Three Years of Progress in pictures

Three years ago today, on my 21st birthday. I'd been out of the hospital for a few weeks after complications from swine flu led to an ordeal that kept me in the hospital for 3 months. I even died for a little bit. I learned how to do everything again at rehab - from little things like moving my fingers and feeding myself, to big things like walking. At the point of this picture I had graduated from using a walker but was still sometimes using my cane. I had been on life support for 12 days and the drugs used caused my hair to fall out so, at the point that I started getting bald spots, I shaved my head. Kinda like "I'm going to fire you before you can quit!" sorta thing. I didn't want any pictures taken but my dad made me take one with him on my birthday. The black stuff on my neck is leftover hospital gunk from where I had had PICC lines and ports and all sorts of things that have no business poking into my neck. I couldn't properly scrub it off because I would start to have a panic attack if I tried. I was a mess, inside and out.



I got a wig for my 21st birthday. In hindsight, I think I looked better with no hair, but at the time I was too anxious about being bald and had to cover it somehow to enable myself to go in public. They didn't have any red wigs that looked decent, but I'd always wondered about being a brunette.



Around my birthday last year. Still growing out my hair and still stuck with all the weight that I'd gained during everything. This was about when I hit my highest weight ever, probably.



And this is from a couple days ago. I haven't used a cane, walker, or shower chair in three years. I'm not fit yet, but I'm also not half-dead. I rarely have panic attacks, which is a huge step up from the panic attack/passing out that happened whenever I would have a follow up doctor appointment at first.

Three years ago, I tripped coming up the stairs to my house. Two single stairs and I was too weak to make it. I was definitely too bad off to have come home from rehab yet, but a combination of depression and anxiety meant that my doctor gave in and let me go home as long as I had someone take me to pt several times a week. But still. Two stairs got me and I wasn't even strong enough to stand back up. I had to crawl across the porch and into my house. Now, not only can I bend over to pick things up, but I spend all day at work standing, or crawling around in the floor wrestling with big dogs. I work at a vet hospital and even though it "smells like a hospital" I don't freak out and pass out. Exercise now is more than walking three laps around the couch. My hair grew back in curly. It had been straight/frizzy before and I could never get it to hold a curl, no matter how hard I tried. I'm still getting some of the last health effects sorted out, but I'm so much better than before. I'm healthy enough now that I've been able to really work at losing weight and so far I'm down 66lbs.There's still a long way to go, but I'm just happy that I'm not dead. Sometimes its the little things like that

I took myself shopping last week, for my birthday. None of my old clothes fit me at all anymore and for the first time ever, I had to return everything I took to the dressing room because it was all too big and I needed smaller sizes to try on. What a great feeling and I'm sure you will all understand. I bought a skirt sized 18/20. Never thought that would happen again!