My Story.

The yearbooks for my senior year came in. 

I can tell you more about that in today's coming post.

Anyways,

it prompted me to tell you 

my story.

"There was a boy,

a very strange, enchanted boy..."

Actually,

it's more like,

there was a girl named Morgan,

and that girl is me.

I was just a normal high school girl 

who had friends and who didn't feel pretty enough already,

you know, like every other girl.

Enter December 2009.

I honestly don't remember anymore how I originally felt.

I think I just started realizing that I could barely make it through five periods of school and make it home before I felt like I was going to explode from needing to go Number 2.

Yeah, I'm going to revert to the Kindergarten way of calling it number 2.

It's just better for all of us.

Also, I'm pretty sure that my number 2's... looked different.

Bloody.

I'm sorry, 

but for this conversation 

we're going to have to act like grown ups.

And grown ups sometimes talk about gross things.

So bear with me,

and you can quit reading if you want to now,

but I'm going to keep talking.

So after these symptoms had been going on for about a week,

my Mom finally took me to see a gastroenterologist.

By the way

my gastroenterologist,

Dr. Knox,

is a pretty cool guy.

I never felt that awkward,

except for the fact that we were talking about my poop.

He finally diagnosed me with Ulcerative Colitis in January 2010.

I got started on Prednisone (a steroid) and medicine named Apriso.

Honestly,

I never thought that what has happened to me

would actually happen.

I figured that I would be like most people 

who just take a pill,

and the medicine puts them in remission.

The Apriso worked for about six months.

In June, my medicine stopped working and I had a flare.

My doctor moved me to a different medicine named Azathioprine.

He also put me back on steroids (I had tapered off when I was taking Apriso).

So I tried the combination of Azathioprine and Prednisone.

It worked for awhile,

but then it didn't.

It's effects started to taper 

until finally I had a bit of a climax.

In mid-October 2010,

I was hospitalized.

I had been having a fever and vomiting some.

I even had to skip Tuesday's band practice,

which was important 

because that weekend was our big overnight trip.

I went to the ER that night 

because my GI wanted to make sure that I didn't have a condition

called Toxic Megacolon.

Yeah,

imagine how awesome I felt having to be overnight in the hospital 

for a threat that wasn't even a threat 

of something with that ridiculous name.

I don't think I went back to school until Friday.

Maybe I went Thursday,

but I also don't remember going to practice until Friday.

Luckily,

Rhody (band director) let me march that contest.

In November,

my doctor started me on 

yet another medicine called Remicade.

This time,

the medicine was stepped up a notch,

and delivered intravenously.

Remicade helped immensely.

However, the steroids 

were having a different effect on my life.

You could mainly see it in my face.

Steroids can cause this thing called "moon face".

That definitely happened to me.

Progressively,

over those first six months of 2011,

my face (and slightly my body) swelled.

It hurt my self confidence a lot.

My then-boyfriend always said I looked pretty and beautiful,

but that's not how I felt.

That's not how I looked,

and I knew it.

I knew that my face was pretty much completely round.

And it hurt.

It hurt because I felt ugly.

It hurt because I could look back 

and wish I had realized how beautiful I actually looked 

before 2011 started. 

I had always known I had a rounder face,

and I always disliked it.

I always thought I was fat.

I wish I had been able to see myself through my own eyes 

when my face actually was as fat/round as I thought.

It hurt because I felt like I didn't fit in with my friends.

Then in my life,

I thought that I didn't mesh with my friends as well as I liked 

because I wasn't photogenic

and I was fat 

and had a fat face.

I didn't bother to face the fact that they just didn't like me like they liked each other.

I'm not the same type of girl they are.

That's okay though.

I'll hold onto the friends I want to hold on to,

and I've made beautiful new ones.

But I wanted,

oh I longed,

to be "hipster".

THAT was the thing to be in Spring 2011. 

It's when hipster first started becoming popular.

And my friends were,

for lack of better words,

obsessed.

Obsessed with finding hipster guys,

and taking "hipster" photos,

and trying to look hipster beautiful.

And I wanted in.

I wanted in so bad.

I wanted to be hipster,

to be cool,

to be accepted,

to feel like truly a part of the group.

I mean, sometimes I felt like I was only invited to some things

because of my boyfriend.

It's sad when it's obvious your friends 

like your boyfriend better than you,

even though you've been "friends" with them longer than they've known him.

Whatever.

I can't dwell on high school,

because it makes me sad.

Back to the story.

I blamed the steroids.

I thought that if I was skinny,

if I had a thin face,

than I could be hipster and take nice hipster photos with my friends too.

I just felt 

ugly.

I felt like all people saw was my moon face.

I felt like people probably just thought I was getting fat,

when really they had no clue what I was going through.

If my friends had been real friends,

I could've trusted them with the info about my disease.

Even if I had mentioned it to them,

honestly,

none of them,

except my best friend and my boyfriend,

ever remembered I had it.

They just say something about me being "sick" last year.

Sick?

Really?

