Part time athlete, full time sick person.

'What's your occupation?'

'Oh, I'm an athlete' she says from the hospital bed. 

Bald, various wires and tubes attached to my skin and running into my veins, relying on injections to maintain a patent airway. I can see why you might question my answer. 

See I would currently describe myself as part time athlete, full time sick person. Not exactly a job you see at a careers fair is it? Full time sick person, but it's my current job. I like to think that I'm doing pretty well considering what I have been through the past few months, I am entirely self funded as a sick person, and I still do little bits here and there. Granted it's not as much as I want to do but I'm grateful that I can still do a bit. 

The past year or so I'v had a lot of friend request and followings off people I went to school with. Most of these people I hardly knew in school, I wasn't in any of their classes and to be fair I don't think many of them even knew my last name as I always did my own thing. However since hitting news headlines, whether it be for awards or for being unwell these people have suddenly re-appeared in my life. Messages like 'remember me' and a circled image of themselves in our schools year photo. I realised that these people now know only my 'before' and 'after'. Before; when I was a normal teenager and now, a full time sick person. Which is hard because I look at them and they are at university, have a full time job or and traveling the world and here's me, university of life, full time sick person traveling the world in an ambulance.

The job of a full time sick person is very complex but the ultimate goal is this; stay alive. 

Everyday things needs to be organised. Updating and arranging my care plan, preparing crisis drugs, doing treatment, attending appointments, chasing up results, sterilising things, monitoring everything- lung function, blood pressure, oxygen levels, heart rate etc and adjusting my treatments to suit.

I might plan to do things, but sometimes my job interferes with my personal life too. Maybe I need to spend longer doing treatments one day and so I miss out on something, or I'm not getting enough relief from treatments do allow me to do what I wanted. Perhaps my body goes into crisis and I find myself back in a hospital bed fighting for my life.

Not your average 9-5 job, I work night shifts, day shifts, early mornings, late nights and in the past I have had to work for 6 days on a total of 8 hours sleep.

So that's me, part time athlete, full time sick person.