An Unpredictable Life

7. Hospital vs High School

Hospital vs High School

7

Here's what my dictionary says :

G-CSF - is an haematopoietic growth factor that works by encouraging the bone marrow to produce more white blood cells. Growth factors are special proteins which are produced naturally in the body. They can also be made as a drug. G-CSF can be given to stimulate the bone marrow to produce new white cells more quickly after chemotherapy.

GCSE - an examination for 16-year-olds in England and Wales that includes coursework assessment by individual schools as well as examination by independent boards. (except I'm in Scotland.)

So you get the general idea - they're both as awful as the other.

There's nothing worse, especially when you're ill never mind any other time than having to do your school exams. Unfortunately, I had to do this and have my G-CSF injections at the same time. My thoughtful, lovely teachers would send work home for me, through my friends or at the times when they would phone the house to find out how I was doing, only to find out that I was bored out of my skull. And really, what other way should I have felt when I had nothing but four walls and a bunch of nurses and my family around me?

There was nothing to do, because when I had the energy I'd do much more interesting things than homework - duh. And when I didn't have the energy, I couldn't do all those things I wanted to do. Sometimes I wish I'd written all this at the time, but then I suppose it would all be rather uncertain. I wouldn't have known the outcome and I'd be writing this with possibilities and suppositions, whereas now, I know what I went through. I know how it felt and what I had to go through and I've made it. So I guess, it's best that I didn't bother. How else would I be able to tell you all the juicy details and laugh instead of cry, while I'm writing it?

I suppose the worst thing was the concentration. It was just so damned difficult to focus on my school work and get pricked by needles all the time, wondering when it was all going to end, and even wondering if any of the work I was doing would be worthwhile. My liaison nurse was very good with that. She managed to get me a tutor for my Italian class, but what none of us realised was that, although the woman's husband was the headmaster of a high school, she herself was only a primary teacher. She had no idea the kind of work I needed to do for my higher Italian class.

It didn't help that, because I had been left undiagnosed for so long I had no confidence in my brain function anymore. I had sat my exams while I was sick and although they were decent enough, I didn't feel that they really represented what I could do and what I had been doing with my course work up until then. What we didn't know was that if we had been given a doctor's note to say I was unable to sit my exams due to a diagnosed medical condition, I wouldn't have had to sit them at all. I could have submitted my class work instead, which the invigilators would grade as though it were my exam paper and that would save me having to go through the stress and panic I had gone through. But by the time we knew, it was too late. I'd done them, failed a few of them and it had been months before I was diagnosed. They weren't going to backtrack it all just on my word.

I hadn't really had much choice. I thought that I had to sit them no matter what, because otherwise I wouldn't even be able to re-sit them at a later date, when I was feeling well. I would just automatically fail anyway, so I figured putting the effort to go there and fight the urge to pass out was the better option.

Nevertheless, I have to say that overall the G-CSF were much worse to cope with. I'm still suffering the effects now. I can't remember if it was completely because of the injections, or just a combination of everything I had but I now have early onset arthritis and at twenty-seven and a bit, that's not such a great thing. But I'm getting used to it. It's only really present when it's cold; my fingers seize up and I get finger, leg and foot spasms, just the normal stuff really. At least, normal for me. And if you've read all this so far, then you'd pretty much know that normal is a word that doesn't exist in my life. Nothing I do happens to be the norm, not for me. I guess I'm just a freak of nature. But I like it that way. I just bought a coaster for my room and I think it basically sums everything up perfectly: I like life…it's something to do.