Personal Narrative: A Personal Experience With Mental Illness

As she put more on, she said, “If I don't clean it out, then it will get infected.” When she finished she bandaged my leg, and we watch tv until my dad got home at about 8pm. When my mom told him what happened, he wasn’t too happy because he told me he did not want me on the

There were only six people, including myself and my mom, in the orthopedic clinic's waiting room. The other four were two couples. When we entered, one elderly couple glanced up with wrinkled faces. The other was a mother and her adult son, and both smiled at me and my mom. After we had checked in for my appointment, we sat and waited like the other patients. At the age of 15, I was the youngest in that waiting room. I was also the only one wearing a cast on my arm. I felt a bit out of place. Then the door to the doctors' offices swung open. A young couple walked out, holding onto the hands of a little girl. They all had sparkling eyes and beaming faces. Upon closer observation, I realized that the girl couldn't comfortably hold onto her dad's hand because she was wearing a prosthetic forearm and hand. Despite her condition, I couldn't help but smile at the sheer image of her joy. As the family walked by, I stuck my good hand out and asked for a high five. She was shy, but her parents encouraged her. She missed the first time, but after a successful second attempt with her prosthetic hand, everyone in that room, even the women at the

“See you after surgery,” said the surgeon as he was grasping the breathing mask on my face.

In September of 2008 I was playing tag with my sisters when I stumbled and hurt my ankle. Naturally I panicked when unlike a typical ankle injury, my ankle did not began to heal and an excruciating burning sensation started. Throughout the following weeks I lost mobility in my foot and my ankle. For a long time I went from doctor to doctor frantically searching for the solution to why this mysterious injury was occurring. During this time medical professionals refused to believe the pain I felt existed. Doctors would say that I exaggerated or made up the pain for attention, which frustrated me since all I wanted was to know what was happening. As a kid this experience was scary, and every day I would wonder if I would ever be able to walk again. My mom and I refused to give up and continued searching for a doctor who would believe me and help restore my walking. Through this, I learned to stick up for myself even when people insist that I am wrong.

It was 5:00, and as I glanced outside at the gray mist, I couldn’t shake the thought that I was going to miss another day of fourth grade. “Why me,” I wondered as I strained my muscles to watch the door. I had a weird disease, the neurologists were saying recently. Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy. You can break it down to this. Imagine a horrible disease that rids you of all your physical capabilities. Now multiply that by ten. Put yourself on steroids. Get into a wheelchair. That’s what was left of me. Yup, withering away like a dying fire. Just then my beautiful, totally not pitying myself thoughts were interrupted by the creak of the wooden door with a window in it, as a man in a white coat walked into the room, and after talking with my dad a few minutes, he loaded me into a soft, white bed on wheels, so I closed my eyes as the cart rumbled down the hallway to the elevator. I didn’t really care what happened to me, I was used to pain, as long as there weren't any residents operating on me. It was a mistake that I picked the banana anesthesia, a mistake I would apply to my knowledge it future surgeries. I gaped

The surgeon, Dr. Boyd, informed me that I would not be able to walk for a minimum of ten weeks and would not be able to play football for another six weeks after that. I was not distraught over the thought of not playing football for about four months, but I was more troubled by the fact that I would not be able to use my legs. I knew right then that this summer would be miserable for me, and, indeed, it was. My house felt like a prison from which I could make no escape. If any of my friends wanted to see me, they would be forced to come to my house because my parents were worried that something would happen to my foot, so I was only allowed to leave on Sundays to attend Church.

​The sun shone brightly in the blue, cloudless sky. The heat outside was smothering, damp in a way only Alabama summers can be. For the first time in two years I don a t-shirt and shorts to go to the movies with a friend. Looking in the mirror, my eyes zero in on the first aspect everyone else will notice as well. I am ready to bare my scars as a sign of strength and courage rather than hide them in shame.

