It's not okay

This post has been half written for a bit due to me stressing over a long string of tests, and finally (At 4:11 am on Monday morning...) I wanted to finish it.

Although 5th grade is really where problems started, things slowly worsened from there.

In sixth grade, I was completely asymptomatic for the majority of the year, with an odd "attack" occurring every now and then, but to a manageable extent. I thought at this point, it was still my previous diagnosis of Cocksackie. Whenever I had a spell of feeling lightheaded or dizzy, I'd ask to be excused and go to the nurse, but that was very rare. I still had never witnessed anything like that attack in fifth grade...until a day towards the end of the year.
I was sitting in Social Studies with one of my favorite teachers. I remember we were mapping regions in Africa and nothing was any different. Suddenly, the room began to spin. My heart began to race, my breathing was labored, and I began to shake violently. I raised my hand quite panicked and asked...or rather demanded... I head to the nurses office. As I got up to leave the room, I started to stumble and clearly couldn't walk in a straight line. The teacher noticed and immediately ran to my side to make sure I didn't collapse and brought me to a desk sitting to the side of the door. She stopped the class and ran for the nurse. The nurse came down and prodded with questions and, not knowing what to do, called my mother to come pick me up from the classroom. When she arrived, I was dazed and still wobbly, but improving. We ended up heading straight back to my doctor whom dismissed it as a recurring symptom. I still didn't understand, even at that age, how something from a year ago could have the same debilitating effect on me now. The year ended with only one or two additional small attacks.

Then 7th grade began...Probably the most significant point in my story so far, and the most difficult.
Again, the school year started out as normal as any other year. However, now those "small flare ups" were happening much more often. And when I say much more, I mean starting from 2 a month to 3-4 a week. The symptoms were the same but now the attacks would last much longer.
At the beginning of the year, I'd probably go to the nurse's office about once a week and lay down until the symptoms passed. After one week, the attacks would become more severe and eventually becoming exponentially more difficult to bare and culminating with a total of 102 days in the nurses office in a single year (I sadly remember this number when I asked one of the nurses the number of times I was in their log). However, this was far from the real issue. The real issue was I had no idea what was going on with me and the previous diagnosis held no merit. I didn't know what to think, but I know I couldn't take it any longer. Even worse, the teachers no longer believed I was truly having these symptoms. I was told on more than a dozen occasions I could not be excused to go to the nurse. Eventually, they ended up having a meeting with my parents and claimed I was making up my symptoms and I was simply trying to get out of class.

Looking back on this, I can't blame them. As anyone who knows me today is aware of, I am quite loud and outspoken. I hardly ever can be seen without a smile on my face or cracking some smart-ass remark, and the teachers would see this side of me daily. The problem with this was, the second I'd have an attack, that Jesse would completely disappear and I would go into panic mode. How could anyone expect someone to go from one extreme to the other in such a rapid manner and not be faking it? Oh, right, panic attacks! Because they stopped allowing me to go to the nurse, I become afraid to confront the attacks any longer (Which at this time were only happening in the school). I made up every excuse I could to get out of school...Constipation, saying I vomited, claiming I was sick and becoming VERY good at acting like I was. Eventually, my parents no longer accepted these excuses and when the attacks continued, we returned to my pediatric physician, who decided there must be something else going on...And finally referred me to a Neurologist at Salem Hospital.