On July 2nd, my parents, paternal grandparents, maternal grandmother, cousins, and a few friends from my homeschooling groups, and college were all gathered to wish me a happy birthday and celebrate my high school graduation.
This was a day that back in the sixth and seventh grade no one was sure would ever happen. Yet here we were, with me already having completed a year of college, and maintaining a GPA of 4.0.
To your average Jane Doe, completing a year of college and turning nineteen might not seem that monumental (well I’ll toot my own horn, maintaining a 4.0 GPA is pretty impressive), but when you have a degenerative chronic illness nothing can be taken for granted. I was diagnosed with gastroparesis at the age of ten and my health has just steadily gone downhill from there to the point where more of my childhood was spent in the hospital than at home. At times I had gotten so sick I needed to be in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit on full life support and they hadn’t been sure if I was going to make it, so turning nineteen was an achievement for me.
I had learned that I had to make sure to do everything that made me happy and was important to me, right away, in the immediate moment. Nothing could be put off. The future was not guaranteed for me. Life is a series of choices. Being happy is a choice.
Every day I made a decision to be happy and make the most of whatever I had.
At my birthday party, everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to me first with the birthday cake, and then because my mom knew all the sugar in the birthday cake would trigger my stomach to go haywire and cause something called ‘dumping syndrome’ (major, non stop diarrhea, accompanied by nausea, vomiting, a racing heartbeat, hot flashes, dizziness, and bloating, that would start within minutes of eating or drinking something with sugar in it), everyone sang “Happy Birthday” again over my iced black tea from Starbucks with no ice, three equal, and three sweet n low.
My mom had even stuck a candle in the whole in the top of the cup where the straw was supposed to go in.
On that particular day, I was NJ tube-free so I could swallow my drink without feeling like I was gagging on something in the back of my throat every time I swallowed.
We had Scrabble, Boggle, Upwords, and Bananagrams out for people to play tournament style and I’m pretty sure I played each game at least once. I had a bit of a headache that day but was able to stay sitting up and busy the whole time to distract myself away from the consistent background throb as much as possible. The fatigue was there lingering in the background too, but I refused to let it drag me down. Instead, I focused on the fact that I had made it all the way to my nineteenth birthday, all the way through middle-school-hell that back in sixth and seventh grade felt like a trap I’d never escape from. I made a conscious choice to have a happy birthday.
Despite multiple visits to the pediatric intensive care unit and practically having a room reserved for me on the adolescent unit at Baystate Medical Center, I’d even made it through high school and a year of college simultaneously. None of what I’d been through had been easy, but that’s why I felt so much more proud of myself for accomplishing it.
After the party was over and my dad, mom, and I were cleaning up, my dad pulled me aside.
“I just want you to know how proud I am of you for graduating high school and finishing your first year of college, and how happy I am to call you my daughter. Even if you didn’t have a perfect GPA I’d be proud of you. I know you worked really hard to get where you are, and I just wanted to let you know that.”
My dad leaned forward and gathered me in a big hug.
I still fit in his arms like a little kid.
“Thank you Dad,” I told him in a voice that was happy but soaked with tears. “I love you.”
My dad patted me on the back gently before letting me go.
“I love you too Becca, more than you will ever know.”