What I learned from being mostly homebound for a year

You think being home for break is hard… try being too sick to leave for a year

Back in August 2011, I should have been painting my name on my senior parking spot/the senior wall in the cafeteria with my friends, however, I was hospitalized for nine days with MRSA in my jaw and cheek. My face was swollen to twice its normal size for two days before I felt extreme pain and had to be taken to the hospital where I was admitted immediately. I was put on several strong IV antibiotics and pain killers, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, on the ninth day, they called in an oral surgeon as a consultant and he found the abscess tooth that I later learned started when I had my wisdom teeth pulled.

My cousin Kalix visiting me in the hospital

I was released with medication the next day and sent to get surgery at the oral surgeon’s office in Marion, Va. I can’t remember whether it was due to the medication I was on or due to the large amounts of swelling, but, unfortunately, for some reason, they couldn’t numb me for the surgery. My mom held my hand and they held me down (you tend to squirm with pain which could’ve been very bad mid-surgery) and then the doctor lanced and drained my cheek without novocain. I was in so much pain on the ride home (Marion is 30 minutes away from my home) that we had to stop at my grandparent’s house and let me rest.

It took a few days to recover, but I eventually got back to almost normal. I wasn’t able to move my mouth/cheek enough to smile for about a month. I started my senior classes and had fun with friends.

Celebrating a friends birthday in a local park

Then, two weeks into the semester, my migraines came back worse than ever. I had had migraines since my freshman year of high school, but never this bad. We had to oil all the doors in the house because if one squeaked anywhere, I cried out in pain. I was in the hospital every night getting IV pain killers in hopes of some relief. Then I started to get severe jaw pain – I could barely chew.

We went to a neurologist and a TMJ specialist. We later learned that I had nerve damage from the swelling and the surgery, causing strange pains in my cheek and jaw, and TMJ, but we still couldn’t figure out the source of the migraines. We tried medication after medication to try to find the right combination of minimal side effects and less migraines, but nothing seemed to work. Eventually we found something that stopped the migraines, but it caused me to gain about 80 pounds, have memory lapses, and have severe nose bleeds – it was like someone turned a faucet on in my nose. I also couldn’t function properly while on it. Friends would later tell me I was basically a zombie.

Needless to say, I couldn’t attend school at this time. After missing about three weeks, my parents and my vice principal discussed the option of homebound education (with doctor recommendation, a teacher from the public school is assigned to you and brings the class work you missed and teaches it to you – an option to not be counted absent or face truancy charges). I wouldn’t go back to school for six months. I was totally dependent on those around me.

I should clarify that I was not completely stuck at home. I was for the first few weeks, but occasionally, I’d have days with minimal pain that I could go to the store or the park for about an hour and have some socialization and activity. It was during this time that I learned to longboard, to coupon similarly to those on TLC’s Extreme Couponing (though not to that magnitude), and to bake.

Rainbow cupcakes I made

I learned what a real friendship looked like.

When I stopped attending school, I stopped seeing my friends. The phrase “out of site, out of mind” took on a whole new meaning. People who claimed to be my best friends while we were in school were ignoring my calls and messages or promising me they’d visit, but never following through. When I was in the hospital before the start of the semester, only two friends that weren’t adults (my youth ministers and preachers visited as well as family) visited me and, sadly, they never proclaimed to be my “best friends.” These were just genuine people who saw a person in need of company. I know now that those that ignored me were fair-weather friends, but at the time it was beyond devastating. I fell into a deep depression. However, after working through this, I realized this time taught me what to look for and expect in a friend.

I learned about myself.

In this extended period practically alone, I learned a lot about myself. I learned what I enjoyed doing and what I could do to appease my depression and relax. I also learned tricks to minimize my migraine and jaw pain.


Six months later, my condition started to improve. I went on a vacation to Florida over Christmas break and only had to stay in two days. I decided to try to go back to school for a day. My doctors recommended I wear a face mask because my immune system had been weakened by all the medications. Unfortunately, a migraine would strike about two classes into the day and I’d have to go home. After that, we decided it’d be best to just transfer to an online school and not have to worry about reinstating the homebound at the end of every six week period.

Because of the way medical homebound worked at that time, we had to reapply for it with new recommendations from my doctors every six weeks. This was an ongoing battle and we even struggled with one doctor not believing I was really sick (an opinion she’d later apologize for upon seeing me healthy).

I drew vampire lips on this mask.

This lifted a huge stress from our lives and allowed me to focus more on getting better. I still had to wear face masks everywhere to keep myself from getting sick as my immune system built itself back up, but I was able to do all my schoolwork on my own time, meaning I didn’t have to push it when I didn’t feel well.

I learned to stand up for myself and insist on what I needed for my health.

