Fire at the Ronald McDonald House!

'*Places hand over mouth, resisting not to laugh*
"What?", Shelby said thinking she said something funny and didn't get the joke.
*Points at the microwave, Shelby turns around*

A blur of green smoke was flowing out of the microwave. It started to smell as it filled the whole half of the kitchen.

"Oh my god! Whatdowedo?! WHATDOWEDO?!", Shelby said in a panic.
"I don't know...", her friend said sounding very useful.

She opened the microwave and more smoke starts to pour out onto her face. She closed it immediately panicking. As she thinks of something to do she tell's her friend to start fanning the smoke down so the fire alarm wouldn't go off, while Shelby asks a random lady behind her who's casually cutting vegetables if she can help. All she does is look at her, then continue to cut her dinner. By now the fire alarm has gone off and Shelby tell's her friend to follow her and they start running downstairs to the office screaming, "FALSE ALARM!".'

I have no idea why I decided to write this experience in a third person perspective but it made it sound like a legit story novel that I just copy and pasted, and the main character just happens to have my name. Not a coincidence at all. This really did happen to me, and at the completely wrong time too.

I was pretty much "living" at the Denver Ronald McDonald House waiting for my second transplant. While waiting, I met a girl who shared the same interests as me and I decided to share my Harry Potter obsession with her, being the HP fan I am. We were online looking up Harry Potter related news and we came across a HP contest. Basically whoever participated in this contest had to submit a video of the contestants brewing an original potion. Whoever's potion was the best won some kind of BRILLIANT prize like meeting Ron Weasley or receiving a signed Nimbus 2000, I don't know. So that's what we decided to do... Big mistake. Our ideal potion was the ability to turn opponents wands into noodles by sprinkling our concoction over our enemies wands. All we had to do was show the camera a stick which is supposed to represent our wand, put it into a saucer, and after stirring the wand in the potion for a couple minutes it has "magically "become a noodle. We made Ramon noodles before-hand and while cooking in the microwave it started to smoke like CRAZY!

Everything turned out fine, of course I still have the guilt on my hands, and the RMH staff had to install a new microwave from storage, and my mom found out about the incident the next day. I guess after having gorgeous firemen come to disable the alarm, I don't feel as much of a disgrace anymore. Now whenever I talk about it with my parents it's a oh-those-were-great-memories-right?-conversation, while my dad's still clueless about the whole thing. Must have forgot to mention it to him...

P.S

If your wondering what went wrong when making the noodles. It's not a the-world-may-never-know-thing, it's a common sense stupid rooky mistake.

...I forgot to put water in the cup of noodles :-P

Punching a Nurse

There are so many times I had the urge to smash a nurses face in. Like when they wake me up at three in the morning to ask me if they can take my blood pressure once again? Do I have a choice, I think not! Or when they  failed the first five times when placing an ivy into my arm! Or when they give me whole milk instead a 2% like requested. Sometimes they would sneak up on me and place a thermometer in my ear unexpectedly! Oh thanks for the warning, it's not like that's even remotely creepy!

I'm too polite to strangle a nurse in real life. I would flip them off or just immaturely stick my tongue at them when their not looking instead. I guess when I'm not conscious I literally can't control myself! When I was unconscious for a week I had a nurse who would talk to me in a baby voice. Like the voice you would talk in when you're addressing a dog.

Sane Regular Woman:
"Your such a good dog! Who's a good doggy!? Your a good doggy! WANNA A TREAT?? "

Petite Insane Medical Professional
"Oh who's a good patient! Your MY good patient! Wanna an ivy? Who wants to draw some blood!?? SHELBY DOES!"

So you could see how this would annoy anyone! Even though I wasn't awake it's not like the words flew over my skull. I guess I could still process what she was saying to me and how I felt about it. My reaction was no longer under my control once she leaned over me to fuss with the monitor. I lazily slopped my arm over and attempted to punch her in the face. I didn't miss her face but it's not like I left a black eye afterward. My parents told me it was more of a slap, but I'm satisfied with anything as long as she felt the need to leave the room. My parents tried to avoid her as many times as possible because apparently I wasn't the only one annoyed by her.

Even though my nurses can annoy the hell out of me sometimes, they have saved my life multiple times. So in that case I give all my past nurses props for cleaning the bed pans/ throw up bowls, the constant sponge baths throughout their day, and dealing with squirmy, screaming kids ALL THE TIME! I hope to become the same profession in the future, and I probably won't expect the massive amount of poop cleaned each day. Haha, okay that was too much information, but I'm glad I was able to give you the-that's-disgusting-smirk upon your face(unless your just laughing at me).

Coming Home After A Six Month "Vacation"

Near the end of September I was told I was free! I could finally leave Denver after waiting since May to go home. In July of 2009 I got my second heart transplant at the Denver Children's Hospital, then had to wait three months afterward to make sure I didn't reject. If you don't know: Rejecting my heart is when my T-cells and other various cells in my immune system attack my heart because it's a foreign object inside my body. Then the heart becomes weak and ill, and I would have to restart this transplant process all over again... Lucky for me, my heart was healthy afterward and my scar healed nicely. I was living in The Ronald McDonald House since May and I left near the end of September. If I had to stay any longer I think I would have exploded, you would have had to whip me off the furnished walls.

While I stayed at the Ronald McDonald House I would occasionally have mental breakdowns and cry under the covers until one of my parents noticed how unhappy I was. They would do their usual parent ways of putting a smile back on my face. Which consisted of letting me cry until my eye's were dry, making me hot chocolate and popcorn, and ending the night with watching Harry Potter. So when I was told I was able to go home by my nurse practitioner it was like I just defeating Lord Voldemort and the world became a happy cheesy cartoon again.

