Overcomer

So much didnt make sense to me as a child. I loved my family so deeply but always felt out of place, different to my siblings. I guess some would say I was an odd child. My mother, who died of cancer in March of 2006, used to love to tell the story of my birth. I was born a cold winters day in a little town called Toowoomba, 1.5 hours west of Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland, a state in Australia. My mother had developed a seemingly sudden and very severe kidney infection, that jeopardized her life and my own, so she was induced and I was delivered prematurely on the 4th of June 1977. She said I was born angry, screaming infact and that I never really stopped. Many times, I have laughed at this recollection of hers, during her life and since her passing however I know now, I wasn’t born angry, I was a born a warrior, because my life would be marred by abuse, pain, abandonement, sickness and a more than one time battle to simply continue exsisting in this world.

My story is a story of bravery, excruciating pain both physically and emotionally, fiery trials that seemed never ending with only my faith in who I am, to keep moving me through the fires of my life that ultimately brought me full circle. In this moment, my mind drifts to an old saying "You are never given more than you can handle". I have always said " My heart is both my greatest vulneribility and also my superpower" and for me, that is very true but I have come to realise, while moving along this treatcherous journey of mine that the greatest lesson I have learned is the simple act of forgiveness.

I have suffered more than most in my 44 years, from the beginning, life was always going to be painful. Before I was even born, I had started the battle for my life, a battle of which, I'm still fighting today. Let me explain, in 2014, just weeks after burying my father, I was diagnosed with a very destructive and aggresive auto immune condition called Diffuse Systemic Sclerosis or Systemic Scleraderma. Sounds innocuous huh? However that simply was not the case. Sceraderma is a connective tissue disease. My immune system had decided to play "hulk" and started attacking every part of the tissue in my body, inclusing my organs.

Scleraderma, particularly the kind I had been diagnosed with, is generally thought to be the most dangerous auto immune condition, with a very poor prognosis of only ten years. This illness progressed rapidly in my case, my skin started to thicken and tighten, making movement painful. I developed sclerodactaly and raynauds phenomonen, a curling and contracting of the fingers making basic function difficult and ischemia in my findertips leading to digital ulcers, which was so painful at times all I could do was scream. My blood pressure was affected and in January of 2017, I developed a rare complication called scleradermic renal crisis. My kidney's were failing, my platelets shearing, I was bleeding internally and drowning in my own fluid. It felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest as I gasped for every breath. At my worst, I was told by my Doctor's, that I had four hours to live. Despite being so weak and tired, I remember something stirring deep in my soul.

That warrior my mother had described, the fighter that I had been created to be, was awakening. "I'm not going out this way". I remember telling myself, even though I barerly had enough energy to lift up my arm but ten days later, I was released from the hospital, abeilt with some permenent kidney damage, but on my feet.

I was married at this stage and as saddended as it made me, my marriage ultimately failed. I was fighting for my life and figthing for and with my husband at the time, who had turned to drugs and developed a significant addiction in a futile attempt to help him cope with my illness and rapidly deteriorating health, turning him into what I could only describe as a domestic terrorist. He was no longer the person I once knew. I was suffering in every way a person can. I was at the mercy of a body that was failing me and man who was supposed to love me but couldn't at this time. It took all I had to make it through every day.

By this stage, people had started to see me as my illness, not Priscilla anymore. I had started to disappear but I was still in there. Home became unbearable, despite my pleas for help to family which seemed to fall on deaf ears and as a consequence, my blood pressure remained volitile and uncotrolled, worsening until, in November of 2018, I was rushed to the emergency department by ambulance, after suffering through what I thought was a mega miagraine for five days however quickly realised on the fifth day of excruciating pain and after losing my ability to speak, I was in serious trouble. I was quickly diagnosed with a subduaral heamorrhage, requiring emergency brain surgery. Again, I remember approaching the second threat to my life with humour and courage, ultimately prevailing over it with no longterm complications or deficits. I mean, its ridiculous, who bleeds into their head for five days and survives? Me, I do.

The warrior inside of me, the person who other's seemingly had forgotten exsisted, was wide awake at this time and drove me to seek out more permanent solutions to curing an incurable disease. This led me to researching, finding and being accepted into a risky clincial trial, through atogulous stem cell transplant. This procedure would shut down my immune system completely, through incredibily high doses of chemotherapy, transplanting my own, previously harvested stems cells, back into my system and restarting my immune system with the hope my body would have forgotten it had the disease. Kind of like a control/alt/ delete of my immune system.

In January of 2019, while still coping with an unraveling home and marriage, I was admitted into the Royal Brisbane Hospital here in Brisbane to complete this treatment. Despite it's risk, it paid off. I am now two years post transplant and my recovery has been nothing short of miraculous.

Soon after the transplant, I managed to extract myself, with the help of domestic violence organisations here in Australia, from the marriage and was put into hiding and refuge for a number of months. This time was one of the loneliest, most gut wrenching and painful seasons, in a life of many gut wrenching and painful moments, I had ever experienced. I was abandoned by family and friends alike, a true wilderness period but I perservered. The world may have counted me out but the REAL in me, the warrior, the fighter was truly just beginning and slowly, everything improved.

As I write this now, I'm healthy and fit. My hair has grown back thick and with lustre, as has my appetite for life. Through firey trials and grace given, I was given a second chance. Finally, now as I look in the mirror, I see the woman so many allowed to disappear from their sight but who never lost sight of herself! I will leave you with this utterance; Remain humble in the knowledge of who you are, remain focused on simply the next step, regardless if anyone else can see your true worth and remember to always be graciousand live in grattitude. You see, trials, such as I have experienced will humble you to the point of nothingness but it is meant to be that way. It's only in complete surrender, can you access the realest parts of yourself, which will ultimately determine if you sink or swim in this thing we call life. As for me, well, I choose fly.