I guess that's the simplest way you could possibly put it.

More like,

I was miserable.

I visited every

single 

possible

public restroom.

I had cramps and stomach pain whenever I had to use the restroom.

I knew that as soon as I got a hint of that pain,

that I had around a minute to five minutes before I would be running to the bathroom.

I never realized before now, 

how much the disease controlled what I did.

I couldn't stay after school a bit to socialize with my friends.

As soon as the bell wrung to let us out,

I had to dash to get out of the parking lot 

to go use the bathroom,

or else I would crap my pants.

And honestly, 

that happened twice.

Not at school,

but at two different times, 

I just couldn't make it to the restroom in time.

No 17/18 year old girl should ever

ever 

ever

ever

ever

have to live like that.

No girl should ever have to feel ugly and controlled because of a disease.

I had an appointment at Vanderbilt Hospital that spring 

to talk about potentially getting my colon removed.

That would fix my Ulcerative Colitis for good,

but that was sort of a last resort move.

I tapered off the steroids in the spring/early summer.

I ended tapering at the end of the summer.

I also proceeded to get sick then too,

but not sick enough to go back to the hospital.

So I went to school though,

not badly flaring,

but still flaring because I wasn't in remission.

That wasn't the best decision.

I felt awful most of my first semester of college.

Well, the part that I was there for.

However,

it wasn't an awful awful feeling.

It was more like

being completely tired all the time,

not being able to stay to socialize because I wanted to sleep.

I also was grateful that I didn't have a roommate that semester,

because she would've been miserable.

I ended up getting really sick.

Well it happened more like this.

I was still spiraling down from coming off steroids in the late summer.

Finally, 

my doctor decided to put me back on a short stint of steroids.

That was a small saving,

but ultimately my downfall.

Three weeks.

Three weeks was all it took to bring me down.

That first week of 40 milligrams of steroids was fabulous.

I felt almost normal.

But it just got progressively worse as I tapered down from that.

Literally,

I didn't last a week after I took my last pill before I got dangerously sick.

I ended up having a 102 fever when I was home

and my doctor charged me to go to the hospital.

So I was back at the ER.

I spent a night at my hometown hospital.

However,

my Mom felt like I wasn't getting better there and my GI agreed,

so I was transferred to Vanderbilt.

I stayed awhile there. 

That was an awful experience.

Mainly,

because of the catheter.

That dreaded thing.

I had to have one because they were transferring me in an ambulance.

The ride was pretty cool though.

However,

the ambulance guy

gave me an IV.

WHILE THE AMBULANCE WAS SPEEDING DOWN THE ROAD. 

That was one of the most nerve-racking experiences of my life. 

And also,

it was a bad experience 

because the final room I was in

was really

really

crappy.

It was basically the size of two closets 

and a putrid yellow color.

But after that experience,

we knew that we couldn't put off having surgery any longer.

Unfortunately,

the surgeon at Vanderbilt 

thought that it probably wouldn't even be wise to hold off until my college's winter break.

So I had to take incompletes on my classes,

which basically means I could drop out of school,

but be able to take new classes and make up the work I missed for my old classes.

And here we are.

I'm in the new semester,

and I have a buttload of work to make up.

Oh, and somewhere last semester,

I managed to loose around 30 lbs. because of being sick,

and because I got awful mouth ulcers that made it painful to eat.

But it's okay,

because I realize that it's all God's perfect timing.

Sometimes,

I think that God used this to teach me to trust His timing.

Everyone always told me to pray to God about my disease.

And I would, some,

but not like I should've.

I probably could've helped my situation more by praying.

But God really got my attention with this whole situation.

Through my colon situation

and this commitment to read the Bible through in a year,

I think God used it all to bring me closer to Him.

My health is making me trust Him more,

while the Bible is teaching me more about His love for me.

So in just under 2 years,

I managed to have 4 colonoscopies,

take 4 different drugs,

spend at least $40,000 on one drug alone,

and was hospitalized twice.

I have managed to accomplish what most 50 year old people accomplish the year they turn 50 or older.

So now,

I just have the next few months with Walter to...

look forward to I guess.

Then hopefully,

after the third stage of my surgery,

I'll be a normal me again.

It'll be somewhere between just over two and a half years and under three years.

Just think,

I'll still be blogging on here 

when I get to be normal!

I am excited for the future.

And I am excited to see what God has in store for me.

I'll leave you with a chronological order of photos for you to see what steroids did to me.

<3MG

Fall 2011

Homecoming week. Fall 2011

Homecoming week. Fall 2011

My parents and I at the Senior Night football game. Fall 2011

My then-boyfriend. I lied. We were broken up then. Anyways, March 2011

My best friend Paige and I at prom. April 2011

My then-boyfriend and I taking pictures for prom. April 2011

My former Spanish teacher and I. April 2011

Jazz Fest. May 2011

Senior Week breakfast. May 2011

Senior Week breakfast. May 2011

After graduation. May 2011

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 premiere. July 2011

Fall/Winter 2011.

January 2012