When we were unpacking, we decided that all of our belonging wouldn't fit in all our luggage. We had to leave everything we couldn't fit in our suitcases behind and have it sent to us by a friend.(We had a few garbage bags full of stuff we left behind) The minute I stepped on to the plane I already felt at home, and I haven't reached the front door yet. Once we landed we met up with my mom who had my dog in her car waiting for me. I haven't seen my dog since April, so you could imagine why my little pomerianan didn't leave my arms the whole forty-five minute drive back to our new apartment.

In our first apartment I didn't have my own room, I was sleeping on the couch every night I slept over. On the way back I was extremely hyper to see how everything turned out. My mom guided me to the front door once we arrived. I entered casually, dropped my suitcases, and asked where my room was. "The double doors on the right", she responded with a sneaky smile upon her face. I glanced at her, then at the doors, then at her again suspecting something. I was not expecting my two best friends to be on my bed playing UNO while waiting for me to enter. They dropped what they were doing and tackled me to the ground. Then I tackled them to the bed and we sat on my bare mattress talking for hours.

My room had the minimum amount of furniture inside it. A desk, a bed, organizing cubes, and a nightstand were the only pieces of furniture sitting in my room, before my gigantic suitcases took up the entire floor. My friends slept over that night in our new apartment. We played with our feet, found random games in my luggage, ate barbecue for dinner, then stayed up all night talking in the living room when we were supposed to be sleeping.

I was extremely happy to be home and not back in Denver in my very comfortable yet cramped prison cell. Though, I still had cardiac appointments every week to make sure I didn't have to go back to the Denver hospital. But if I was able to go back to school and redecorate my own room, I didn't mind at all.

Morphine Dreams

In the middle of seventh grade my immune system decided to completely shut down on me(because the medications I take lower my fighting cells so I can catch anything I came across). That year of school I was in the hospital for almost a month due to Pneumonia, "Kennel Cough", water around my lungs, and a slight kidney failure.(my heart was fine through it all, just a bit stressed) The first week in the hospital I was unconscious and during that deep sleep I had an unforgettable dream that made absolutely no sense.

I arrived to the hospital at around six in the morning and was transported from Urgent Care to The Children's Hospital by ambulance wearing an oxygen mask on my face. I remember sitting in the emergency room after we arrived for a few minutes looking pale white from lack or blood flow, hunched over ready to throw up again, and tears running down my face. The last thing I remember is lying down before being moved to an ICU room and being told, "Tell me when you start to feel sleepy" and then in a few seconds later the overpowering drug locked my body into a deep sleep. If your wondering if I was still able to dream even by forced sleep? Yes, yes I was.

The dream started out with myself walking through an empty parking lot at night. No cars in sight. Just some twelve year old wearing neon scrubs pacing through empty parking spaces. One of these parking spaces had to be a teleporter because once I stepped over it, half a second later I was in the steam room at Lifetime Fitness. It took myself a few minutes to realize, "Wow! I'm still in scrubs. I should leave before I boil in here."  So I got up but the steam room was so misty I failed to find the door. I started to panic so I banged on what seemed to be the door until someone came to my rescue. When someone opened the door I slipped forward and fell into the person's arms. This person was wearing neon scrubs like me, and I also noticed that he looked similar to the actor Oliver James(You know that guy with black hair gelled into a mohawk who starred in Raise Your Voice and What A Girl Wants).

Anyways, from that moment on I lost my sense of touch and feel, almost like I was paralyzed afterward. My voice was so soft and raspy I wasn't able to get what I was trying to say which was, "Water slide...". Although, he managed to comprehend what I wanted so he continued to carry me like a baby in his arms. Before we left I'm pretty sure he set the steam room on fire then left the locker room with me still in his arm walking casually towards the exit.

Once we found the pool and were almost to the steps of the slide he set me down gently on to the floor and expected me to climb up two flights of stairs by myself, while I still paralyzed . He left without a word and the farther he walked from me that more he dissolved into the air. I was determined to slide down the water slide so I twisted my body so my stomach was facing the floor and started to crawl up each step which felt like it took DAYS! Once I made it to the third to last step someone noticed how weak I was and proceeded to pick me up.

The top of the stairs wasn't just a small area to wait for your turn but it was a medium size bedroom. No furniture just plain white walls with random giant, colorful, square hacky sacks floating in mid-air. Placing me into the tube where the water slide began was more difficult then it needed to be. The woman helping me, also wearing neon scrubs, tried to force me to grab the metal bar on the top of the slide. I could crawl up two flights of stairs but not hang on to a metal bar for a few minutes(probably too exhausted). Since I was being "too difficult" she walked away to find someone else wearing scrubs. Once she came back, two weak women (One in her mid-twenties with brown hair, the other around the same age with blond hair with several piercings in her nose. ) came back placing me in different positions to get me in the right angle to slide down. Apparently that "right" angle was head first and on my back. After they pushed me down I teleported again to either a beach house in Hawaii or a stone hut in Pakistan.

Suddenly, I was lounging in a beige recliner while having a fat Mexican lady, her hair in a bun and wearing Lilo's(from Lilo and Stitch) dress but in purple and green flowers instead, braid my hair. My hair grew significantly long which is why the lady took HOURS braiding it. There were other people around me as well. One guy was shirtless while fanning me with a giant leaf like in the ancient Egyptian time period. Another person was cutting "Around the World Fruit" by my side and feeding me. Someone else was in a black suit who I think was my lawyer, but  he was wearing shades from the matrix and was outside on the phone the whole time.

Between my dreams I woke up for a brief amount of time in the real world, and my parents counting the minutes I've had my eye's closed were ready to take a picture of me with my eye's slightly opened, braided hair,while giving the peace sign(I thought I was gangster back then stop laughing) and then send to all their contacts while labeling the message as: SHE'S STILL FIGHTING!