already formed friendships. The final year I did stay in halls of residence, but it's hard to make friends when most of the time you are confined to your bed and unable to join in with the normal "student social life".
So thus ends my education. Job crisis was really bad for everyone at this point and like everyone else I struggled to find a job, all of my fellow graduates were in a similar issue. I did manage to get a job at McDonalds - not the best of places, but it was a start. I got my own house and a dog (which I did a post for the other day). Only 8 hours a week as that was all I could manage. Living on my own was hard as the blackouts decided to increase; it didn't take me very long for this job to end when I blacked out at work! Thus ended my career. Moving house did however mean I swapped G.P and in doing so I finally got a diagnosis as to why I was blacking out POTS! At this point, I was advised to move back to parents house and go under 24 hour supervision. My blackouts became more and more frequent. 3 months later and my weight plummeted, my G.P took note and realised that my former diagnosis of IBS couldn't be right. He sent me to the best local Gastroenterology specialist he could think of and said to me that no matter what it took he would get to the bottom of my problems and he was right about that as within a matter of a few days, I was soon diagnosed with Crohn's.
No more education, no more career, no more house, no more independence. A rather sharp turn around in my life to go from a career and house to being told that I should remain under supervision 24/7.
This is where I started to pursue new interests and raise lots of money for Crohn's and colitis.
Doctors don't think that my Crohn's and pots are linked, but in the last couple of months it has become obvious that my bad crohnie days tie up with my blackouts, so sort the Crohn's out and maybe no more blackouts and welcome back old life.
Here is one of my latest makes with stained glass. Wolves are a strong passion of mine!
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