Walking Miracle Part I

"You learn to appreciate life more 

when you have faced death so many times!

Erica Mateus

I am a very private person, and I struggle to share my story and pain with people. There are just certain parts of me that I can't share with others. Whether that is a good thing of a bad thing, I don't know. Some time ago, I was having a conversation with my roommate. She was telling me she wanted to end her two-week relationship because she felt her boyfriend was hiding things from her. So I said to her, "We all have something to hide." I have so much that I hide. Anyways I am already sidetracking. As I turn a quarter of a century, I decided to share a little bit about myself. This is a personal blog, and what is a personal blog without the story of the author.

So I don't really know my full story, especially the parts before my brain could fully form memories. I will tell you the stories I have heard. So my story, like all others, began with a man and a woman having a child. Both my parents died when I was an infant, barely a year old. I don't know what the cause of their death was, I have never been told, and I have never asked. Anyways, after my parents died, my grandparents from my mother's side took the responsibility of taking care of me.

I was a sickly child, and my grandparents did not have the means to continually take me to the doctor. So whenever I got ill, they would call my aunt (whom I call my mother now) to take me to the doctor. Every time I was taken to the doctor, they would say the same thing "This child will not make it." or "She won't have a very long life." No doctor ever believed that I would make it because I was in and out of hospitals. With all the care I made it till today, but this is not the end of the story.

When I started school, I would spend my weeks at my big brother's house so I could go to school and the weekends at my aunt's house. You already know from the blog "Family vs. Relatives" that I did not like spending my weekends there. I felt very lonely and out of place. I still remember that at the age of six, hospitals were my second home. I remember one Saturday in Angola. Like every Saturday, we woke up, got ready for church, had breakfast, and headed to church. We had gotten into the habit of having lunch at church with other families. This particular Saturday after lunch, we (the children) were all playing, running up and down the church. Suddenly I began to feel sick and just laid on the floor, the other kids ran to the parents and told them that I wasn't feeling so well. I had never seen people pack up as quickly as everybody did that day. I was rushed to the hospital. To be honest, I can't remember what happened after I was rushed to the hospital. That day my mom heard the same words as she told me, "Her fever is too high, we don't think she will make it through the night."

I am literally keeping back tears as I write this because I realize that God has really kept me through. There were several other incidents where we had to rush out of church or out of the house in the middle of the night because I was sick. Let's fast forward to the fresher memories. In 2002 we moved to South Africa, which improved my health a bit because the medical facilities and living conditions were so much better. But still, We were in and out of hospitals. 

In 2002, we had a school outing. We went to a swimming pool, and at that age, I did not know how to swim, but I was super excited to get into the water. The teacher who was supervising us said, "Those who can swim do so freely. Those who can't please stay by the shallow side and keep your hands on the sides of the pool." I followed the instruction, but even so, I found myself under the water being dragged to the deeper end. I couldn't help myself up to catch a breath. All I know is that when I opened my eyes, I saw my teacher fully clothed (shoes included), all soaked and trying to take out all the water I had swallowed.

In 2003 I spent more time at doctor's appointments than at school, which contributed to my failing that academic year. I always had a health issue, if it wasn't my eyes, it was high fevers, allergies, my ears, or something else. I was just never strong enough to stay out of the hospital. This was the year I got my first pair of glasses because when I was at school, I struggled to see the board.

In 2005 I almost died! It was a regular school day like every other. I got up, got dressed, and went to school. During the school break, I started feeling sharp pains in my abdomen, I couldn't stand, couldn't eat, and felt like there was a war happening inside me. After the break, I had mathematics, and while I was in the class, I felt nauseous and ended up throwing up at the door while I was on my way to the toilet. My then best friend took me to the sick room, where I was given some pain medication and told to sleep. When I got home, I went straight to bed, my mom tried to get me to eat something, but I was not even a little hungry. I forced myself to eat though. I spent the rest of that night throwing up. At 04:00, my mom took me to the hospital, at first, they could not figure out what was wrong with me. Only two days after did they figure out that I had appendicitis and that I needed emergency surgery. Unfortunately, their pediatric surgeon was working in another hospital that day, so I had to be transferred. When we got to the hospital, they had to run new blood tests to confirm the diagnosis.

By the time the results came back, my appendix had ruptured, and the pus was fast-spreading inside me. I needed emergency surgery, or I would die. I went into a seven-hour operation that left me scarred for life. After the operation, they had to force me to wake up because I did not wake from the anesthesia on my own. I was in so much pain when I woke up that I quickly went back to sleep. After that, it was months of recovery. I was not allowed to carry any heavy thing, and I had to relearn to walk up straight. For more info on appendicitis follow the link:

 https://www.everydayhealth.com/appendicitis/guide/appendix/ruptured/

Stay tuned for the rest of my story... Walking Miracle II will give you a little more of my health journey and what we can take away from all this. For now, thanks for reading and for your continuous support!