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The Goldfish in a Jar
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Having Melody work for me, turned out to be the best thing in the whole world. Without Melody, i never would have even dreamed of going on a date with anyone. Because of my developmental and physical delay, I didn't get a period or have adult hormones in my body. This meant that I didn't feel the same attraction to boys or men that most other people my chronological age felt. But I would never grow to fully be an adult, and Melody wanted to make sure I experienced every wonderful part of life. Sometimes when Melody came to work she had to bring her two kids, Max and Jared. They didn’t have to come with her every time, but when they did I didn't mind. Max was eight and Jared was ten. Melody would just sit them in the beanbag chairs in my living room. "Don't touch anything except the beanbag chairs and your Nintendo Switches," she would tell them. Her thirteen-year-old daughter Serena would tag along to keep an eye on them. "Max and Jared have a lot of mental health issues. They both have bipolar, ADHD, an attachment disorder, PTSD, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder...."
Everything started at age eight when I stopped being able to eat lunch at school. If you ask a thousand different people with gastroparesis, "What do you do when your stomach fails you?" They will give you a thousand different answers. When I was in third grade my answer was to refuse to eat lunch and snacks anymore. Of course, this made my parents very anxious, and started them asking me a bazillion questions. I almost wanted to ask them, "What would you do when your stomach fails you?" but I knew I couldn't talk to my parents like that. It wasn't until the end of third grade and the summer of my nine-year-old check-up that my parents really went on high alert. But as soon as I saw Dr. Monroe, my pediatrician, she noticed I had fallen off the growth charts for weight and then was reminded that even though I had barely turned nine I was on the highly competitive level six gymnastics team. Instead of thinking, "What do you do when your stomach fails you?" She decided to plaster me with the eating disorder label and dismiss all possible physical possibilities for my stomach failing me.
Maybe if the hospitalizations in the month of November had stopped there then things would have been okay, but life with major medical diagnoses is never that easy. First I went to the hospital for dehydration, Immediately after that bloodwork showed that my potassium was dangerously low. I had to rush back to the hospital.