When the Body Turns Against Itself (2017)

Chapter Four:

By 2017, my body was no longer whispering warnings.It was screaming.

Emergency rooms became a revolving door. My health spiraled faster than anyone could have imagined, and the decline was merciless. The weight dropped from my body until the scale revealed numbers that terrified even me. Ninety pounds. Then lower. My reflection became a stranger: hollow cheeks, fragile bones, skin stretched thin over what little was left of me.

By July2017, I was unstable, fainting, collapsing, unable to stand on my own. My independence dissolved. A wheelchair became my prison, and the simplest of movements turned into battles I could not win.

I remember being dragged on a blanket across the floor just to reach the restroom because my legs no longer carried me. My skin was a map of bruises, my muscles wasted away until even holding my head up felt impossible. I was alive, but barely.

Doctors began preparing my family for the worst.I could see it in their eyes, the way they lowered their voices, the way they avoided promising anything. Hope was slipping, and so was I.

Every medication I was offered carried a new risk. Binders, dyes, fillers, preservatives, all enemies to my fragile system. I couldn’t take them in their standard form. The only option was to compound them in their purest state: stripped of everything but the raw medicine itself, dissolved in sterile water. Only then could my body begin to tolerate what was meant to help it.

I earned a nickname among the medical staff: "the Bubblegirl." And it wasn’t far from the truth. My hospital room became a fortress. Two, sometimes three air purifiers roared constantly, filtering out threats that most people never think twice about. Doctors and nurses covered themselves head-to-toe before stepping inside. Many times, they didn’t dare enter at all, instead speaking to me through a crack in the door, or over the phone, just a few feet away.

Only a select few nurses were allowed near me, chosen carefully for their willingness to come fragrance-free, stripped of lotions, perfumes, detergents, or anything that might send me into another spiral.

And still, danger pressed close.

Eventually, my body reached a point where food itself was no longer safe. I reacted to nearly everything I tried to consume. Malnourished and frail, I was placed on an NJ feeding tube, a risk so great that some doubted I would survive the procedure at all.

But I did. Barely.

Even then, the tube itself triggered reactions, my body fighting against it as though it were poison. A Benadryl drip became my lifeline, a constant flow meant to calm my storming mast cells enough to accept nourishment.

Weeks passed in that fragile state. My survival hinged on a single condition: I had to tolerate at least three foods before I could be released from the hospital. The trials were grueling, but eventually, I managed a fragile list, blueberries, chicken, pears, yogurt, turkey lunch meat, and plain table salt. Six foods. Brand-specific. Nothing more.

It wasn’t much. But it was enough.

Against all odds, I began to fight my way back. Muscle slowly returned. The hollow shell in the mirror started to soften. I wasn’t healed, but I was no longer disappearing.

And yet, survival came at a cost. I would never again be the woman I was before.That chapter had ended.

What came next would be something entirely different.

Written By

The Original "Girl In A Bubble"