I’ve always been a bit of a pushover, but I eventually realized this was a time when I had to insist. While I was sick, I had the hardest time getting doctors to listen to me about my medications. My neurologist and psychiatrist didn’t accept patients under the age of 18, but they made an exception for me because I was 17 and would be 18 in August. Unfortunately, they kept seeing me as a child and refused to listen to what I had to say about the medications. It took my pharmacist mother standing up for me for them to finally listen and stop upping my dosages when the medicine no longer worked. I had to learn to stand up for myself and demand what I needed (different medicine or no medicine at all, silence with a headache, etc.).


In the summer of 2012, we finally found at least one cause for my migraines – I had celiac disease. It ran in my family, but we never suspected I had it before now. Once we received the diagnosis, I changed my diet to strictly gluten-free, as it is currently the only treatment for celiac disease and got off the medication that had been causing me so much trouble. I dropped all the weight I had gained and then some in just a few months, I had less migraines, and I felt better than I had in years. We finally felt like we had gotten some answers.

Due to some confusion with the online school, I eventually had to get my GED in July of 2013 and was able to attend the local community college full-time; it was a little before this that I had built up my immune system enough to retire the face masks for good. I tried taking courses in the summer of 2012, but could only take three and was absent quite frequently, leading to the decision of taking the fall semester off. In the spring of 2013, I enrolled as a full-time student at Virginia Highlands Community College–the first time I’d physically gone to school (not counting the few hours I tried to go back in January) in a year and a half.

Practically living like a hermit all this time proved this endeavor to be challenging. I had developed severe anxiety and didn’t handle the level of socialization well. I ended up switching to a psychologist/psychiatrist team and worked through these issues as best I could.

I learned to be proud of my GED and Associates Degree

There tends to be a stigma surrounding GED and community colleges. People tend to look down upon these and see them as inferior. For example, people tend to see the GED program as people that couldn’t pass high school. There are many reasons why a person didn’t finish high school – it’s usually not that they were “too dumb to pass,” often times people have to drop out for familial reasons, medical reasons, financial reasons, etc. There’s no shame in a GED. I have the utmost respect for those, adults especially, that go back and study to get the GED. Some have been out of high school for decades and have to relearn almost everything.

I know a common thought amongst my peers in my area was that community college was something of which to be embarrassed or ashamed. This is not true. Community college is a quality education for a lower cost. I completed all of my general education classes there for less than half the cost of JMU. When you get an Associates Degree in the state of Virginia, it waves all general education courses. It is nothing but beneficial to complete the two year program at community college before going on to a four-year university.

I learned there was no shame in asking for help.

I couldn’t make it out of the pit of depression I was in on my own. I had to ask for the understanding and aid of my family and friends to help me overcome that and my anxiety to get back to some semblance of my old life. I was prescribed anti-anxiety medications and anti-depressants, along with seeing a psychologist twice a week (which eventually lessened to once a week) and a psychiatrist once a month. I was eventually able to learn how to cope with these struggles.


My grandfather and me at my community college graduation

In May of 2014, I received my associates degree. My acceptance into JMU proved to be yet another struggle to overcome. My community college didn’t send them my transcripts on time and they wouldn’t consider me without them, so I was wait-listed and eventually rejected. Due to a beloved professor bringing this to the office’s attention, they overnighted my transcripts and bugged the admissions office until they would look at it and consider me. Meanwhile, my boyfriend had already been accepted and had RSVP-ed for orientation with me as a +1. The day before orientation started, as we were getting situated in our hotel room, I got a call from the admissions office at JMU. They received my transcript and accepted me on the spot. I remember jumping up and down on the hotel bed and screaming with joy – I was so excited. Finally, I was able to put all this mess behind me and live as a normal student again.

I learned I had a huge support system backing me up.

More than just my family, I had professors and friends backing me up through all my struggles. I could not have gotten to where I am without the great support system I had.

I learned to have confidence and to trust in my intelligence and skill.

When I was first rejected from JMU, I immediately doubted myself. It wasn’t until I learned about the transcripts that I stopped blaming myself and considering myself dumb for not being accepted. It may seem silly to put so much weight in such a decision, but I was always held to high academic standards and getting rejected from a college was not acceptable to me. Through this experience, I eventually learned trust in myself and my capabilities rather than doubting them. After all, no matter how good you are in life, there will always be someone better. You can’t let that keep you from going after what you want. Just because someone’s better does not mean you’re a failure.


Even though this was an incredibly difficult time in my life, I’m glad I went through it. It made me the person I am today, and for that, I couldn’t be more grateful! I’m so happy to be at JMU and consider myself so lucky to have the friends and support system that I do.

More
James Madison University national-us