It felt like an eternity before my dad came to help me. Even with his help I could barely get up. It was like as if I was a prisoner to the sidewalk, unable to be freed. It all seemed like a battle between my dad and the sidewalk, him trying to free me. Finally he got me off the ground and my body was in so much pain. I looked down and saw that my hands, arms, legs, and chin were all cut up and I saw that I had left little spots of blood on the sidewalk.

The days in the hospital were hazy, strewn out between wheel-chair trips, failed attempts to eat something, and constantly injecting or swallowing pain medicine. A stiffer, straighter back made relearning how to walk properly a real chore on top of the fact that my back and thigh muscles were completely numb (almost four years later and it still hasn’t completely faded). Medicine could temporarily subdue the pain but never block it out, making each day seemingly endless and uncomfortable. There was a time, when I was in such great pain and the end of recovery seemed so implausible that I wished I would die so it could end.

“I believe surgery would be the best option for you” the orthopedic doctor said. A few minutes after that he left the room to go get the checkout paperwork, and a referral to see a surgeon. At the time surgery was the last thing on my mind. A few months earlier a close family friend, Dana Griswold, had decided to discontinue her cancer treatment because it was too difficult on her body. The days leading up to her death Dana had been rapidly deteriorating and everyone knew that she would pass away soon. At the time I was angry at God because Dana did not deserve cancer at all. She was the nicest person I had ever met.

When I got up that morning, delighted to be going a friend’s summer party, I never expected to get a scar that I would still have more than three years later. In previous years, I only ever gotten very minor injuries before, so I expected that today would be no different. Of course, I guess I should have expected it. Later, I learned that whenever there was a party at that friend’s house, somebody got hurt. Unfortunately for me, that day it was my turn.

My mind strays to my eyepatch again, back to all those years ago, as a kid, when my mother watched as I gaily, obliviously, crafted the eyepiece that would hide the mess of torn tissue and ravaging scars that marred my face. A summer day in the suburbs. So different to where I am now, I couldn’t help but note. The child I had been back then had no idea why the symbol he plastered on his face was so destructive, had been such a testament. He had lost those memories, and even now I feel cushioned from the full force of what happened to me. Seeing that symbol once again in Bangkok was an enlivening reminder of the road I’ve been set on for years and years.

It wasn’t routine anymore when I was in the operating room for 10 hours instead of five. It wasn’t routine when I spent 27 days in the hospital afterward, drugged to the point where I could barely speak let alone remember any of it now. What I do remember is that I spent most of that time crying and screaming in pain. No one could figure out what the problem was. They pumped me full of various narcotics, any pain medicine and sedative they could. None of it worked. After seven days of my mother arguing and fighting them, my mother finally convinced the hospital staff to cut the casts off my legs – the ones that they had put on to prevent my heel cords from tightening up again after the surgery. When they pulled them off, everyone finally understood. The cast on my left leg had been far too tight for my foot with all the swelling that occurred from having such extensive work done. Even after the doctors figured out the cast was a problem, they still didn’t know how to help me. No matter what they tried, I

As my parents entered the room, the doctor gave me a reassuring look. She explained to me that I had been in a car accident with my parents, however it wasn't very serious. Mum was perfectly fine, dad had a broken arm and I had the worst injury of, a bruised liver. The doctor continued to speak "Your bruised liver can easily recover if you have a blood transfusion.”

I spend most of my childhood as a patient. I was born with ----- and had to undergo multiple surgeries and physical therapy sessions. At 8, I contracted malaria and was hospitalized for a week. Wandering around the lobby, I came across patients who had injuries and casts all over their bodies; patients who looked like they were from another planet. I had been in and out of hospitals before but this was my first clear memory of other patients as I was so frightened by the sight. I was hospitalized again at 11. This time was on the promise of an operation that would restore some function to my hand. While there, I befriended a girl, -insert name-. She had surgery to remove foreign bodies from her leg. The joy on her face when she was able to stand on her own was wonderful to see. I became so hopeful that would be able to use my hand and be like normal people. –what where the results of your surgery? – Looking back as an adult, I realized that I, -the girl’s name-, and the trauma patients