Throughout life we all face variety of things; birthdays, holidays, school, creating a family, getting a full time job. A long list of things that have the natural balance of positive and negatives. These are different between each person, I mean my positive memory is getting into Chelmster College- Which has a low acceptance rate, making me a special case to be accepted, along with the others who were accepted. This college being twenty minutes away from my small quiet village, where I have lived my whole life. On the other hand, my negative experience or event is my father not being a part of my life after I turned two. He was there one day and gone the next from what my mother tells me. This making me one of the millions of children who will never have their fathers in their lives. Whereas for my mother? Her positive was finding a healthy and happy relationship, that pushed her to thrive to the best she could ever be, being blessed with two beautiful girls. And the negative...? It began with my birth and the medical conditions that later established and how her once 'perfect' family home was changed and ruined.
Pneumothorax or in basic terms "collapsed Lung(s)". I was born on the 20th November 1997, when I was expected to be born on the 25th December. I was born early weighing only 3 pound 6 ounces, making the weight of roughly one bag of sugar. I was in an incubator being monitored all hours on oxygen, heart rate, temperature, heel prick test. It was a long night ensuring I was warm, receiving oxygen, my heart was beating and ensuring my blood sugars was okay. At midnight my heart monitor began to decline slowly, my heart was slowing down to the point of it hit the solid beep sound. Nurses ran around frantically rushing to come and save the day, my mother was woken up from her sleep seeing that nurses were taking me away from her to save my life. Wonderful. What happened was my lungs were over inflated, due to too much oxygen being filtered into my lungs, causing my right lung to burst, leading to the air leaking out and into the space between my lungs and chest walls.
Long story short, I was wasn't receiving any air in my right lung, my left lung wasn't strong enough to keep me fighting. They took me off the oxygen, placed me onto a ventilator and the doctors had to place a catheter into my chest to remove the air that had leaked. My right lung had collapsed from so much pressure on my lung from all of the air, it just collapsed and my left nearly had done the same. The catheter rid of the air that floated around my chest, but I was in hospital for weeks past the original expected three. My father was taking the night shifts after my mother was discharged but I was kept in, my Father would leave early hours of the morning and my mother would just be greeted by me. This is what happened for the whole two months I was in the hospital. My mother barely drank, ate and slept all in fear. Her first child ended up nearly dying on her, but my father was doing it all; drinking, eating, sleeping. As I grew up, I gradually got use to the whole idea of not being able to over push it, as having one lung that was slowly healing could break and rip at any point, I had to be careful otherwise I would be on a oxygen tank the rest of my life. But according to my mum that I would smile through it all, keep trying and pushing myself to heart stopping limits. It was all a sign to her saying "Hey Mum, I'm just Dandy!" and that was the name my Mother and Nurse would call me, since I was nameless for two weeks after the incident.
As I began to slowly heal, my mother was sat on her large oak chair that had a single, flat pink cushion for her rear. A half drank cup of coffee sat next to her on the table and her phone, which was on silent to avoid the thousands of calls she received and the texts that built up over 100's of them. My mother, Pamela, always told me of how close she sat that she could feel the heat from my incubator, radiating off and keeping her warm on those cold winter nights. She always refused to look away from me, in fear that something would happen. So she decided to use singing as her way to up keep her sanity.
She told me of how she would sit so close, that if I ever stopped sleeping almost 23 hours of the day, I would have been able to draw and know every line and crack on her face from where she leant so close. I would have been able to tell you details of her hands, her tan line of where her ring once sat and how she wore the dark clothing, heavy boots and how her hair always sat against her tired looking face. She would always sing as it was her second nature; her youth was filled with endless parties, awful colour matching, dreadful hair styles. She was forever singing, but found comfort in singing her wedding song: Can't Help Falling In love With You By Elvis Presley. I became so use to the song, I would let out a squeaky noise at the line "Shall I stay?" and my mother took it as the sign that I was getting there, I just need time Mummy. Which led to the night of me being called Dandy.
One night as she sang, my nurse Mrs Heathers, came around checking my statistics. As she hit the line that I had become so in love with, I let out a squeak and a small smile over my pale face. The nurse, Mrs heathers in her blue and white clothing, came over to my mother's side and began to laugh. "Look, Pam. She's smiling at you, as if she's trying to say: 'Mummy, I'm all Dandy!" which led to my name being Dandy Melanie Hope. Melanie being the name of Mrs Heathers, who spent hours of nights on her break with my mother, giving her hope and confidence, but also company my father didn't give her.
For a while I was okay at home, having that my lung was found to be weaker from the attack from birth. I literally had a shit lung. So, with that said, I had to have a small tank of oxygen around me at all times in case of my left lung was unable to continue to keep up the breathing or, not receiving enough. Later around 19 months, I had a check-up at the hospital and found that my left lung had grown stronger and I was able to continue without it, just had to have a small inhaler to ensure that after every activity I was supplying it with Oxygen- like an inhaler. I was finally a healthy baby, with just the one poorly lung that needed air frequently. And often hospital and doctors' appointments. That's all.
