It’s hard to forget it, because everything reminds you of it – somehow.
It’s not something that you could just easily let go. Unless you’re in my shoes, you’ll never understand it quite as much as I do.
I’m only eleven years old, and I’ve already had two major tragedies. Peanuts, tree nuts, even the tiniest, smallest little thing could change everything. I can still remember it like it happened just a moment ago.I was just in class, and I asked to get a drink from the water fountain. After getting a drink, I felt so weird, like everything around me was moving in slow motion. My friend asked me if I was ok, and I said I was fine, but I knew I wasn’t. About a minute after I got back to class. Everything around me seemed to stop. I felt so hot, like I was on fire. But then I felt a cold rush go down my spine, and I shivered as my eyes filled with blotches. It felt like a hand was covered in needles, and it was taking my neck going straight through the skin, flesh, and bones and reaching around my throat, squeezing and squeezing till there was no air left.I immediately jumped up, ignoring that my teacher was talking and screamed: MY THROAT IS CLOSING. Everybody stopped and stared, my teacher looking at me with no expression on her face. It took a moment for everybody to process what was happening, but after that, my teacher yelled, “Go run to the nurse’s office, i’ll be right behind you.”
I ran through the door into the hallway, nearly hitting a kid in the face. I ran down flights of stairs feeling the hand closing in smaller and smaller each second. I ran into the nurse’s office, and even though she had patients in there, she told them to leave quickly when she saw the expression on my face.
Now, barely having any air left, I squeaked that I needed my epi pen. I sat down, shaking, as she ran and grabbed it before plunging it into my thigh like a bullet. She asked me, “Do you really need this? Are you positive?”
I nodded my head, barely being able to talk anymore, trying to save the last bit of air I had left to survive. She took the epi pen and pulled out the needle, rolled up my skirt, raised the epi pen and plunged it into my thigh. Still, anytime when I think about that, all I can see is the needle hitting the skin, pressing in as a drop of blood flows out from my body. I continued to sob and scream as she called 911. Teachers aides, assistants, the principal gathered around me telling its going to be okay, but it wasn’t, because I was barely surviving. In fact, I was partially dying.
A policewoman stepped into the office, telling me it’s gonna be ok, making sure that i wasn’t going to faint. My dad rushed in the doors and sat by my side on the cot and hugged me, tearing up too. I saw the ambulance people come in, carrying the stretcher along with them. I had no fond memories of the stretcher, for I had once been on that before when my throat closed the summer before at my own house. They picked me up and laid me on the stretcher, strapping me in. I felt enclosed. They shoved a tube with a mask on it onto my mouth, finally a bit of oxygen reaching my lungs. I could barely breathe before, but now the epi pen was opening my lungs and my throat, even though, sadly, that would only last for 15 minutes. They dragged the stretcher out of the school and I saw the principal’s face saying “Before we leave today, right at the end of the day, in the car line, we will say a prayer for you. We all will.”
As they dragged me out onto the sidewalk, getting into the ambulance, I stared at this one girl, her face pale, questioning in her mind, trying to get the message to me, “what happened?”. She looked so confused and concerned. That was one of the only last faces that I remember from the school that day.
They shut the ambulance doors, slamming them. They put more oxygen in me, a few seconds later putting a needle into my arm, an IV, then putting medicine through it. The tingle went through my blood, rushing down me. I received more oxygen a minute later along with a cool rag atop my head. I couldn’t speak. All I could hear around me was the beating of my heart, the only things I felt were the pins against my throat, the fluids running up my body through the iv, and my heart burning, melting into pieces.
We rode to the hospital, and once we got there, we met more nurses, more doctors, more people staring, more oxygen, more medicine, more fear. The only thing I was glad to see was my mother rushing through the halls to get to the stretcher as I was wheeled into the room. They put me on the bed and accidently touched my thigh. It felt like a hundred bees stung me at once.
I had to get so many X rays. I couldn’t talk, and when they took off the oxygen it just made it worse. I had to stay there for such a long time, hours, waiting and waiting.
Places that you always throught were safe were now exposed. The people that you thought were always safe had now entered a world where nothing was safe. Everything threatening. Nowhere to hide.
I am only eleven years old, yet I had to go through this. So don’t tell me to forget about it, and that you just have to let it go because it’s better now, because its not. Nothing has changed. I still have an allergy, and I will have to live with this for the rest of my life because it is so severe that the smallest thing could change everything.