You look sick: Adventures in Summer Camp

 If you don’t follow me on Instagram you are most likely unaware that this summer I resumed my scheduled job from last year, that I was hired for about a month or two before COVID took over our lives. What is that job, or more accurately, what was that job? That job, my dear readers, was a camp counselor at my local JCC for their arts and sciences camp. I lasted approximately five weeks working forty hours a week, which is more than half way through, but not the full eight weeks that camp runs. “Now why is that Max?” You might find yourself asking while reading this post. Ah well, despite the pandemic making me have a lack of colds and infections this past year, the struggle bus of chronic illness continues to move ever along its way. Since May in particular I have developed a plethora of new and exciting symptoms, though all rather vague. Bruises, nosebleeds, unnatural fatigue (we’ll talk about this more later) no matter how much sleep I get, night sweats, bone pain, lack of appetite, the list goes on and on. Over the course of camp they have gotten worse, too. Slowly multiplying. In the beginning when I was still with my group of adorable seven year olds I could function enough that they didn’t particularly notice, but after my group almost doubled in size and my symptoms continued to progress, I found myself exhausted, an almost mirror scenario of when my first grade teacher (both rounds of first grade in fact) called home saying that while the other children were out running and playing and having fun on the playground as children do, she would find me instead huddled up, curled into a ball, napping inside the classroom while my peers played. The JCC has a behavior specialist, who even noticed that by the half way point of camp when I was with my group of rambunctious small children one counselor and the cit would be playing a game such as tag or the favorite fishy fishy cross my ocean, while I would be sitting with the children who did not want to play the game, and would be curled into a ball with my head against my knees, wrapped up in the sweater I always carry to try and stay warm in the air conditioned room we would be in on rainy days. By the end of the first session with weeks one through four a camper came up to me at swim, and even they had noticed I was not well, asking me one day at swim out of nowhere “Max, are you sick? You look sick. You are pale and have dark circles under your eyes. What are the red dots on your arms *pokes at arms* do they hurt? Do you have COVID? What’s wrong with you???” While I calmly replied oh no everything is alright and ushered them back into the water that series of questions haunted my sleep for a number of nights after, because truthfully, I do not know, and if I did, I have no clue how it would be easily explained to a seven year old. For this past week, I was with a much more my speed group, the older group of visual arts campers. They understood my pop culture references, flaunt their various flags proudly, and have excellent music taste. I could use my arts skills with them, and they were self sufficient enough to walk to the bathroom by themselves. However, by the end of this week, even the “indoor cats” group became too tiring. I would go home each day and simply collapse, taking naproxen in the morning to dull the pain enough to function through the day, possibly taking a break to cry from pain at some point, have a snack, and return to the group. Yesterday, during a long appointment with complex care, we seem to be heading in some form of direction for further evaluation. Bloodwork was drawn, and while mostly normal yesterday, the previous labs from only a week or two were not, and so they will be repeated in a week or so while complex care consults with hematology. An ultrasound of my liver, gallbladder, and pancreas is to be scheduled, as is an urgent appointment with rheumatology, and possibly hematology/oncology. I resigned from camp today, officially my last day is this coming Tuesday, and then it will be a month of as many appointments as possible before August 20th and the weekend I fly off to school…granted I am well enough to go. I very much enjoyed camp, and I am sad to have to leave, but it is for the best I think. One simply cannot function like this for three more weeks. There is always next year, hopefully by then I will be feeling better and that summers adventures in summer camp will be more enjoyable.  

Until next time, Max