georgianna, kidney stones, TMJ

Welcome to my page. I'm so glad that you came to visit and to learn about the sort of person I am. To begin with, I was very small when I was born, and that caused a lot of problems, I'm told. Problems like TMJ (that's temporal- mandibular-joint syndrome...what it really is is a royal pain in the jaw, and on top of that, it often makes my face all swollen). I also have very serious and very very puzzling kidney problems. My kidneys make these awful stones that try to come out. Do they ever hurt on their trip from my body! Right now I am a "mystery" to doctors and nothing seems to help except surgery. I've had lots of operations, and as you might imagine, they aren't a great deal of fun!

I love to collect post cards and have fun with my family...to draw and to take pics...to babysit and to collect girlie stuff like dolls and beanies, even though I just graduated from high school and am looking forward to college. I love to read and write and particularly enjoy e-mailing friends on the kidtalk list (that's for all kids with kidney problems, like me). I love all of those things. In fact, I'm a pretty loving person all around.

Last year at school was really tough because kids would make fun of me since I had to go to the bathroom a lot. I used to be able to ignore them but this year was very hard. I guess it was because I felt sick more often than I had in the past. What a pain! It was also really embarassing to have to let all my teachers know that I was different from my classmates. It made me a teacher's pet for the wrong reasons...I just hated being treated differently. If I were in charge I would make sure nobody was teased. In fact, I think that I would kick out all the kids who made fun of others.

I love my friends. I met some of them on the computer through kidtalk and I have a lot of them now at home. We can really talk and that helps a lot. My friend Ben also has kidney problems and he supports me a lot. In fact, we are like brother and sister now....I can trust him that he won't tell all, if you know what I mean. Here we are at graduation. When I can "talk to a friend" about 'kidney stones' and how many problems they cause, it helps so much!

I do tell people what sorts of problems I have...I really don't mind. I do not like it when people feel sorry for me, though. I just don't like being treated special and things like that. For instance, I can't eat things that everyone else can eat, sooo they always have to fix me something special. I am so embarassed about it. Everybody tells me to "enjoy it"...this being treated special, like it was cool or something. I don't think it is.

What I DO think is cool is the fact that you're reading my story. Hope that you'll let me know what you think of it!

Have a wonderful day! Georgianna

Here I am with my sweet kitty
Merry Christmas!

To the frog ponds