CLINIC 6

Clinic was the first time I met my team. Dr Rob and Nurse Mary. The two people who I had to give my life to. My clinical nurse and my consultant. Two complete strangers that have my health resting on their shoulders. To say I was terrified is an understatement.

I know I shouldn't have been but I was only 15 and had to spill my heart out to these two doctors who I didn't know from Adam. We sat and spoke about all of my symptoms, how I was feeling myself and then we started to talk about the medication that is available for me to take to calm my situation down. The list of possible drugs is endless but due to me having Polycystic Kidney Disease, that list decreased rapidly. Turns out, there's only about six that I can take. So, that made me feel better- NOT.

To start off with, they put me on a nine week course of steroids starting at eight tablets a day for two weeks, then seven a day for the next week, weening me off them slowly. This made me gain so much weight, going from a size 10 in jeans to a 14. This lowered my self esteem by a lot. All of my friends are size 6 so me having to go up in sizes made me feel really upset and 'alone from the group' in a way. That sounds really stupid but I felt like I missed out because they would all go shopping together and talk about clothes all of the time but I would try and avoid the subject because I was just too embarrassed.

I got to the fourth week of steroids feeling a lot better and really excited that they had worked but the week after, I got really ill. I started to have stomach cramps that made me roll in to a ball and I physically couldn't straighten myself out again. It hurt so much. There are no amount of words to describe the pain.

After I finished that course of steroids the inflammation markers in my blood had gone down slightly but were still too high not to notice. Your inflammation markers are meant to be around 10-12, mine were off the carts at a major 110. Yeah, so that wasn't the best thing that's ever happened. No wonder the camera couldn't make it's way through my digestive system! However, two weeks of not eing n any medication, the clinic still weren't happy with where I was and how little progress I was making so they put me on another course of steroids just like the last set and while doing that, they started me on a drug called Azathioprine which I will have to take until they decide to drop me off of them. The Azathioprine is currently my life long remedy to not feeling as dreadful as I was back in the months of August-December 2014.