Episode 3: Her world was changing

The young girl's average day was now flipped around, twisted, rearranged. Her life went from going to school, cheer-leading practice and hanging out with friends to medical appointments and random visits to places in the medical field. This changed everything because she found that sometimes she had to accept the worst or expect that it would just appear when she least wanted it to.

Trying to leave the house with some friends used to be a fun event. Previously, she didn't have to think out every detail. Now, she had to make sure every pill that she could possibly need - from food irritation to just random outbursts of pain - were in her purse and ready to go down her throat. Some of the pills were fairly large and hurt to swallow so she also had to make sure she had a bottle of water with her.

The embarrassment she felt was barely contained while just hanging out. Meanwhile, her anxiety level was well over its normal limit. Sometimes, she had to get up in the middle of a movie and leave her friends because she couldn't handle the sharp abdominal pains. All she wanted and needed at that time was to curl up in bed.

That is not an average teen's idea of fun or normal living.

Being the thick-headed person she is, she would try to fight through everything she felt inside and explain that she was alright even though she always knew she wasn't.

Sports left her life before anything else had the chance to because her grades couldn't remain at the level required for participation. She was too sick more than half of the time to even make it to class for an important test. It was devastating to her that she could no longer feel that passionate drive she usually got while on the sidelines of a football field. She loved everything about cheer-leading and knew everyone around her. It was extremely upsetting to her to lose a passion for something that she knew she would never have the potential or time to do again.

Next, she lost school. High school just slipped right through her fingertips. You don't want to go until you know you can't. She soon realized that home school would be better for her grades, so she faced reality and just left her friends and past life behind because she had to.

Everything had its own way of changing in her life. The hurt and devastation she felt never seems to leave. She misses out on a lot of very important things that occur at this stage of teenage life. Being left behind in the crowd is never where she thought she'd be standing. But there she was in the midst of nothing at all. How was she supposed to turn back when she knew that it was already too late?