Where it All Started. (1993-1995)
At the age of 12, I went through some major life changes. I got sick during my first week of eighth grade with flu like symptoms. After the first week and come to pass, my parents started getting a little bit worried.. Mono they thought.. Another week and another trip to the doctor, and it turns out that I did not have mono.. pretty strange.
Very quickly, the weeks turned into a couple of months. My parents and I were both scared. On my thirteenth birthday, I underwent a CT scan to look for tumors, as I have many of the symptoms of Lymphoma. I clearly remember drinking and vomiting up the radioactive dye, crying to see if we could do this any other day than my birthday.
Fortunately for me, I did not have cancer. But what did I have? At this point, I began visiting specialists of all types, searching for an answer on what could be wrong with me. Our local school system also started sending a home teacher to my house on a daily basis - they were required to by law as I still needed to receive an education.
Her name was Gail, and she was a wonderful woman. Within a week of teaching me and getting to know my family, she told my parents that I had identical symptoms to a former student of hers who had recently graduated. The disease? Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. For the next six months, the doctors visits continued to be a weekly part of my life.
Chronic Fatigue syndrome was typically only diagnosed after all other diseases could be ruled out. In fact, it took nearly the entire school year of my eighth grade term to finally be diagnosed. During this time, my symptoms were pretty consistent - headaches, low grade fevers, constant ear infections, achy muscles, and extreme exhaustion. Some days were worse than others, and good days were few and far between. Good days were the ones where I would maybe go outside or feel up to going for a ride in the car somewhere with my parents.
I went from being a young jock, popular and handsome, to a recluse. I constantly had people believing it was all in my head, and then trying various “cures” on me (herbal supplements, anti-depressants, and the whole nine). The more this went on, the harder my life got. My friends were good to me for the first year and remained close by my side. I will never forget the year book that they sent home at the end of the eighth grade school year - it was like a hundred page get-well card.
A year had passed, and my health had remained the same. What changed was everyone else around me. As my friends entered high school, I found myself being taught five days a week at my dining room table. They were growing up, going to high school, getting into JV sports and finding girls.
The one thing that did keep me going during the first two years of being sick was my families first computer. It was a 486SX 25 with 4MB of RAM and a 110MB hard drive (which later got upgraded to 200MB after the original drive failed). I found great joy in some of the original first person shooter video games like Wolfenstein 3d. I also had a great time with other games like Sim City and many of the other Maxis games.
During this time, I first experimented with dial-in Bulletin Board Systems. I distinctly remember dialing into Maxis to download user made add-ons for Sim Ant. I also remember the $80 long distance bill my parents scolded me about for calling into a system in California.
Between bulletin boards, and our family AOL account, I finally found another avenue for communication - my computer.
