Chronically Catherine: Fabulousness and chronic illness can coexist

When I sat down to write this column, I heard the theme song of “Sex and the City” playing in my head — I’m Carrie Bradshaw, channeling my inner 2000s baddie, pretending I’m gossiping with my besties Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte about our wild Friday night escapades in the Big Apple.

But this is 2021. We’re in a worldwide pandemic. I’m not Carrie Bradshaw, and I’m not sitting at a boutique cafe sipping lattes with my gal pals. Instead I’m sitting at home in sweat shorts with tubes hanging out of my chest, filling my pill organizers, flipping in and out of Zoom classes and virtual doctor’s appointments, and every hour I lie down in a box to give my head and neck a break. Real sexy stuff. 

To give you some context, I’m a transfer student, and this is my first semester at USC. I’m also a junior who is restarting my junior year, for a second time. Everything about my identity as a student is never what I envisioned it to be — kind of like how Carrie never envisioned herself single and writing a sex advice column into her late 30s — but here we both are. On the outside, I feel like Carrie, a smart, curly-haired, fierce queen in a brown slinky Dolce & Gabbana slip dress. Yet what’s invisible to everyone around me is that on the inside, my body is attacking itself, literally. 

In 2018, I took a medical leave of absence from college because I got so sick I could barely walk. After months of bopping around to different providers and getting different opinions, I thought I’d get a nice, neat, clear and curable diagnosis, tied up in a little box with a bow. Instead what I got was a dumpster-fire of multiple diagnoses.

I’m 22, toned, tan, fit, ready and supposed to be having “the best four years of my life” right now, but instead you’re telling me I have multiple, incurable, chronic diseases that I’ll likely have for the rest of my life — some of which will almost certainly worsen as I age? 

In a matter of months my body completely changed; as a result of my conditions, I unintentionally lost 20 pounds, my hair started coming out in clumps, I had surgeries, lumbar punctures, scans, radio frequency ablations, countless infusions, tubes hanging out of my arm, belly, then chest, headaches so bad I couldn’t open my eyes, nausea so intense I couldn’t stand and pain so fierce moving my neck would put me in tears. 

For a long time I struggled to accept my new body — its triggers, quirks, tolerance for certain activities — and I say “new body” because that’s what it felt like, being reborn into a body that wasn’t the one I’d spent 20 years learning to understand, and then told to start over and figure it all out again. I joke it felt like a second puberty. And with that came a major lesson in patience and self love (both things I’m still actively working on). 

Yet inevitably, there were, and still are, many days where I felt ugly, unsexy, gross and unlovable because of my health conditions. On those days I live vicariously through Carrie and “Sex and the City,” remembering the most important lesson she gave me: fabulosity isn’t external, it’s internal. I realized early on that this wasn’t going to be a quick battle, so I resolved to be my version of fabulous or die trying.

Now I’m here —  a student at USC — having never set foot on campus, entering Zoom University and doing my best every day to channel my inner Carrie Bradshaw. I’m starting a new chapter in my life balancing both identities — patient and student — finding out how they can coexist. 

My hope for this column is to share my thoughts and stories to provide comfort, community and resources to readers with similar lived experiences or readers who are new to the world of chronic illness and differently abled people. I’ll give you a fly-on-the-wall look into what it’s actually like being a young person, student, friend, daughter, single gal — and more — battling chronic illness. I’ve found that the more I share my unique lived experience through story, not only do I find community with others battling similar challenges, but I also find connection with others outside the world of chronic illness, because the life lessons I’ve learned since becoming chronically ill are universal. Ultimately, this column will be from the perspective of my lived experience — chronically ill, chronically fabulous and chronically Catherine.

Writer’s note: Feel free to reach out to Chronically Catherine if you’re also a student of different abilities working to coexist with daily adversity, without losing sight of your fabulosity – [email protected] or @itschronicallycatherine on Instagram.

Catherine Ames is a junior writing about life as a young person coexisting with chronic illness. Her column, “Chronically Catherine,” runs every other Friday.