I'm never going to get better.

I'm never going to get better.

This is the reality I face. There is no cure and no magic pill to relieve my symptoms. My life consists of medicating symptoms I can't cope or survive with and dealing with those I can't.

There is a risk with the medications too. I'm so sensitive to preservatives I've got into anaphylactic shock from a bag of IV saline in hospital, and I react to all pain medication so I have to work out which I'm going to react to worse, the meds or the pain itself.

It's funny because the realization that you're never going to get better hits you at strange times. You would think it's when I’m mid crisis in the intensive care unit, fighting for my life, but it's not. It's when I'm stood waiting to pay for my shopping or just sat watching TV. It suddenly hits you like a wave crashing down over your body, drowning you.

It had never occurred to me that I’d wake up sick and just never get better.

The symptoms can be scary sometimes, and its scarier knowing that most of the time you just have to wait it out. I have to sit at home with unbearable pain, with major swelling or with stroke like symptoms. I don't want to; I want to seek help but I get the same answer each time. 'There’s nothing more I can do for you'.

If I have the correct medication for a certain symptom I'll take it, but most of the time I will have already had it. I have exhausted all options I have to help myself so I just have to wait it out, weather it lasts an hour, a week or a month.

I won't be able to recognize the person in the mirror; she is a stranger to me. My smile faded, lips chapped and eyes grey from the battle going on within my body. I cling onto hope because I know that's the only thing I can do to help myself through it. My mind full of things I will never be able to do, places I can never see, but mainly the person I can never be. I can never be who I want to be with this body, but I am learning to adapt to this new person I am becoming and sometimes, just for a split second, I recognize the girl in the mirror.

The girl who, yes, will never get better. However, this new girl is grateful for life and everything in it. She can appreciate feeling the fresh air on her face and being able to watch the leaves fall of the trees because she's made it to another autumn. She knows she can’t make a huge impact on the whole world, but she now knows she can make a huge impact on those around her. With each uncertain day comes the blessing of a new day, another sunset and sunrise and another day to say I was here, I lived.