Chapter 2 The Other Side
1161 Words
At a year old his mother took him to the doctor for his 1 year check up. The doctor noticed something peculiar, his spleen was large for his age. A lot larger than normal. The doctor told his mother that he wanted to run a battery of tests to figure out why. In 1991 after the doctor who’s name was Dr. Alexander came back into the room. He told his mother that he had no portal vein giving cleaned blood back to his organs. Her baby boy was dying. The doctor would go to tell her that something miraculous is happening though. His body is making new veins that is allowing some fresh blood from his liver to reach his vital organs and brain. Something he had never seen before. Something no one has ever seen before. Even his kidneys were making extra tubules to have more blood flow. His body is trying to save itself but they didn’t know how far the body could go to keep him alive. Which in turn is making his spleen enlarged because of the lack of oxygen getting to it and having to compensate for his liver. She asked the doctor so what exactly does he have wrong with him. The doctor explained that there is no name for this, it’s not something we’ve ever seen. I’ve given his disease a name though. Cavernous Transformation. The mother took her baby boy how and as he grew he got better and better until he turned 7.
He started to bleed internally into his stomach and was again dying. They did a sonogram and were stunned with what they saw. His whole body had made a completely new system of veins to get the blood to every organ. Even in his esophagus, his intestines, in his brain, and they even ran down his spine The reason he was bleeding was because the veins in his esophagus had been cut by sharp food though boy had eaten. So they did an endoscopy and cauterized them in hopes they would grow somewhere else. That they would find a better route. A year later, they were no longer there. Instead they imbedded themselves into the lining of his esophagus. So good would no longer cut it, So they thought.
4 years later
The boy was now 11 and doing well again but he would soon come to find that god was about to give him one of his first greatest tests. February 3rd 2001, the young boy sneaks into an R rated movie with his friend and brother. They got popcorn, candy and soda. As he ate the popcorn, the popcorn kernels began to slice the veins embedded in his esophagus. They cut every single one. He started bleeding so fast that his stomach began filling up with blood. “I have a horrible cramp.” He told his brother and friend and got up to use the bathroom outside the theater doors. “As I got up to walk to the doors to the hallways of the theater to use the bathroom. “The room began to spin and dropped to me knees as I got to the theater door and began throwing pools of blood.” Again the young man was dying and it seemed at this point that death had him in hands.
He wash rush to the hospital as he through up buckets upon buckets of blood. “I could no longer keep my eyes open. I was afraid to die, I just wanted to sleep.” The nurses and doctors wouldn’t allow that. So they shoved tubes up his nose and down his throat into his stomach as he saw a machine sucking more blood than it could handle out. They induced him into a coma and the boy was now in either God’s or Death’s hands. In the first 52 hours the young boy had 13 blood transfusions. As doctors did endoscopy after endoscopy to again cauterize the veins in his esophagus. The young boy was lead his last right not knowing if he would ever again wake up. As his mother wept and prayed to god to save her son. She screamed and cried and hated the world for her son. “I woke up 3 weeks later, but I was still bleeding they said. They had slowed down the bleeding from the endoscopy’s but more still needed to be done. They gave me a special medicine called Octreotide that constricted all the veins and blood vessels in my body giving my body time to heal.” The young boy was kept on a floor with other children that were dying as well. Though they were dying from cancer. Everyday they would play arts and crafts together in the kids lounge. “Everyday it seemed another child my age or younger had died from cancer. I knew I was eventually going to be next.” Strangely the medicine started to work and his body started to heal. The bleeding stopped but not before the young girl he had become friends with that had a tumor in her mouth and couldn’t speak passed away. She was only 8years old. “She had the sweetest voice, I can still hear it at night in my dreams. I can still see all their faces as if they were burned into my mind. They haunt me knowing I made it and they didn’t. That I have to live because they would give anything to be alive today.” The boys feeding tube was removed and he was cleared to go home after 4 months in the hospital. 27 bloods transfusions and a life he no longer understood.” The boy as he grew would learn that the world would not accept him and always see his as weak. Year after year it seemed like this was his life now as he bled again and again, to no end insight. “Everyday in school I wasn’t allowed to play with the other kids. In gym I had to sit on the bleachers and watch the other kids play. They would ask me why I couldn’t play but I couldn’t give them an answer to a question I also asked myself. During recess I would have to since in the cafeteria by myself and watch the other kids play. I was made fun of a lot, I was called a freak, a loser, and I had no friends.” My mother finally moved us to a new town in New York called Amityville. “She mad me a promise that know one ever has to know what is wrong with you. She said you can play with the other kids and go out for recess. She explained I would have to wear a mask and become something else. To always see myself as strong and to never tell anyone my secret. That I was in fact dying.”
- Writer
