Black girl with a Chronic Invisible illness here. The top 2 pictures are what I look like when I am having an okay day, which isn’t often. The rest are a little peek at what my life is actually like. As many of my followers know, I have a brain condition called Chiari Malformation. It is a degenerative disease and there is no cure for it. People are dying from it or are taking their own lives from the excruciating pain it causes because doctors just cannot seem to help us, simply because they are not educated on it, or have never even heard of it! I have wanted to take my own life on many occasions, and still do very often because of what this illness puts me and my body through on a daily basis. There is no escape. It feels hopeless. These pictures were taken in February. Just a few months ago I was going in for my second brain surgery because I was having so many problems again. It was the worst thing in my life to happen. After surgery, I got a CSF leak from ripping the stitches in the back of my neck from throwing up so much because of the anesthesia. I then contracted a strand of meningitis that came from IRAQ. Acinetobacter Baumanni, to be exact. Also known as, Iraqibacter. It is a killer infection. It kills a lot of our troops in Iraq. The mortality rate is high, and there are only 2 antibiotics that can kill it, and they are not even guaranteed to work. So if both antibiotics don’t work, you die. We tried one and it wasn’t working. I ended up unresponsive from it. Almost died from it. I couldn’t even articulate my words or make sense before I became unresponsive. Thank God the only other antibiotic they had was working. They sent me home with a PIC line in my arm, connected to a pole on wheels, with lots of bags of medicine that were to be mailed to my house the next day. My mom was injecting me with the antibiotics weeks after leaving the hospital. Catching the meningitis kept me in the hospital for a month. I thought I was going to die. I lost so much weight and lost all the tone and muscle I had. I had to learn how to walk all over again. It was a terrible experience and I’m glad it’s over. My mom and I do a walk for Chiari every year. We’ve even ended up on the news! We do this walk to raise awareness and money that will be put towards research to find a cure. It would be amazing if everyone could reblog this and spread it around and really get it out there. It’s really important to me and would mean a lot!! We are a little far away from our goal with only 45 days left to donate. Please donate to Team Brianna! ANY amount helps. It all really does add up and it makes me feel good to know it’s all going to research to put a stop to this illness! We desperately need more to be educated on this illness. We desperately need to find a cure. I’m fighting for myself and every other Chiarian out there.
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