One Year Later. 2014.

Around this time last year I was planning a surprise party for my dear friend Rachel and I was revelling in the fact that for the first time in over five years I would not be in hospital or on treatment for Christmas. I would be at home with my family. It had been a funny few months. That September the idea to come to Columbia University had occurred. It was at a release party for Meave Binchy's Irish Times columns and a conversation with some kind hearted creative minds that made the impossible seem possible. The next morning, while cleaning my room, I found myself suddenly unable to lift the duster. Somehow my body had locked in place and any slight movement forward meant severe bolts of pain shot through my upper chest. I curled downward in a ball searching with one outstreached hand for the phone. I knew what it was, My mom on the other end of the phone knew what it was, but I needed her to tell me it probably wasn’t that. The last time my lung collapsed – two years earlier -  it was transplant and death talk. But I had kept working. I wrote all sorts of things and stayed focused and that is how I stayed alive. Now I was out of that situation, I had hoped anyway, and I was one month on this new combination trial. I would not go backwards. I could not. Lying in bed, unable to move, for the next few weeks the pain killers blurred my mind and made communication interesting to say the least. I thought about New York. There was a video online that adverstised Columbia University, it’s where an author who attended here calls it ‘doubled magic’, It talks about the rectalinear boundaries and illuminates walkways with artificial light in a kind of time lapse that shoots possibility from the screen. I talked to a writer I knew who went here. They gave me hope. I got through it. My lung reinflated. I got to Christmas. I was ready to apply to University. The surprise party happened – my favourite people all together again and so full of love and boundless creativity carried with them from their new homes abroad so that when we came together the love magnified. A few days after the party, two days before New Years Eve, I got a cold. 48 hours later I was admitted to hospital. One day later I was delirious. My body sweated out it’s insides for days. I threw up, bled, emptied and shook. People wore white masks and white gowns to tend to me. Only close family were allowed. I wrote mindlessly when I was not staring, drooling at Netflix. Thank God for The Good Wife.  Six days in I had a conversation with a medical team member who told me it was Swine Flu. She reminded me that if I could have a semi coherent conversation with her I could write my admissions essay. Of course she was right. I couldn't really see how it came out at the time. I was jacked up on everything. I wrote about Just Kids by Patti Smith. Every word shook, every word felt like a mountain. My temperature was sky high. Nurses brought coffee. Toast. I sucked melon. I threw it all up. Panted at the screen. Typed. The lines were violin strings taught along my spine.  It looked ok. While this was happening , across the world, my friends, my exceptional  friends, were typing up my articles and columns into the correct format so I could imput them on the system. Because the downloads were not a suitable format and I had barely enough strength to type the admissions essay.  I sent it all in 29 minutes before the application deadline.Together we did it. Days later the temperatures stopped. And the week before I left the hospital I think I changed from the placebo drug, on the drug trial, to the real deal.  It’s been almost a year and instead of having intravenous antibiotics every six weeks I have had them  but three times this year. One of those was due to travel exhaustion after insane delays I would argue under normal circumstances it wouldn’t have been needed and the other a precautionary back up pre the long, risky flight to America. It’s now December 16^th  and the first semester at Columbia is over. And I got through it. It was rough but it is done. And I have made some wonderful friends and felt all kinds of newness. I got here because of hard work and because of the hard work of others. Because of the incredible generosity of others, of so many people who gave on so many levels to allow me live my dream. Here I am at 27 and I am still alive. And every single day I try to stop, to breathe, and to process the sheer beauty of being on this journey. I am so grateful for life. Thank you thank you thank you.