I’ve reached the two year mark since when I first got sick.  It’s hard to believe.  

What started out as a series of seemingly harmless colds and sore throats two summers ago really turned out to be something far more complicated.  Never in my life could I have guessed that I would still be trying to recover from this illness.  Yet looking back, I realize there is more to the story than just this current episode. 

First, it was a case of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, followed by the unstable roommate who went off her medications and threatened to kill me.  Then I unexpectedly got a call the day before a week of final exams saying my grandma had died.  Two weeks later, I was in a car accident during morning rush hour traffic, going 65mph on an overpass.  My airbags failed to deploy.  My seatbelt and guardian angel saved my life.

But for me, it wasn’t the fact that this was happening—sooner or later we all hit life’s speed bumps.  Rather it was the fact that this all occurred in a relatively short amount of time.  Yet human nature is inherently resilient.  Just like everyone else in this world I dealt with these curveballs as they came, always getting back up and dusting myself off when I fell down.

After recovering from the accident, there were a few peaceful months. Thus, when I first started getting colds, I brushed them aside, denying that anything bad could happen again.  Yet something felt different about these colds that I just couldn’t explain.

After two months the colds left.  But then even weirder things started happening: hair loss as perfectly round, bald patches in a young female, excruciating joint pain and chest pain, ugly rashes, mouth sores, bruises, headaches, unbelievable fatigue and weakness, trouble breathing, chronic coughing.  After almost a year and a half, more symptoms erupted: weight loss, spontaneously collapsed lung, severe asthma attacks when I never even had asthma before.

Yet, there are a million other stress buckets that come with being ill: juggling appointments, tests, bills, the huge amounts of time wasted, agonizing over test results, incompetent-egotistic doctors, strained relationships, being stigmatized, wondering “why me?” while worrying about the future.   

Still, life didn’t stop there.  On top of the illness a close friend of 16 & ½ years died in my arms.  I came back from a trip to the Mayo Clinic only to have a detective explain that a serial rapist had attacked the girl that lived a few doors down from me at gun point. 

And still, on top of all this, I learned that the every day pressures don’t just magically stop either.  All I wanted was a break from life.  All I got was a massive collision course with one brick wall after the other.  Previously, I was such an oblivious kid always bouncing on my merry way.  What mess had I been unknowingly tangled into?  

Over time, especially in the past few months though, I realize I have changed as a person.  I think this illness has been somewhat of the ultimate tripping point—forcing me to sit down and reflect on my short life thus far, while thinking hard about the future to come.   

With only a smidgen of hindsight, it has been nearly impossible to express in words exactly how I’ve changed.  But very recently, a wise teacher and mentor, who has known me in the short time I went from being oblivious kid to seasoned “life crisis veteran,” put everything into perspective.  With this overly simplistic explanation on what has really happened to me, he smiled and observed:

“You grew up.”