Kirsten Wethern Ms. Lehmann English 1-1A 27 February 2020 Stronger My nerves got worse and worse as I sat in the rheumatologist's doctor office waiting for the results to see what was wrong with me. I could feel the coldness on my legs from the leather bed that I was sitting on. With every little movement I made, the paper that was protecting the bed crinkled. I woke up on a warm spring day in March. Everything seemed normal at first except for the fact that I had some stomach pain. But everybody gets stomach pain sometimes so I didn’t think anything of it. The next day I woke up and the stomach pain was still there. Over the next week my stomach pain didn’t go away and I started to develop joint pain. I tried many different medications such as ibuprofen, Tylenol, tums, etc. And nothing was helping the stomach pain or the back and joint pain. My mom and my dad started to get concerned so they scheduled a doctor's appointment. At first the doctor didn’t know what was going on so they told me to go to the gastro intologistand I had to take a lot of tests. At the doctor’s office that day I had a lot of blood work done to see if I had any type of arthritis. Then they sent me back home and told my mom and I that the results would be back in a week or so. Eventually the results came back and there was a possibility that I could have arthritis and I need to go to the rheumatologist. They were booked and the soonest appointment was three months out. So, the wait began. Over this wait I went to the gastro intologist and the doctor diagnosed me with post viral IBS. I got treated for that and the stomach pain went away for a little while, but it did come back and they doctors didn’t know what was wrong and I also began to have a lot of chest pain. So, more tests. EKG’s, more blood work, breathing tests, and more. During the wait to see the GI I started to have a lot of back. I went to the hospital and got some x-rays done. Turns out I had scoliosis. So much more happened during this wait. I had so many ER visits for stomach pain and other issues that I got treated for. Finally, it was time to drive up to Boise and see the rheumatologist. I sat on the bed waiting for him to come in with the results. I was nervous, but I didn’t show it because I didn’t want to stress my mom out. “Hello,” the rheumatologist said as he walked into the room and introduced himself. He and my mom started to talk about what had been happening to me for the past three to four months. The went over the blood work results from my normal doctor office. He did a couple test on me while I was there. He checked to see how flexible I was and he did a little more bloodwork. “I do not think you have arthritis,” hesaidinaseriousvoice.Aslightlyconfusedlookformedonmymom'sface. “If you had arthritis your blood test markers would be a little bit higher than they are. I think that you have fibromyalgia. You also have hyper mobility which could also be causing you some pain,” he said in a serious voice as he kept switching eye contact between me and my mom. He and my mom began to talk about how to deal with the pain and what fibromyalgia actually is. Once I got back home there were more doctor visits. Dr. Bostrum put me on a whole bunch of medications to help with the pain and I had to start physical therapy. I did physical therapy for two months-ish. I also had to go to therapy so that I could learn how to deal with the pain. Everything began to get better, besides the stomach pain. I eventually got to stop going to physical therapy. I still have to go to my other therapist but only once a month now. Over the eleven-month period I had been through so much, but it made me a stronger person. All though this experience sucked and I wish I didn’t have to go through it, I'm glad that it was me and not someone else. I don’t want anyone to go through what I had to. Through this whole process, I have learned that I am stronger than I thought I was and I can handle more pain than I thought I could. Personal Narrative Reflection
Please answer all questions in complete, grammatically correct sentences.
1. Explain the process you went through to write this paper. Please be specific. The first thing I did was decide what event in my life I wanted to write about. Once I decided what to write about I made and outline. Once I was finished with that I typed the rough draft of my personal narrative. Next I revised it and then I was done. 2. What qualifies this paper as a narrative? What are the requirements for this genre and how did you meet them? A narrative tells about something that happened or someones life. This meets the requirements because I told about something that happened to me in my lifetime. 3. What is one part of your story that you think turned out really well? What do you like about that part? I like the beginning of my story because I think that it uses good show don't tell.