April

Everyone as well as myself was wondering when this would finally be over.

I was so happy that I was finally feeling good. I was finally healthy. We called the doctor and they told us not to worry because these were probably some smaller pieces of the kidney stones that were passing through. Thankfully, these pieces weren't as excruciating as they were in February.

The most pain I felt was pain over once again having to give up my teenage life. Once again good health was dangled in front of my face, but kept out of my reach. I did everything I knew to do so I could get better, but it wasn't enough.

We made the decision that no matter when I got better, I would continue the rest of the year on home bound schooling and return to school in the fall for my junior year. The choice was daunting, but necessary. Leaving school for the third time was almost as painful as the pain involved with my endometriosis and kidney stones.

I worked so hard for nothing and I was back in bed. Everyone was getting restless. Every day I tried my hardest to work towards good health, but my pain never went down. I got on a new hormone therapy-- third time is a charm, and worked my way back from square one... again.

Because everyone was restless, tensions were high. The stress kept me in pain. People walked out of my life, and looking back, I know now that it was for the best. It was painful then, and I finally got to the heartache that people my age go through, instead of the endometriosis pain that was not normal for a fifteen year old. It was so hard to work as hard as I could to get better for people, just for them to walk out of my life as soon as I showed any bit of improvement. It was so hard. But I'd been through enough, that I wasn't going to let anyone take away the future I had worked for. Through the pain, I had worked. Through the tears, I had worked. When there was no one by my side, I had worked. And I was not about to give up now.

Each day, I continued to grow stronger and stronger. I stopped taking pain medicine and started learning how to work through the pain. Each day, I started seeing health I had never seen before. Each day, I returned to the person I hadn't seen for a full year. Each day, I returned more and more to myself. And I knew now that this is the feeling I had worked so hard for. This moment right now was the reward I had suffered through a year for. I was finally better. And the day I realized just how healthy I was, was the happiest feeling I had ever felt in my short fifteen years of life.

March

After a rough and painful month of passing kidney stones, I went back to school and began to get back into the swing of things. It was weird being in bed one day, and back in school the next. The pain went down over night and it was time to start getting my life back.

Although I was more than over-joyed to go back to school, it was such a familiar feeling. How many times would I have to come back to school before I got to stay there? But this time was different, this time just felt right.

I woke up every morning to go to school and although I had some sense of direction, I felt totally lost. For the past year, my only goal has been healing and returning back to good health. And now that I was healthy, I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself. I was so excited to be back with the friends that I missed so much and I was so excited to be back to the routine I'd craved, but every day I didn't know what I wanted to do, my positive mood started going down hill.

I got up, went to school, got home, slept, and worked until I couldn't hold my eyes open any longer to catch up on my school work. Since I'd been in such severe pain, I wasn't getting much school work done, and since I came back to school so unexpectedly, I was so far behind the rest of my classes that there was no time to stop and complain. I could not stop now. I'd made it so far to come back. I worked through so much pain. This is all I wanted when I was sick, but all of the sudden I had no idea what I wanted any more.

Spring break was a blessing. I spent every day with my friends and spent some time being able to be healthy and happy with the people I had worked so hard to get better for. All of the sudden, something went wrong. I went from laughing and smiling and running and swimming with my best friends over spring break, to not being able to get out of bed. And I just didn't understand why.

Why this kept happening. What I did wrong. Why I couldn't just be healthy. Why no one else had to go through this.

And I think everyone around me was starting to wonder the same. Everyone else was getting just as tired of this as I was.