my name is amber.
i'm 25, unemployed, single, and sick as fuck.
i never thought much about my future when i was young. 25 seemed so far away at the time and i didn't know what i wanted for dinner, let alone, where i'd be a decade or two from then.
you can tell me i'm going through a rough patch all you want. that i grew up and graduated from school at the wrong time. that the economy blows. that i'm not putting myself out there as much as i should be. that i should go back to school. that i should interview better. that i shouldn't have spent so long in school. that i should've started working sooner. that it's my own fault for losing my job. that it's my own fault for getting plagued with an illness that makes me watch my body deteriorate at an alarming rate.
but there isn't much i can do, outside of what i'm already doing. how long do these rough patches last? or maybe this is my body saying that i need to become a professional student, since the moment i stopped going to school, i became ill for no reason.
when the results of the test i took on sunday came back and were positive for c diff, it was the first time in over a decade where i was more concerned with my mental health than my physical well-being.
plagued with this ongoing illness for over 3 months (with mild symptoms beginning as early as may and severe symptoms starting in september), my body has been in a complete revolt. the prolonged use of antibiotics gave me another infection on top of what i was already fighting, and now i feel as though i'm losing both battles simultaneously. my symptoms, severity, duration - none of them point to one underlying illness. instead, i've been thrown on 4 different antibiotics and attempted a wait-and-see appraoch, which did nothing and required me to go onto the fourth antibiotic.
i'm doing my best to be strong through all of this. i'm tough. i'm an optimist. this is what i do. but waking up and experiencing new side effects daily is making me lose hope in my optimism. the constant support of family and friends is no match when it's getting more and more difficult to recognize yourself, both physically and emotionally.
but i'll get through this because i always do. my optimism still stands, it's just a little less than what it was before.
