ESSAY BY HEIDI JOHNSON-WRIGHT
At age nine, I was diagnosed with severe rheumatoid
arthritis.
It raged out of control for years.
Nearly every Christmas break,
summer vacation and lengthy stretches during the school year meant ghastly
orthopedic surgeries.
Surgeons would saw entire joints out of my body, then
hammer in pieces of metal attached with screws.
In between surgeries and the
prolonged recoveries, I made the best of the life I had with all its
limitations and chronic pain.
And yet I had friends and loved learning foreign
languages and dreamed about traveling to exotic places someday.
I was 15 when I spent the month of June 1980 in the
hospital, having both of my hips replaced, then the remainder of the summer
recouping.
Nothing could have prepared me for the breadth and depth of it, nor
for the depression and anxiety I suffered, but kept hidden from my family and
friends.
RECOVERY ESSAY CONTINUES TOMORROW -- FEBRUARY 2
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