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You know when a baby falls down, and instead of looking concerned, family members and friends laugh and clap and smile so the baby feels like nothing wrong happened and then s/he won’t burst into tears – in other words positive reinforcement. That’s how my parents often behaved with me when there was a flare-up (minus the chipper renditions of Ol’ MacDonald). They had always encouraged me to believe that nothing could limit me and so I went about life as if UC didn’t play a role in my life. Which in it of itself might not be a bad thing. But at some point, you have to take stock of the situation and face reality. Just because you don’t want something to be the case, doesn’t mean it’s not. So imagine their surprise when the words “I think I need to withdraw from school” left my mouth. Dropping out of school my 2nd semester was my way of communicating: I. Just. Can’t. Anymore.
You know when a baby falls down, and instead of looking concerned, family members and friends laugh and clap and smile so the baby feels like nothing wrong happened and then s/he won’t burst into tears – in other words positive reinforcement. That’s how my parents often behaved with me when there was a flare-up (minus the chipper renditions of Ol’ MacDonald). They had always encouraged me to believe that nothing could limit me and so I went about life as if UC didn’t play a role in my life. Which in it of itself might not be a bad thing. But at some point, you have to take stock of the situation and face reality. Just because you don’t want something to be the case, doesn’t mean it’s not. So imagine their surprise when the words “I think I need to withdraw from school” left my mouth. Dropping out of school my 2nd semester was my way of communicating: I. Just. Can’t. Anymore.
I had a particularly bad UC episode at the very end of my 1st semester of college that shook me up pretty badly - I had seen a lot of red and for a split-melodramatic-second, I thought I was going towards the light. I was familiar with traces of blood before, but nothing like this. When my doctor later told me “Ya that happens” and could be expected, I was not sure if that was supposed to make me feel better or worse. I would become more familiar with the color red as time passed – up to 20+ times a day at my worst. I was not able to recover quick enough physically or emotionally after that flare. And I don’t think it was a coincidence that it happened when it did. I had in fact underestimated the value of my mom and pop posse (as is too often the case!); in the past 3 years, it had taken our full time efforts to keep my health from crashing completely and to enable me a semblance of a normal high school life. There were a lot of sleepless nights, sometimes with my parents anxiously eyeing my door, knocking occasionally when I would stop moaning to make sure I wasn’t passed out on the floor or something like that. In high school, you are used to your parents yelling at you to not lock your bedroom door, just not your bathroom door too! At that time I was too out of it to picket for my privacy rights. But being the teenage rebel without a cause that I was, I still gave my parents, the two people who bore the brunt of all my frustration, plenty of other grief to keep them on their toes. Sometimes, you just have to fulfill your teenage destiny.
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Second semester: For the first time, my friends noticed that something was off, and my grades were starting to get affected. Both horrors of all horrors. Several times, my friends would say “Your mind is elsewhere” or “Why are you trying to write down your notes with a spoon?” Once, my friend saw me walking on campus and said “Earth to Sheena, why do you look so serious?” Because in that very moment, I was 200% concentrated on walking through the pain and willing my body forward to class. I had to remind myself to smile. (Raman Prasad describes this exact same thing, what he calls “tunnel vision” in his book, Colitis & Me, a book which when I read in one sitting, I could have sworn was written about me! I highly recommend it; it deals with a sensitive subject beautifully and describes it in an articulate and accurate way. I almost feel like deleting this post and just telling you to hightail it to his book. If you have UC or are a parent of someone with IBD, please do yourself a favor and read it.)
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When I missed my best friend’s 18th birthday party that semester because I was sick at home that weekend, that was sort of the proverbial straw that broke my attitude and all my thoughts boiled up in frustration. Up until then, I had a rule with myself. No matter what or how I feel, I always made it to birthdays, graduations, weddings, etc. (and these days bachelorette parties! woohoo!), and that was the first time I broke my own rule. It was becoming increasingly harder to lead my double life (me and me with UC that is, not the sexy kind of double life that Jennifer Garner led on Alias) as the UC was consuming both. I ended up dropping out at the end of my 2nd semester. As I asked my doctor for a note to withdraw from school, it was the first time I cried – surprising to both of us given my allergy to raw emotion.
I spent that summer dodging surgery, gulping down scary meds, and trying to make up classes at the local JC.
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