I Still Dream Big: Stories of Teens Living with Chronic Illness

I Still Dream Big: Stories of Teens Living with Chronic Illness

Kelly was a seventeen-year-old star of her high school basketball team . . . Gevon was a twelve-year-old who played linebacker for his middle school football team . . . Crystle was a nineteen-year-old college student with big plans for the future . . . One day you're hanging out with friends at the mall, playing basketball at school, dreaming about your latest crush, and the next you're in the hospital hooked up to tubes and wondering whether or not you'll ever feel normal again. Getting sick was never part of the plan. Lupus. Diabetes. Rheumatoid Arthritis. Crohn's. Multiple Sclerosis. No matter what the diagnosis, teens with chronic illnesses share one thing in common: their lives have been changed forever by illness. Seventeen young adults share their personal stories in I Still Dream Big. Their tenacity and spirit are an inspiration to us all. The voices of the teens profiled in this book are filled with hope and optimism despite the very real challenges they face. While some of their goals may have changed, these kids still have high hopes and big dreams for the future. Above all, they refuse to be defined by illness. Seventeen-year-old history buff, Jamie, sums it up with these words, "You define yourself, not something written in a medical chart". When someone gets sick, family and friends are affected as well. The stories of these seventeen teens are important, not only for teens with chronic illness, but for the people who love them and want so much to understand the emotional and physical challenges their best friends and loved ones face. I Still Dream Big is a celebration of life and a reminder to all of us to hold onto our own dreams for the future-and to remember to DREAM BIG. I Still Dream Big Stories of Teens Living with Chronic Illness By Penny B. Wolf AuthorHouse Copyright © 2009 Penny B. Wolf All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4490-3096-4 Contents i. Introduction............................................xiiiii. Cast of Characters.....................................xviii. Chronic Illness.......................................xix1. Why Me?.................................................12. Being Different.........................................133. Needles and Pills and Pumps, Oh My!.....................234. Independence Delayed....................................335. BFFs....................................................436. What About Dating?......................................537. The Monster under the Bed...............................618. Talking to Your Doctor..................................699. Ways We Cope............................................7710. Talking to Schools and Employers.......................8711. Dreams Deferred and Silver Linings.....................9712. Words of Advice: Teen to Teen..........................110Appendix: Where to Turn for Help...........................119 Chapter One Why Me? Being Diagnosed I didn't cry or anything. I guess I was kind of in shock ... I was trying to figure out what I did to make this happen. -Crystle Why Me: Being Diagnosed Kelly was a seventeen-year-old star of her high school basketball team ... Gevon was a twelve-year-old who played linebacker for his middle-school football team ... Crystle was a nineteen-year-old college student with big plans for the future ... One day you're hanging out with friends at the mall, playing basketball at school, dreaming about your latest crush, and the next you're in the hospital hooked up to tubes and wondering whether or not you'll ever feel normal again. Getting sick is never part of the plan. I knew something was wrong ... GEVON Gevon was in football practice when he first realized he was sick. A twelve-year-old linebacker for his junior-high team, he was big and strong, but he knew something just wasn't right. "I felt very tired and my mouth was really dry," he remembers. "I just felt really sick." The school called his mother, who immediately took him to the doctor. After an initial misdiagnosis of a stomach virus, Gevon finally was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Stories of Teens Living with Chronic Illness "By the time I was diagnosed, I was DKA and barely conscious, and I was hospitalized for about a week," he recalls. DKA-the abbreviation for diabetic ketoacidosis, a life-threatening diabetes complication-tumbles off Gevon's tongue with a nonchalance that only others with a chronic illness can understand. You come to learn the lingo of your illness really fast. Gevon doesn't remember much of the first few days he was hospitalized, as he was in and out of consciousness. But he does remember when he was told he had diabetes. "Nobody believes that I didn't get really emotional, but I didn't. My mom has diabetes, and my grandmother had it. A lot of people in my family have diabetes, so I already knew a lot about it," he says. "They tell me most kids get depressed, but I never did. The hard thing for me was giving up the Cok