Birthday gift?

"I'm gonna be a year older tomorrow!" I thought to myself. I was so excited. Birthdays are days I really look forward to and considering all that has happened to me this particular year, especially the surgery I had three weeks prior to the day, I was looking forward to the warmth and love and outpouring of goodwill I will receive tomorrow.

I couldn't sleep, adrenaline was pumping furiously into my system.
Tic, Toc, Tic, Toc, went the clock as I busied myself with putting my room in order in preparation of the many guests I expected to receive.

Yay!!! It's 12a.m. The goodwill messages started coming in with my mother leading as she showered me with prayers. I received a lot of messages and calls and was beaming with joy thinking in my heart "this is the best day ever, what can possibly go wrong on this beautiful day? Nothing, absolutely nothing".

Finally, I managed to get 2 hours of sleep by putting off my phone. When I woke up, I had a slight headache which I promptly dismissed as fatigue or a result of sleeplessness. I did my chores and proceeded to hang out with a couple of friends.

On the way back home, the heavens were opened and I was drenched; I took it all in stride saying to my friends "even God sends His greetings".

Countdown to 7p.m, the shivering started and headache reloaded. One of my friends had to volunteer to stay back with me overnight "just in case".

I have a vague recollection of what went on throughout the night but I do remember that a bag was packed for me and I was taken to the pack to be sent home. It turned out my mom has been called to wait for me at the pack at home.

Immediately I alighted from the bus, I was literally carried across the road and gingerly placed in my mom's car. This was the beginning of the end for me.

I was taken to the clinic where we get treatments, there, many tests were run on me. When the tests results came out and was brought to the doctor's office, he read it and looked up at my mom, uttering those horrific words I've only ever heard in movies "thank God you brought her in in good time, otherwise the story by the end of today may be different". He then told my mom that I'd have to be referred to a specialist hospital.

I was in daze when I was catheterized, carried to the ambulance and driven to the teaching hospital some towns away. On arrival, I went through another series of tests.

She has septicaemia, we were informed. Good for me septicaemia was curable. I was then placed on a strict diet and enough drugs to last a small village in my state of origin for a month.

Every two days, I had to report in. I wasn't getting any better, that much was clear to all and sundry. I became somewhat of a lab rat; "try this test, let's place her on these drugs, she should stop eating this or that."

After months of these, my ESR result was still out of these world, I couldn't breathe in or out without a sharp knife stabbing my chest, I couldn't sit nor lay down, the pain was too unbearable.

"I just want to die, please let me go. I can't take this pain any longer" I'd sometimes tell my family and mostly God. I sometimes took overdose just to end my life. I became a skeleton, a shell of myself. I lost my light along with my weight.

Then one day, the pain was gone and I was healed again but the damage has been done, what started as a slight headache cost me 3 years of my life. I had to start all over....

This is a story I'm not so keen to tell. This feels like therapy, thank you @bycoleman