These emotions...

are really something to take in. One minute I am completely overjoyed, and the next I feel confused and overwhelmed. I didn't realize it would feel like *this*, a feeling I find so difficult to describe, to be healthy.

My mother pointed out yesterday evening that I had been ill for over a third of my life. Seven out of twenty years. My world had been so focused on "something is wrong" and then "getting better", that I now feel robbed of key parts of my life, things that everyone else gets to experience, like highschool, hanging out with friends, going to university. Sure, I went through all those things, but I didn't get to fully experience them, not like healthy people. During highschool, when my friends were trying out for the soccer team, going on filed trips, staying out late, and dating etc. I was worrying about the sores on my shin, going to doctors appointments, and having surgery. I wasn't 'living' in the sense that I was enjoying life. I was just one big ball of tired and sore and worried and pain.

Am I able to catch up on what I have missed? Is it realistic to think that I can? Perhaps I should forget what I didn't get, and solely focus my attention to diving into my new, adult life. Life in the moment in a new way. Before living in the moment meant looking at the pleasant things in life because I never knew when I would be to ill to do so. Now it means enjoying the moment just because I can without having to worry about the future.

Oh I know this sounds so dramatic, and maybe it is in some way or another. But maybe that is not a bad thing. The last few doctors appointments have given me such reality checks. At one, my ID specialist threw around words like  'septic shock'. She said that is what you can get when you have an untreated osteomyelitis for a long time. I have not doubt that I would have ended going down that path sooner, not later, if I had not been referred to her and received treatment. When I look back I realize how tired my body was in 2011. When I was sleeping sixteen hours straight, yet waking up tired. No, not tired, exhausted. I was not living. My whole body was fighting to keep the infection under control, and as a result, there wasn't energy left for anything else. My orthopedic surgeon told me almost the same thing yesterday morning. He said that when one part of part of the body is infected for so long, that the rest of the body is effected. That your blood carries that infection throughout your body. I look back now at the things I have gone threw in the last few years, and cannot phantom how I actually did get threw them. At times I thought that "getting better" would never happen, that it was always something to happen to other people, there were so many set backs, but look! Now here I am! and it will all take coming to terms with. But it is better now. I am here, and it feels good. It is right. It just takes a little bit of convincing.

Wow.

Happy tears. I have never cried them before, until now. This whole week has been a slew of hospital appointments and entailed a giant bundle of nerves... and now? Now it all just melts away. All of my fears and worries, all the things I was afraid of.. and now *poof* gone. Good news. VERY good knews; not being in the one percent of everything that could ever go wrong. I am a happy healthy person, just like you.

I recieved my scan results yesterday from my infectious disease specialist, and a confirmation of the good news from my orthopedic surgeon today. The WBC scan I has done earlier this week shows no signs of active infection! The bone infection is gone even after stopping antibiotics for two and a half months. I do not know what the future will bring, if the infection is dormant, or if it will ever come back, but right now I am normal, happy, healthy. Something I have not been in seven years. Just like that *bam* I am no  longer sick. For the first time in years I am not worried. How long this will last I do not know. Perhaps weeks, months, years? But I a do not care. I am so happy! My best guess is that the news I got today had not fully sunken in yet. I thought it had, but no. I went to shower, a wonderful relaxing thing after a week of anxiety. I stood under nearly burning hot water for a long time, and then dried off and put on my pajamas. Minutes later my mom and brother arrived home. I walk into the kitchen to say hello and make myself a cup of tea, and just like that I was crying. Crying and smiling and laughing and feeling all my worries melt away. I never understood what it meant to cry happy tears, but now I do. For the first time in seven years I feel fully at peace, that absolutely nothing is wrong. I do not know if this is permanet or temporary, but I am going to make the best of it. For the first time in what feels like ever I am going to sleep peacefully.

Ps. I shall have a proper update posted soon, explaining the last few months and esp. the past few weeks.