"Steel Cage" by Sezar G

                  There was a time that I remember where I could wake up and feel free and good with nothing to worry about. Now it seems like a distant dream from a long time ago. I use to be able to wake up and feel any pain, but now that’s usually what I my mornings consist of now. The day that it all began was my freshman year the day we went back to school from winter break. I woke up and I felt sick. The words that I said still echo in my mind sometimes “I feel sick but I think I might be nervous for second semester”. My day went on and the sickness persisted. “By the next day I should be better”, this was the second thought that crossed my mind. Fast forward to a couple weeks later I was in the worst pain I have ever felt. The sensation of someone pressing down on my stomach so hard while another person was stabbing me from the inside was the only thing that I felt for the next 3 months.

                  Every day that I went to my first period it was a daily struggle. I now had to focus on staying conscious since the pain was so intense, but I made sure not to show anyone the pain I was in since I would feel bad if I interrupted the class to ask to go to the nurses on a daily basis when school just started. Each day I knew the daily routine. Wake up at 5 have my head in the toilet bowl for an hour then start getting ready for school at 6. I live a good 4 min away from the school but getting ready took a good 2 hours now that I would feel really sick every morning. This marked the point where for the next year and a half I would wake up at 5 to get ready.

                  The day I finally told my parents about how I have been feeling for the past 4 months was a new change in my life. I no longer felt free, I now felt as if I lived in a steel cage that would hold me down and stop me from achieving the things that I longed to do. In April I started many medical tests to see what it could be. They tested me for parasites, abnormal bleeding, Inflammation, Parasitic eggs and the list went on. It was a struggle to know I can't do anything about it and the medication that they started me on was the worst. Some days it would work and others it wouldn’t. Eventually it would stop working and I was back at square one so the test would continue on.
                  I started to feel like a burden to my family, that everything I would do from now on would no longer matter. I felt that when every they looked at me, they would just see resentment, but they were just hiding it from me, so started to resent them before they could do it to me. The one thing that didn’t worry me that much was the medical expenses since we were and still are financially stable with a great health plan. Every test continued but the new one that didn't bother me that much was getting my blood drawn. This one thing interested me in how it could maybe provide the answer to what was wrong, except it didn’t. The only thing the test showed was an elevated level in white blood cells, but am ever so slight raise so this didn’t raise any suspicion.

                  To try and see why my stomach hurt I tried to switch up my diet. I took out red meats, only ate white meat, removed dairy from my diet, went on 5 different types of diets that would limit me to only eating certain kinds of food, went vegetarian, and then vegan. Still no changes. I would still spend pretty much every day with my head in the toilet and sometimes pass out from exhaustion of vomiting.

                  Both my mental health and physical health started to diminish. One of the clear cases of this was my freshman to sophomore year. Freshman year I was close to 200 lbs. which was overweight for my height and facts that play into what is the ideal weight to where even the new doctor called me a porker. That simple phrase broke me. The mix of medications and thoughts of being a porker now sent me on a downward spiral of rapidly losing weight. In the span of 3 months I lost 30 lbs. and I was now a shell of my former self. My friends even commented on how skinny I was but I could not see what I looked like. My sister didn't tell me this until recently but when I saw her at basic training she was scared. She said I looked like I would kill over and die any moment. This point I now felt I would never get better and nothing would matter anymore since I was sick every day.

                  When I finally had surgery, they saw my stomach was being attacked by my white blood cells in attempt to remove the “foreign object that was my stomach”. I finally had a ray of light in what was wrong. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, IBS, Gastritis, and Colitis, and when people have these kinds of stomach problems it can play a big toll on their mental health which can lead to things such as depression, anxiety, or even suicide. Fortunately, I never experienced the last one but I did at moment have depression thinking I would never get better, and when I was feeling down, I would think of the saying C’est la vie which means that is life.

                  Slowly I started to get better, and now that they knew which medication to give me and how to regulate them my sickness was able to be managed. From this I started to put on healthy weight, learn how to regulate my eating and the stuff that was going into my body which helped a great amount. My mental health started to improve along with my connection with my family. I learned that they wouldn’t go through all of this if they resented me, but out of love. This is what made me realize that the lengths my family would go through especially my mom who would look at forums to see how others with similar problems deal with it and what they do to help cope with the pain.

                  From this sickness it wasn't a steel cage, but it was my liberation, it was my freedom to learn and appreciate everything that I have around me. It made me appreciate my friends more along with my family. Of course, some days are hard but that means that I have to push through it and try my best to see if I can make it go into remission. If I can make that happen then I know without a doubt that I can take on any task that is thrown at me. That mindset is what lead me into pursuing the medical field to try and help anyone who feels the kind of pain that I felt since I wish that on no one. I can now say that I have gotten better from when I was first sick, and sure I have my days, and every day I feel pain but it’s now at a more manageable level that does not interfere with most of my daily life. From now on I like to take life one step at a time and appreciate everything and everyone.