“One, two, three, four..” \u00a0“Make sure you have 18 altogether Nani”, my mother interrupts my thoughts as I exasperatedly drop my pills into my medicine holder. \u00a0“It’s important that you take these meds Nan. \u00a0You don’t want to end up needing a kidney transplant like Kereece.” \u00a0Kereece is some really angry adult in my church–who I think probably, hates anyone who’s happy–who has a kidney problem just like me.\u00a0 She kind of reminds me of the crazy scientist villain from The Incredibles<\/i>. She\u2019s the woman you wouldn\u2019t allow even your worst enemy to have the \u201cpleasure\u201d of meeting.\u00a0 I shun the thought of needing a transplant–and the blunt affirmation of how sick I can become–and decide to lie down. \u00a0Maybe it will help with this arbitrary dizziness I’m feeling…<\/p>\n
When I wake up I\u2019m told I had a stroke.\u00a0 Huh?\u00a0 I mean last time I checked I was barely eleven.\u00a0 I think back to the salty Ramen I remember eating the night before.\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 Thanks Ramen noodle I nearly died.\u00a0 I try to speak but they\u2019re tubes everywhere: an oral,\u00a0a naso-gastric, a urine catheter and a ventilator.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking places I didn\u2019t even know tubes could go in. \u00a0I\u2019m told that I had been in a coma for almost two days.\u00a0 Jesus Christ, I think in my head, Ramen can do this to people?\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until 10 days later was I discharged from the hospital.<\/p>\n
Ok so maybe the Ramen was an exaggeration.\u00a0 A turn out Ramen makes killer salty noodles, but they are free of charge when it comes to what sent me to the hospital\u2026<\/p>\n
In July 2004, the start of my middle school year, I was diagnosed with a disease called Membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis (MPGN).\u00a0 Yea I know right.what?? The fuck is that?\u00a0 Believe you me, to this day, I still can\u2019t pronounce it let alone explain it\u2019s horrendous role in my body.\u00a0 From my doctors (and a little WebMD) I\u2019ve conjured up the most watered down version of my crappy disease.\u00a0 I have a kidney disorder where the cells in the kidney become inflamed and allow blood and protein molecules to pass through into the urine instead of being retained in the body for use.\u00a0 I was put on medication after medication, which challenged me physically, emotionally, academically, and most important religiously.<\/p>\n
At the onset, I was taking 18 tablets per day.\u00a0 The medicines made me listless and the steroids in particular caused me to gain weight.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking swelling of my limbs, tightness of my skin and a weight gain of 15 pounds kind of weight.\u00a0 Emotionally, it wreaked havoc on my self-esteem. \u00a0For months I only wore loose fitting clothes to hide the giant I was slowly becoming because of the steroids. \u00a0The disease impacted my education because monthly (or anytime I felt dizzy), I had to miss classes for doctor\u2019s appointments or even hospitalization.<\/p>\n
I guess I can say High school proved productive and rewarding.\u00a0 I joined the cross-country and track teams that helped me to shed the excess pounds and to gain control over my weight.\u00a0 To this day I cherish running any chance I get, just to ensure I don\u2019t slip into the blimp figure I once was.<\/p>\n
I could say that my life is normal and that MPGN is no longer a factor.\u00a0 I could say life is great and enjoyable but it would be untrue.\u00a0 I am reminded of it by the now, nine pills that I take every day.\u00a0 If I bend or stand too quickly, I feel light-headed and must take a few minutes to recover.\u00a0 \u00a0Oh and the worst, you know those salt and vinegar chips?\u00a0 Yes I know you know, the UTZ flavored bags of joy?\u00a0 Yea I can\u2019t eat those.\u00a0 So much for those killer Ramen huh?\u00a0 Actually, I can\u2019t eat staple kid\u2019s foods like chips, French fries, cold cuts or anything with high sodium.\u00a0 The salt will cause me to retain water and to increase my blood pressure, which is already elevated due to that long M-word disease.<\/p>\n
Now I could babble and ramble on how screwed up I am and how much I wish I could start over, a new slate, new body, new life, the works.\u00a0 But it wouldn\u2019t change a thing.\u00a0 You know what they say, if \u201cwishes were horses, beggars would surely ride\u2026\u201d What has really been on my mind is the role religion has played in my life after I found out about my disease.<\/p>\n
