Don't Give Up

I think we all have at some point asked ourselves what we would do in a life or death situation. We may plan and say what we are going to do, but until we are in that position we don't know. A few times I have faced death, or what I thought was death. One of those was in the fall of 2007, but to understand the fall you have to know what happend in the spring of 2007.

All my grade school years I only ever had four true friends, and three weren't until my senior year of high school. I did have a friend from the time I was 3 until the spring of 2007. That friend was a Doberman Pinscher named Duchess. She was two years old when my family got her, and my best friend. Whenever I was sad, happy, or angry she was there. She  always comforted me and protected me. Even if people pretended to attack me or made me scream she would show them who's boss. As the years went by, as most dogs and humans do, Duchess became increasingly ill. We never heard her whine or cry at all. In March 2007 my mom had made an appointment to take Duchess to the vet. You see Duchess had lost a severe amount of weight and wasn't eating. One day I came home from school, I let Duchess out, and went to drop my stuff off in my room. I opened the back door about 10 minutes later and called for my friend, but she never came. I knew in my heart something was wrong. I went outside and began to look and call for her. I turned my head and saw something in the bushes up against my house. As I looked and walked closer I saw who it was. That's right it was Duchess. She had collapsed in the bushes. I ran toward her and, like a mom whose kid is trapped under a car, I picked her up and carried her toward the door. I dropped her at some point, but she never made a peep. I couldn't get her into the door, so I called my mom at work. I was sobing and my mom told me to just wait for her that she would come right home from work. I tried to keep Duchess from moving, but she wanted to go inside. My mom got home and carried Duchess into the house. As I sat in the office chair crying, my mom called the vet and scheduled to have my baby put to sleep the next day. While she was on the phone, Duchess saw and heard me crying, and used her last bit of strength to crawl over to me and put her head on my lap. I lost it! The next day we found out that Duchess has gone from weighing 74 pounds to weighing about 40 pounds. With how far her tempeture had dropped the vet said she would have died naturally in a few days. She likely had cancer. My mom and I, although my mom didn't want to, stayed with Duchess until she was gone. I spent the rest of the day with my grandma watching the show Reba. That show and my grandma helped take my mind off the horrific event that had just happend. I had lost the best and only friend I had ever had, at that time. Not a day goes by that I don't think about her or miss her terribly. I am at peace with it because she is no longer in pain, but it took me a while to accept that she is gone.

Well Since I'm on a roll let me tell you about the fall of 2007. In the fall of that year I had become increasingly ill. It was pretty similar to Duchess, now that I think about it. I slowly started to lose my appetite and became more and more tired. I became weak and depressed. I didn't know what was going on. I lost in two months 20 pounds and became a frail 100 pounds. Now I'm 5'6", so that's pretty bad. I was so skinny that the wire in my bra would painfully get stuck in between my ribs. I was always tired, but could never sleep. I missed about 30 days of school in the fall. My school even harassed my mother about why I was out when we didn't know. I remember my mom being in tears after a phone call. I had come to the conclusion that I was dying, and even came to accept that. One day I was watching Dancing with the Stars, and my idol Dolly Parton was performing. She performed "9 to 5" and then her new song "Better Get to Livin'". Ah, ring a bell! Yes, my blog is named after that song and here is why. That song saved my life. I had givin up on livin', but when I heard that song it made me sit up, smile, and think. I heard what she was saying, and decided that even if I was dying I was going to live my life until I did. Dolly Parton and that song saved my life, and to this day I still listen to it when I'm down. "Music is the voice of the soul," Dolly Parton once said. I believe that doctors and faith heal the body, but music heals the soul. Anyway getting back to my life and death experience. I had been misdiagnoised as having arthritis, and givin a medication that disoriented me and made me weaker and physically unbalanced. We went to a different doctor who said I had myalgia , not fibro but as far as I know there is no myalgia other than fibro. That doctor gave me sleeping pills that kept me awake. Finally I went to see a pediatric rheumatologist who within two weeks diagnoised me with fibromyalgia. That doctor didn't rush a diagnosis, she actually cared, and took time to diagnose me right. I either had lupus, leukemia, or fibromyalgia. I'll take fibro over the other two any day. Don't ever give up because you think you may die. Keep living until you do, and wether you have lupus, cancer, fibro, or anything else life is still worth living. We always think that it could be worse, but most of the time it could be worse. Remember DON'T give up on life because life won't give up on you if you don't.

I'm not done writing about my diagnosis or the time before it. I will continue to write until I have nothing to say. Anyone who knows me will say that I will never run out of things to say.

Kayla Dawn