At the age of two, I was placed into a pre-school in hopes of that I would be well enough to finally interact with other children. Which was only morning sessions. After a few days, I began to make friends (after a few awkward and anti-social behaviour towards those who tried to play games with me.) I managed to have a healthy balance of a social life, home life and hospital. For months I was doing excellent, able to learn my colours, shapes, animals, understand that I had to be nice to others. Just a shame that not all children followed the principal of being nice, which leads me onto the serious accident.
At pre-school around half ten, I was playing outside and I managed to follow my friend onto the grass area. (We had not padded flooring.) I followed her up, taking the steps slowly as I knew I couldn't be too rough on my body, and when reaching the top her other friends joined us. Who didn't like me too much. They spent most of the time outside calling me names or now allowing me to join in with the play, like I was an outcast or not good enough. So, when it came to the end of our outside play, we were all called inside and one by one we looked at each other. One kid began going to the opposite way and take the climbing frame down, then everyone followed after him, so did I stupidly. When I was taking my turn to climb down, one of the children looked at me climbing down and told me to jump, of course I didn't because my mother said "never do stupid stuff, don't run too much and jump off high objects." So, I decided to climb down slowly, until my hand holding the wall grip was stood on, the pain from that made me jump and my foot slipped, my hand was released and I fell onto the grass onto my back. I slammed so hard onto the floor, I began to gasp for air as my lungs both then collapsed and could not get oxygen. However, I managed to cough up blood, ruin my nice new white dress and woke up in an ambulance with my mum panicking. I just remember a tube being forced into my throat and feeling a cold air on the back of my throat.
I had surgery to repair a completely collapsed lung. They done this by having to remove the air once again, but try and install a small tube into my now damaged right lung. Of course this only could last a matter of hours. The accident resulting in me needing extra oxygen and always having a small tank in my bag at all times. I became a fragile child which resulted in me being home schooled until Secondary school, high school to some. It wasn't only due to the weakness of my lungs, but the possibility of easily catching infections and having to spend so much time in and out of hospital, I would constantly need to catch up. It was just... easier?
So, as guessed from earlier where my mother constantly ignored family and friends. She lost her friends and family became less interested with my health and just me in general. My grandparents rarely visited, but if they did it was purely for my mother and to ensure she was alright. The excuse was: "We don't want to spread infection to Dan, she's too vulnerable to getting infections." I was brought up purely by my mum and the doctors who cared more about my health then my shitty family, who didn't have time to come and see me and my mum. But that all changed when my mum found herself a partner, randomly met him at the shops when I was in the hospital around age seven. She had adventured to the shops alone for the first time in years, they crashed into each other and then she was too short to grab something. They exchanged numbers and boom, my mother found her uniformed man. Who then shortly became my step-father and my half-sisters father, who was born when I was 9, soon to be 10.
The father situation, well, he was not in my life from my second birthday and hasn't been since. He died from his alcoholism, my mother told me. Apparently one night he got drunk, his whole body stopped working and he died. I don't really know the details as my mother never told me. But I can't help but sometimes find that she's telling herself that, trying to make herself believe such a lie. Anyway, Mark, the step-father, took on the father role, until he had to prepare for a new season of training for the military. As said, a man in uniform literally. He was deployed back to war when it was my first day of secondary school and my sister's pre-school. My mother was heartbroken but continued with her two girls. I believe she never had wanted Daniella earlier because of me, I was just too much to handle and the fear of her becoming another child like me. Daniella was born when I was nine years old, she was a quiet baby, happy and always sleeping. She was no problem for mother, she was just... better. She grew up healthy, no health concerns or any learning problems. She was the dream child, I guess..
I survived high school life, including the teen dramas with friends, falling out and then becoming friends again, I eventually became a loner. I went through stress, anxiety, depression all over the whole exam preparation. I had made friends with other kids before the exam season who were also in the library every lunch, near me. I managed to graduate with A's, B's, and a few C's which gave me my place at Chelmster college, where I began to study Media with photography. That's where I met my friends, Kerry and her boyfriend Luke. One night, we were both around Luke's and his brother is a hairdresser- a fabulous one at that. Where he comes up to me and says: "Hey Danny. (My nickname, as Dandy was too old fashion in his opinion.) Can I style up your hair? I promise I won't ruin it." And that night he trimmed my hair up to my shoulder blades, created a bang and gave my once bland brown hair a change. I ended up with pure black hair that lead into a beautiful blue dipdye- Which made college something easier, having a new look, friends who wanted to be around me. Which now leads me into the presesent..