Motivation

I have had my down points, and sometimes when I PMS so bad I literally sit in my room floor after class, feeling so down, contemplating what is the meaning of life.

But I don't want to write this post about how miserable I felt back then, I still do feel down at times but I guess that's normal. Mom used to tell me it's cyclical. Being human, you feel happy, sad, angry, and a long list of other emotions but I guess you don't have to dwell on it or punch yourself to make yourself feel guilty just because you think you shouldn't be feeling negative emotions. If you think about it, it's negativity on negativity and this does not work like maths. It's like adding oil onto the burning fire.

So finally today, I guess my hormones are well regulated enough to make me feel like I'm able to write this post and rant about motivations to continue on.

I received an Fb message from a college friend (who was diagnosed with SLE years before me, God knows what she's been through) which said "I am proud of you as you can handle MBBS course". That really meant a lot to me. The conversation actually started with her asking about my health, and I told her I feel short of breath occasionally. I still can't find the reason of why I feel that way and I secretly dread going to the doctor's because of this because I'm terrified that she will find something wrong with me and that she might increase my dosage for Prednisolone. I'm still able to cope with it despite a tiny bit of exercise intolerance?

Though sometimes I look around my peers and feel so intimidated that they are able to run 30 minutes straight on the treadmill. Hehe.

Ugh I'm off topic.

I'm not going to sound cliche but the diagnosis really changed my life. It lead me to a new direction. I never dreamt to be a doctor before I was 17. I never did. In fact if you asked me what I wanted to be when I was young:

At 6: An artist. I loved art and I still do. :)
At 9: Pianist? But I slowly hated piano because I wasn't in a good environment to stimulate my learning.
At 13: A zoologist? I admireeee people who are on this field hehe. I have a cousin who did environmental science and I wanted to be just like him! I lovedddd Steve Irwin! But I just didn't want to work in a zoo piling up elephant dung for the rest of my life.
At 15: A psychologist? I'll go crazy listening to other people's problems all day long I think I'll get depressed myself too.
At 17: A vet? Cannot la. I cannot stay in a house where dogs bark and whine all night long. I'm a light sleeper, you know.
At 18: Biomedical scientist to invent a cure for lupus. Haha. But I didn't fancy the idea of spending my whole life in the lab, I want the human touch too, you know.

I was diagnosed at 17 in the month of August. The process was actually relatively short. Anemia when I was 15, nearly fainted during karate sessions; alopecia areata when I was 16, thankfully it healed completely; experienced tingling in my fingers during June when I was 17, slowly progressed to joint pains, went to see a doctor, told me not to worry and gave me paracetemol, asked me to wait for it to go away, got progressively worse, had fever that wouldn't subside, got hospitalised, had been on Plaquenil and Prednisolone ever since.

After diagnosis, I wanted to take things slow. I wanted to stay home with my family. I had to let go of the dream of being a foreign exchange student and going overseas for tertiary education. Instead, I don't know why, God's will I guess, I chose SAM in Disted and it paved a road for me into Monash Malaysia for MBBS.

At times when I am down, I still wonder what is my purpose here. I'm certainly not a perfect student. I cannot be compared to my diligent coursemates. I guess when you start to psycho yourself that something can be done, you start believing in it. Never in my life have I imagined myself to end up here. And I did. Isn't that a miracle itself? To be able to be healthy enough to proceed into the fourth semester, I guess it is all that I can ask for.

xoxo

A new begining

Hello!

Haha. Yes I'm back again! So what's it about this time?

I figured I wanted to write a post about SLE. Maybe few other subsequent posts about my experiences. If it bores you, #ohwellwhattodo I'm very boring wan actually. Hehe. Ok la don't want to pour cold water on myself here. (Which I already did just now for ALS)

I scrolled back to see what the previous posts were about. It has been so long that I don't even remember what I blogged about. I know I have been venting anger onto some (if not all) of the past posts, maybe one day I will come to a point to let go of all those things I have said. But for now, it will still remain.

So what about SLE? I guess I'm slowly coming to terms with it. Even though sometimes I still feel that I'm hanging by a thin line, one move and it will snap, falling a few floors down again, leaving me hopeless as a struggle to pick myself up. But anyway... Where was I? Oh yes, I shall now admit that I skip lectures. When I find it depressingly difficult to sleep at night (as in lying on my bed for three hours WITHOUT my hp and I still can't fall asleep) or when I get too tired and my concentration tank is close to empty or when I get lectures about AUTOIMMUNITY.

That word freaks me out.

I am very sampat one ok, if I see lectures titled like that I'll be surprisingly diligent and scroll through Australian slides first to see if there's anything about the three-letter acronym that should not be mentioned unless I feel comfortable talking about it. And I do not feel comfortable sitting through lectures about SLE and sometimes RA too. I don't mind educating people and talking to people about it, but sometimes, I don't know how I want others to react and I don't know how I should put it and I certainly don't like people giving their opinions about things I don't like to hear.

I know I sound very controlling here but that is how I feel. I remember going through a lecture when I was in first year, one of the lecturers conveniently added "Oh I once had a friend who had SLE, and he died of this debilitating disease" and that was it. Since then, I cannot sit through another lecture to learn about my own disease. Two days ago, I had another lecture about autoimmunity. This time, when I was running out of the lecture hall I heard her say "it can involve other organs, it can also involve the brain". I had no regrets skipping it.

I don't blame them actually. What are the odds of people being in that lecture theater who has that disease? And they were just doing their job. The problem lies in ME.

I mentioned that I was slowly coming to terms with it. Meaning, I'm not afraid to tell people what I have. I don't care if people know if I have it. What I care about is people viewing me differently from before. I'm not strong, I never have been. If you scroll down to read further but I don't suggest you do. But I want to be able to stand out one day, to give inspiration to other people suffering similar problems and when they read this they'll think "Hey, this girl did it, why can't I?".

Till then, tata! xoxo