Sick Girl Part I

I diagnosed myself 2008. I knew I couldn’t be the only one experiencing these symptoms, I was scared, frustrated, sad, and tired of not knowing what was going on with my body. A week later I was crying because a tomato slid out of my Subway sandwich onto my desk at work.

At 25 I began to realize that something was truly wrong with my skin. I would get these really painful knots and sometimes they would burst and leave holes in my skin. It was scary, painful, and freaking gross. By the time I was 26, my armpits were so raw and red that my boyfriend said it looked like I had gotten shot under my arms. I had literal holes in my armpits that you could see down into. I would put on bandages, go to work, and try not to think about the fact that, as my skin became worst, my boyfriend began to touch me less and less. My job was so stressful. They were asking me to do a lot of physical type activities with a lot of movement. Most of the time I was in pain but they could see nothing wrong and just assumed I was lazy. The lumps were now coming up everywhere. The more I stressed, the worst they became. They were under my arms, on my breast, my navel, between the space where my thighs meet, my inner thighs, and my butt. My boyfriend wouldn’t even sleep in bed with me anymore because he thought I was contagious and he became emotionally and verbally abusive. The times he did touch me, he was rough and I would end up crying afterwards.

I felt so defeated. Away from my family, my friends, a stressful job, an abusive boyfriend, and days of excruciating pain that the doctors couldn’t explain. I was taunted at work, accused of faking my illness to get days off. It was stressful. I was the youngest one there. I got a huge lump directly between my breast. My breast are DD so just walking was excruciating. I went to work anyways. My supervisor asked me to walk across the yard to pick up the medical supplies. I told him I was hurting and he made such a fuss that I decided to do it anyways. On the way back to my unit, I thought I would black out. I walked pass the kids and my supervisor. As soon as I stepped into the building the lump exploded. I feel forward and my co-worker ran towards me and helped me to the bathroom. There was blood and pus all over my shirt. It was such a big hole that we didn’t have a big enough bandage, so she taped a maxi pad to my chest.

When I arrived at the doctor’s office, they had me lay on this table. The doctor took off the maxi and screamed, “She has MRSA!” Everyone took off running, putting on mask, gloves, shoe covers… I was terrified. They gave me shots and pills. They called my job and told them that I was “highly contagious”. My co-worker freaked out and my supervisor apparently felt like shit for not believing that I was really sick and in pain.

#text