M5 Psych Story

 

My Story:
The story I'm going to tell is about myself and something that happened to me when I was younger that has continued to be part of my life since then. When I was in the 4th grade I was diagnosed with osteomylitus.  Lots of people are probably think "what in the world is that?" well it's a bone disease that affects bone growth. Basically your body believes that something is wrong with itself so to "fix" the problem your body lays down new bone and bone tissue over and over again like an onion. This usually continues on until your body realizes that nothing is wrong and the extra bone and bone tissue will whither away back into your circulatory system. Here is a link that can give you more information on the actual disease.
https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/osteomyeltis-treatment-diagnosis-symptoms#1
My version of the disease is in my lower right jaw and is generally the same except my body never realized that there wasn't something wrong and instead of the bone continuing to be thin and onion like it actually hardened and has no bone tissue. The bone actually is completely solid and harder than normal bone. So back to my story, I was diagnosed in the 4th grade, however, the diagnoses wasn't that simple because not a lot of people have the disease that I have. So before I could actually be diagnosed I had to see a bunch of different doctors before my family found one that knew what was wrong with me. I missed a lot of school seeing probably around 15 or 16 different doctors and none of them could help us because they had never seen anything like what I had. My parents ended up taking me to Children's Hospital in Dallas to a maxiofacial doctor that we had been referred to by our pediatrician. He told us that he wanted to give me a biopsy to culture some of my jaw bone to test and make sure that I didn't have a tumor or anything cancerous.
While seeing all of these doctors and getting ready to have surgery I was also trying to stay in school and keep my grades up. The hardest thing about staying in school throughout this process was that my lower right jaw was significantly larger than my left jaw so it was physically noticeable when you looked at me that half of my face was larger than the other. I was bullied and was constantly questioned by other kids in my grade and older kids that would see me walking around the school. It made it difficult to be in school and focus on grades because I was being bullied.
I had the biopsy done and a couple weeks later we were told that I didn't have cancer or a tumor and that they were planning on testing the culture for other things just to rule out anything life threatening. They did and told my parents that they wanted to see what would happen if they put me on high dosages of antibiotics so that I was taking 9 pills a day. This meant that I would leave class to take medication and made frequent trips to the hospital to see my doctor to continue to regulate the growth and pain levels of my jaw bone.
Pretty soon the doctors realized that the only thing the antibiotics were doing was helping to regulate the pain levels but only for a certain amount of time. I continued to see the same doctor up until the 8th grade when he ended up leaving Dallas and moving to San Antonio so my case was transferred to a separate doctor in the department. She decided that she wanted me to have another surgery but this time she wanted to actually shave off some of the bone off to see if they can slow the bone growth down. I ended up having the surgery on m first day of 8th grade. They shaved down the bone and made both sides of my jaw symmetrical to where you couldn't tell that I had the disease at all. The bone didn't grow and I didn't have pain for about 10 months then I had what I call a flare up. My jaw swelled up and I was in extreme pain. This meant that there was probably something else wrong with my jaw not just osteomylitus. They ended up saying that the reason my jaw would grow was because it was also connected with my hormones. My parents realized that their wasn't much they could do right now so through my freshman and sophomore years in high school I would only call the doctor for antibiotics when I was in bad pain.
The summer between my sophomore and junior year in high school my parents insurance changed and I didn't have a doctor anymore. So we were referred to a new doctor, we didn't go and see him until I went through a 4 month period of constant pain in the fall semester of my senior year. I wasn't able to sleep, my grades were slipping, and I wasn't performing very well in soccer so my parents took me to see my new doctor. He decided that I needed to have a third surgery but instead of going through the inside of my mouth through my gums, he decided that he was gong to go through my neck and saw off a huge amount of my bone and culture some of it to test it with different bacteria's. They wanted to also put a pickline in my chest to give me intravenous antibiotics for 6 weeks to see if that would help fight the bacteria that the doctor believed was the cause of having the bone growth in the first place.
I had surgery December 20th of my senior year and spent the night in the hospital, I went home knowing that I had to go to a clinic in Plano to have my pickline cleaned to make sure that I didn't get sick or anything happened to it because it was directly connected to my heart. During the time that I was home I had to stay away from other people and eat on certain schedule to make sure that I was getting enough nutrients each day. I lost 29 lbs throughout my recovery making it scary for my parents to see me lose weight because I couldn't eat very much anymore. I finished the intravenous antibiotics and was put on oral antibiotics that I have since been on and still am on today.
This story that I've been living has been a roller coaster of emotions and pain. I went through a lot of bullying both emotionally and verbally. I was forced to grow up fast because of the constant doctor appointments and being responsible for taking medications. I know that I wouldn't be the same person that I am today because this situation helped me to realize that I wanted to have a career in the medical field and wanted to help others that have gone through similar situations that I did. It's motivated me to want to be there for people that don't fully understand their situation but have to face the fact that they have a disease that has changed their life and it's their choice to see it as a positive situation or a negative situation. This story is one that I live every day and look back on as something that I can use to help other people.
I encourage everyone to express their life story and the hardships they've endured in life because you never know other peoples situations and your story could be a saving grace for someone else. Everyone's story is important and can make an impact on certain people and can be used to help bring people from different backgrounds together.