I walk out of the bathroom stall and I panic. The walls are stretched much longer than what they were when I first walked in here. My vision is blurry and everything is echoing in my head. The sink seems to be moving and people are looking at me funny. A woman with very blonde hair kneels down to talk to me. I can’t find the door. I can’t find my dad.

I was five years old at the time.

A week later I wake up in my own vomit. It was dark, about five o’clock in the morning. I remember  my mom being with me as she brought me downstairs to the car, but all I could think about was if I would ever be able to use my blanket again. She told me she would wash it. There was a large case of the Publix spring water in the back seat that she put a tattered brown towel over and told me to lay my head down on. I liked watching the red lights from the other cars reflect off of the windows. When we arrived at the hospital, they put me in a wheelchair. As they rolled me through the doors, I can still to this day barely make out what the doctor looked like. He had dark brown hair and a calming smile and he told the nurses to do something with an IV. A lady grabbed my left hand and opened a small square packet of lotion. I can still smell it. She rubbed it on the back of my hand and I braced myself as I saw the needle, but it didn’t hurt at all. I felt cool. I listened as my mom told the doctor about what had been going on. I was always thirsty, I kept wetting the bed, and I had lost a bunch of weight. I was thirty eight pounds to be exact. I had lost ten pounds. Apparently my body had been eating itself alive and I didn’t even know. Nobody did. The man smelled my breath. A couple of tests and a few minutes later, I heard the words “Type One Diabetes”. I had never heard them before. I didn’t know what they meant, and I didn’t care. I remember very clearly one day the nurses came in to give me my shot, and I cried. My parents were at a meeting and my grandmother was in there with me. When they left she said, “See, it’s over now. Good job.” I got excited and asked her if it was really over. I can still see her pained expression and hear her voice as she said, “Oh no, honey, it’s not over. Not forever.” I started to cry again. Why was this happening, I wondered. I used to be so terrified of blood and needles that every time they pricked my finger I put a bandaid on it. They were colorful bandaids. When at last all of my fingers were bandaged, the nurse told me I had to take one of them off so she could do it again and I screamed and cried asking my parents to help me but nobody helped. Why weren’t they helping me? I felt so lonely. I felt so scared. When my father got there, he brought my pillow from home. It was round and made of silk with Disney princesses on it. I can still see the horror on his face as I screamed at him and kicked at him for trying to give me a shot himself. I felt so betrayed, I remember accusing him of being one of them. I was terrified, I felt like everyone was out to hurt me. One of the nights I was in there my mother fell asleep on the hospital bed with me. I woke up in the middle of the night as one of the nurses was leaving from checking my blood sugar. My mom was gone. “Where is my mom?” I frantically yelled at her as she was closing the door. “Riley I’m right here,” I heard. She was laying on the couch. I asked her why she had left me. For a moment I thought I was all alone in the hospital. I didn’t even know what a hospital was. I remember the first sugar free popsicle they gave me was red, and I ate it as I was looking out my window. I remember thinking I could actually like it there. I loved popsicles. They gave my brother one too. He was almost three. I remember wondering why people looked so sad when they came to visit me. My mom and I got in the elevator one day and there was a girl in there who was my age and she was with her mom too. She was holding her head. It wasn’t until much later I realized that she had cancer. Her hair was falling out. It was light brown and very pretty. I can still feel the cold tile of my hospital room on my feet. I passed away my time with coloring sheets. I was only in there three days, but it felt like a lifetime. It was over ten years ago, but I remember it as if it was yesterday. It hasn’t stopped, and it never will.