time to get real

when i started this blog about a month ago, i couldn't imagine it to have grown as fast as it did. i honestly thought that this was going to be more of a diary, and that no one would really be interested in what i have to say. i am so happy that you are following me, and i have decided to share some more personal stuff with y'all!
honestly, i have been debating whether or not to post this because i'm kind of embarrassed (i guess that's the best word). so bear with me here while i get real with you.

as most of you know i live in kentucky right now. i moved here about two years ago, during the summer before my freshman year of high school. i have moved a bunch of times, and was so excited to start a new school!

my freshman year was great! i became best friends with an exchange student, and am still great friends with her even though she moved back to her hometown! things were going great, i had great friends, good grades, and was doing well with sports.
then things started changing the last month of being a freshman. i got sick. and i didn't just have a little cold. i was literally in bed for a month. i went to a few doctors to figure out what was wrong with me, and none of them really knew. i had many blood and other types of tests run and none of them could figure anything out. so during the second semester of freshman year, i ended up missing in total about a month. i was sick throughout the summer  for about two or three weeks, but i eventually got better but not 100% back to my old go-go-go do-do-do self.

the summer between my freshman and sophomore year was fine. i wasn't completely better, but i was well enough to hang out with friends, do sports, spend the night, shop, go to the pool, and other normal teenage stuff.

then sophomore year rolls around, and i (and everyone else, including my family) thought that i was completely over whatever it is that i had during freshman year. unfortunately we were wrong.
i was completely fine until about november of 2011. my second cousin had a wedding one weekend, and the weekend right after that, another cousin had her bat mitzvah.  both of these celebrations were out of town. when i got back form the second trip i was exhausted, and couldn't make it to school the day after we got home. and i couldn't make it the next day. or the next. or the next. or the next, and this kept happening for four months. that's right, i didn't go to school for four months straight. i was extremely lethargic, i had a loss of appetite, a ton of weightless, and a ton of stomach pain.

during the four months that i wasn't at school, i was either in bed or at a doctors office trying to figure out what was wrong with me. every doctor thought i had mono, but all of the tests came back negative. in fact, every test that was tested came back negative. because of this, every single doctor thought that i was sick because i was stressed. i mean seriously. because they couldn't easily figure out what was wrong with me they said that i was stressed. they said that because i was a teenage girl, playing sports, and in a good school that i wasn't actually sick and it was just in my head. so they forced me to go back to school, and push my self, and exert myself. this made me even sicker.

finally about three months into being sick, one doctor decided to do a more in depth mono test. this test finally proved that i wasn't sick because i was stressed. it turns out that i had mono all along. this doctor also figured out that i have CMV, which is like mono. the combination of these two diseases, and being pushed beyond my limits has majorly set me back.

there have been a ton of changes in my life because of these illnesses. i have lost some of my best friends ( i guess they took it personally that i wasn't able to hangout with them). i won't be able to play sports for a while so i can fully recover, and so nothing serious will happen with my spleen and other organs. i am too tired to go to hang out with friends, i'm too tired to shop for too long, and i can't spend the night out for fear of being too tired (as in can't get out of bed for the next few days tired)

 the biggest set back of all is that i have to repeat my sophomore year of high school.  well technically, the school isn't making me repeat the year it was more of a family/personal decision. one of my uncles is good friends with the head of acceptance at williams college, and she recommended that it would be best if i repeated. she said that if i went to junior year next year that i would have to push myself way too hard, which could potentially make me sick again. she also said that since i missed so much school, it wouldn't be fair for me to take the SATs and other standardized tests.
all in all, i'm not too nervous about repeating. i have a few girls that i'm friendly with from crew that will be sophomores next year. also, i already know a lot of the material for next year so i won't have to work as hard, and i can rest more which will be great for me to be able to recover quicker!

while i've been sick, i have realized many things. some good and some bad. i've learned what makes a good friend, and what makes a not so great one. i've learned about trust. and most importantly i've learned about patience. i strongly believe that everything happens for a reason, and even though sometimes i am so angry for being really sick for over a year, i know that it has happened for a reason!

right now i am pretty sure that i am on an uphill slope to becoming better. i recently went to an alternative medicine doctor (she prescribes herbs and such), and received a bunch of new medicines that will hopefully help to reboots my energy level and fix all of my stomach problems!

if any of you made it this far, i really appreciate you taking the time to see what is going on in my life! if you have any questions at all, don't hesitate to ask as i will definitely do my best to answer! 

thanks for reading! 

xox

p.s. sorry for the lack of any pictures;)