~Where it all Began~

First I want to make it clear that I know what is happening in my life is directly from the Lord. Back in January, a week before my affliction, Ron Merrel challenged the college group to pray for a year of trials in order to grow closer to the Lord. That is what I have done, and that is exactly what is happening with each day. I am seeing how the Lord is working in my life. He is showing me what it means to have true faith and to not become angry. He is humbling me by showing me my own mortality. He is allowing me to minister to unsaved members of my family, lest I believe he is. Only God knows! But that's okay. I don't need to know. So here is my story with a little more detail.
Back in January of 2009 the first Sunday in College group we received a challenge from our guest pastor to pray for a 'bad year' if it would allow us to grow in ways that wouldn't occur during a 'good year'. I woke up a week later with a pain that was so strong it sent my body into shock. Here is all I can remember:

I was lying in the bathroom crying thinking I was going to vomit from the pain. My mother heard me tried to comfort me while she remained calm and tried to decide what to do. Everything else disappears and I've been told that while lying on the cold floor, I was screaming at the top of my lungs and holding my stomach. I wasn't responding to anyone, just crying in pain.
The next thing I can remember is four firement carrying me out to my couch and then onto a gurney to put me in the ambulance. My dad road in the ambulance with me. The smell of an oxygen mask is perhaps the most frightening smell you will ever experience. It's invasive, cold, and sterile when it is pulled through your nostrils. Lots of questions were asked, but I was staring out the back window at the tree tops I could see going by as if they were moving backwards. Shock.
At the hospital, I received and IV and immediate pain reliver of some kind. It was here that all the tests began. Xrays, blood, urine, poking, pushing, looking and finding a possible explanation that brough my world spinning out of control for having to face memories I had forgotten for the last four years of my joyous life.
As it turns out, the diagnoses was the wrong one. With the initial diagnosis completely solved, my pain remained and it continued to grow worse as the months progressed.
Only recently have I started taking pain medication because it seemed as though each week that I tried acting like a normal person without something to ease the pain, I ended up in either the urgent care or ER. At 21, I know which veins are the best for an IV and that my veins are so small that they can't push more than 2 psi at a time or it will burst my vessels. I know that demeral makes me itch and I know that it takes four hospital blankets to stay warm. I know not to wear long sleeves because it makes your blood pressure readings wrong and bring slippers because the doctors will get you out of bed and put you back multiple times. And every time they put that needle in my arm I want to cry.
Writing this is extremely hard for me. I am sure that reading it is difficult as well. But for the first time in this whole experience, I feel like I am being honest with you. I smile a lot because I don't want to tell the people I love that I feel like death walking. A huge portion of that is the Lord blessing me with an inate joy that never really goes away. But there are plenty of times when the sorrow is suffocating. That is because each day there is one of two possibilities in the medical world. A.) we try testing for something else B.) the new specialist has no idea what to do with me and begins sending me back to people who can't help me.
It is definitely a game of endurance. Currently, I am just tired and trying to stay ontop of maintaining a seminormal life. I'm a senior desperately trying to graduate with my class. I am a child desperately trying not to make her parents suffer with a sick child. I am a sister trying to be strong for my siblings. I am a girlfriend trying to be fun with my friends. I am a best friend trying to help plan a wedding. I am a child of God seeking to bring him glory in all that I do.