Staring into the bowl

That's what I did with food for the next um, six months or so. There wasn't a whole lot of eating. I would cry over a bowl of ice cream because I literally could not imagine eating it. And this wasn't a good thing. I only weighed about 100 pounds (give or take 3) and during the time it took me to adjust to the 3 drug cocktail I was on for the Mac, I went down to about 86 pounds. I couldn't stay awake in class--it is a miracle that I passed anything that six weeks, or even the rest of the year. One day I got up to my alarm and promptly began sobbing because I could ismply not imagine putting one foot in front of the other and getting ready for school. Mom came in and told me that I wasn't going. I was really, really happy to go back to sleep that day.

To give you some insight as to what it felt like...it's called "consumption" for a reason. You are literally consumed. First your weight goes to hell. Then you just have no energy to do anything other than sleep, which you can do in abundance. Eating is just beyond you. The idea of food, any food, is horrible. You can't concentrate on anything because that requires too much effort. Walking through PHS, with my huge backpack, was amazingly difficult. Yet I only missed 4 days of school that year and managed to maintain a decent GPA. I even kept singing in the Sophomore Girls' Choir--that was the year we got a Superior Rating at the state Choir Competition.

The three drugs I was on, morning and night, would continue for about two years...one year after a bronch came back negative for MAC. You really had to be sure you knocked this thing out. Of course, it would come back....my junior year of college, but we were always on the lookout for it after this event. But by then we had other issues, but more on them later.

that summer I used mostly for recuperation. I slept a lot and gradually began to eat again. I gained back the weight, sloooowlly. I've always been a slow weight gainer. But that was tough. And there was damage that I never quite got back. I had had 80% PFTs my freshman year of high school...those numbers were now not gonna happen. But I could return to my normal routine and keep on keepin' on.

And so it went, for the rest of high school. I didn't get any bad infections again, and with the exception of a home IV course (or maybe two), life was uneventful. I chose Capital University for college, intending to be an Education major. Branden, one of my h.s. buddies, was going to Capital, too. So that made it more fun.

And there was a lot of fun...and changes...to be had...