See I grew up in Church.\u00a0 I mean eat, spit, write and read kind of Church.\u00a0 My dad\u2014oh you\u2019ll love this\u2014is a pastor.\u00a0 Yea so parties, those cute sweet sixteens in High School, boyfriends, a life?\u00a0 Um, yea no.\u00a0 Completely non-existent in my house until your at least of age.\u00a0 Yet no matter how many times I\u2019ve gone over the answer in my head, I\u2019m still dissatisfied.\u00a0 When I was in the hospital, with a tube escaping every opening\u2026I asked him, \u201cDaddy, why does God want me to die?\u00a0 Can\u2019t he just tell me why he hates me so much?\u201d\u00a0 His answer was a typical Tyler Perry clich\u00e9, \u201cGod is not trying to kill you.\u00a0 And remember, he would never put you through anything you can\u2019t handle\u201d.<\/p>\n
But see this is my problem.\u00a0 Because guess what\u2026 this, this I can\u2019t handle.\u00a0 I could handle the accident you put my mom and I in, 2003, I could handle breaking my arm, I even handled my grandmother\u2019s death\u2014quite well if I can add–.\u00a0 But this, is too hard. \u00a0Every morning when I shove four pills in my mouth (for blood pressure, protein calcium and who knows what else) I talk to him.<\/p>\n
Now I\u2019m not going to deny the presence of a higher being.\u00a0 I surely believe in God.\u00a0 I\u2019m just so lost on his reasons for picking me.\u00a0 The Christian God is said to be \u201comnipotent, omniscient and wholly good\u201d.\u00a0 But from the day we learn to read and write, we are able to distinguish good from evil.\u00a0 More importantly, we are able to realize that the amounts of evil in the world hold a stronger presence than the amounts of good.\u00a0 Things like Haiti\u2019s earthquake in 2010 or even New Orleans\u2019 disastrous hurricane in 2005 cause me to question my own faith.\u00a0 MPGN is a chronic disease with no known cure.\u00a0 It is not hereditary or caused by anything specific.\u00a0 It just appeared, out of nowhere, that summer before I started middle school.\u00a0 I can either outgrow it, or in its degenerative state, I will need kidney dialysis or a kidney transplant.\u00a0 This means I have no timeline of what my life will entail.\u00a0 I just long for a little more information.\u00a0 I am well aware of the delicacy of life but many times I simply wonder if God is on vacation in the Caymans somewhere when certain events occur.\u00a0 People like my dad would like to clench on the Soul-making defense that God has good rewards for us in a distinctive afterlife.\u00a0 Now if this is true, why torture us so much on Earth?\u00a0 To the starvation in third-world countries to the newborn baby born into the world with Down syndrome to even murders that happen everyday.\u00a0 If this is what I have to experience on Earth, then quite frankly, I\u2019m not too sure I want to go to Heaven.\u00a0 I know any individual can easily identify a time period in their life where they lost hope, confidence and faith in what people call God.\u00a0 If God were truly trying to show his creation that they are enduring pain to experience joy in the afterlife, there is no reason for the pain to be so vast.<\/p>\n
MPGN has ignited my rising doubts in my religion.\u00a0 It\u2019s made me asked many \u201cwhy\u201d questions now that I\u2019ve grown older.\u00a0 Church and religion were things that I accepted to past time on Sundays.\u00a0 But now, that I\u2019m older, and an evil has hit me personally, my faith, sad to say, slowly dwindles.\u00a0 When I greet Kereece with a crooked smile every Sunday, I can finally understand her anger.\u00a0 She\u2019s already had her kidney transplant but her daily life is almost worst than when she had her own kidney.\u00a0 Her questions in Church, to my father spark questions in my own mind.\u00a0 If God is such a good God, there is quite a lot of fixing that need to be done in his world.<\/p>\n
I am ever mindful that life is subject to change without notice so every day is precious to me.\u00a0 I live my life to the fullest by participating in as many activities as I can and generating smiles anywhere I go.\u00a0 I surely don\u2019t want to become a spit-image clone of Kereece in the latter years of my life.\u00a0 But forthrightly, I can now understand her.\u00a0 Through this condition, I have become even more positive and determined.\u00a0 But when it comes to religion and God\u2019s hand on my life\u2026boy do I have a few questions.\u00a0 Matter fact I\u2019m sure, me Kereece and the rest of the world have a few questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“One, two, three, four..” \u00a0“Make sure you have 18 altogether Nani”, my mother interrupts my thoughts as I exasperatedly drop my pills into my medicine holder. \u00a0“It’s important that you take these meds Nan. \u00a0You don’t want to end up needing a kidney transplant like Kereece.” \u00a0Kereece is some really angry adult in my church–who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":673,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions\/673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meadmedia.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}