At the beginning of this year I went to my primary care physician after having had some difficulty breathing and was diagnosed with bronchitis.  3 days later I ended up in the ER with, what they believed at the time to be, pneumonia.  After about 36 hours in the hospital I began to panic, become even shorter of breath (it felt like I was being strangled from the inside), and my blood-oxygen level was down to around 86 and falling.   The oxygen had been turned up to 100 and still I was panting.  So I was rushed to the Medical ICU where the staff performed a number of tests on me.  A blood clot in the lungs was believed to be the culprit, then it was found that I had ARDS.  I lost consciousness before having ever learned what it was I was afflicted with.  I regained it 17 days later, just one day before my 22nd birthday.  My doctors felt it would be less painful for me if they induced coma while I was on a respirator.  About 2 or 3 days after an initial tube-mouth incubation they determined I was to be treated long-term, thus a tracheotomy was performed.

All I really remember was waking up.  My mom told me I had been in a coma and I didn't believe her, not until I looked down at my hands and saw how long my    finger nails were.  I was still on oxygen at that point, but was no long on the respirator.  I remember being hungry and feeling like I'd been hit by a semi.   I saw one of the ICU nurses first, then my mother, who, with my oldest sister, had been staying in the room just above mine, the entire time I was in ICU.   Then I saw my dad who had come to visit me everyday, and whose presence seemed to offer me the most comfort while I was sleeping, followed by my best friend Brandy, who had also come to see me everyday.  After one full week being prodded and pricked at in the hospital, I was over-joyed to go home.  I had worked extremely hard to regain my motor abilities,   eating (which came most easily) followed by walking and writing, as well as learning how to breathe again.  All I could do when I got home was lye in bed for nearly the first few days or so.  Eventually I became stronger and returned to school at the end of March, a lot wiser then I ever was before.  Besides knowing that my loved ones had to suffer without me being able to comfort them, during this illness,    the most painful and difficult experience of ARDS was that I lost my immortality.   No longer am I young and alive forever, now I am mortal, prone to the whims of all the forces of the universe, including ARDS, and death, an ideal I have worked extremely hard to accept.  Currently, I am taking summer classes at the University of Cincinnati, studying for the MCAT and volunteering at Deaconess Hospital.   The patients there seem to love to hear my story and know that  there is always hope, even though times may be tough and dark, the sun is always shining.   Ever since I was young, I wanted to be a doctor.  Now, having gone through ARDS I think more and more of becoming a pulmologist.  My mission is to take every thing that was horrible about the disease when I experienced it and make it better for someone else who experiences it, no matter how hard that may be.  Right now, it seems as though the scar on my neck is the most beautiful symbol in the world to those patients at Deaconess, who like to be reminded that there is hope out there, enough to go around for all of us.

Love,