> High school is great, and I am so busy. Though I may not be the best student in the world, I usually have a great time. As a senior this year, I am totally looking forward to going to college next year. Not sure where I'll be, but filling out applications is keeping me moving. I want to major in psychology…or maybe accounting…or maybe dancing…who knows? The possibilities are endless!

I'm in the hospital right now, getting better from a crazy medical problem called lupus. Until I found out I had it, I didn’t know anything about the disease. I had been getting really sore, and every joint in my body hurt except for my hips. It was the weirdest thing.  Then one day, I woke up and noticed that one of my hands was huge! Neither my mom nor I had no clue what was wrong with me, and actually thought it was kind of funny. Little old me, with one enormous hand.  I had to go to the hospital, and that’s where I learned what was going on with my body. All the organs around my stomach were going crazy, and as a result, my tummy looked huge! At first they thought I was in the fifth month of pregnancy...can you believe that?  I remember throwing up gross green liquid called bile.  Quite a hospitalization, all three weeks of it. I was 14-years-old then, so you can see that I've been dealing with this lupus thing for the past three years.

I spent my 15th birthday in the hospital back then, and during that time, about 70% of my hair fell out (as you might be able to see in the pictures, it's growing back now!) There I was, in a strange place on my birthday, and I had this tube down my nose to help clear the gook from my stomach, so I couldn’t even eat for a while.  Wouldn't you know, some of my friends brought me this awesome birthday cake.  I took one bite of it – my first bite of food in quite a while – and oh, my god, it tasted so bad!!! I think it was because of all the weird stuff going on with my stomach and my taste buds.  My friends and I laughed for so long about it.