The girl in the graffiti shirt

My Santa Cruz graffiti shirt stuck out like a sore thumb amidst numerous senior citizens with walking sticks and wheelchairs as we all sat in the waiting area. While I am no detective, it seems this new doctor does not get patients like me often.

“May hinihintay ka ba ’nak?” A passerby asked.

“Wala po.”

“Lola mo ba, ’asa loob?”

“Hindi naman po.” I chuckle half-heartedly.

“Nasa maling floor ka ’ata, iha! Pang-rayuma mga nandito eh!”

“Ay, nakapila po talaga ako.”

Oddly enough, this 18-year-old pseudo-skater girl’s visit to the fourth floor was long overdue.

I silently winced in pain on a rainy morning in November 2020 while anticipating my left knee to crumble at any given moment. It was a secret yoga session in my room, and the crow pose I practiced for months was uncharacteristically painful. My mind raced with thoughts, questioning if I was lacking sleep, having a bad day, or overexercising. Though, not once did it consider the possibility of chronic illness.

In a matter of weeks, my knees were so weak that I needed to sit down and rest every 10 minutes of walking. It came to a point that I grew jealous of the seniors walking outside my village with dumbbells in both hands while I, at the ripe age of 15, shopped for walking canes on Facebook Marketplace.

The pain yelled “TOUCHDOWN!” journeying throughout my body, and what started in my left knee traveled to the right, then to both knees, then to my wrists, then to my neck, then to my feet. And so on. And so forth.

The search for a proper consultation felt impossible since most doctors only consulted online. I fulfilled each test they asked me to, spending weeks worrying my x-rays would reveal that my bones had fossilized or my lupus test would turn out positive. Yet, no matter how much we spent, I was met with the same line every time: “’Nak, wala naman akong nakikitang problema sa ’yo.”

Was it so wrong for me to think there was even a problem?

I spent nearly two years without a proper diagnosis. However, it was not my inability to exercise that was the worst, nor was it the tedious process of adjusting my knee-support pillow tower now and then. What drove me insane was my inability to hold my pencils due to wrist pain. So, I played trial and error with my exercise and diet, hoping to mend myself better than a doctor could. Uncertainty.

I once asked my teacher if I could voice record my final essay because typing hurt my wrists too much. That was my worst January thus far. The past two months meshed together in one “nothing routine,” where I would wake up, go to class, and learn nothing, do nothing, and go to bed. The only pillars that kept me sane at the height of quarantine were drawing, writing imaginary film scripts I never finished, and learning the guitar and ukulele. Sure, I was never crazy skilled at them, but I enjoyed them regardless. Now these hobbies, often associated with the most sedentary lifestyles, demanded too much physically for me to do any of them.

There was a futile attempt to replace these activities with video game live streams, and obscure puzzle game speed runs to quell my hyperactive brain. However, none of them compared to the joy of finishing a painting or the rush of learning to play a new song on its release day. All these I took for granted and only realized how big a part of my life they were when I lost them. For the entirety of January, I would end each day requesting God to put me to sleep forever should I never draw or play guitar again.

It was a world without art and music. Ennui.

I was directionless for most of my senior high life, considering taking up sociology just because. Yet, I wasted so much time blind to my passion for the arts and decided this was the only road I would enjoy taking. No longer would I wait for the magical diagnosis before acting on it; it was not as if abstaining from drawing and playing the guitar made me feel better anyway.

So I took the risk, teaching myself to work ergonomically for my naive dream to draw once again. I wanted to be a fine arts student. Every detail mattered as I sharpened my pencils like knives, meticulously angled my drafting table, and altered the height of my chair to reduce my joint pains. Every exercise I did targeted the parts that felt the weakest, and in moments of discomfort, I cried (like a normal person) but remembered my past monotonous rut. No way am I ever going back there.

It took several trips to various doctors and unresponsive medicines spanning two years before I found myself on the fourth floor, where my rheumatologist finally diagnosed me: Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. I just turned 18 recently, though, and have graduated to regular rheumatoid arthritis. I am incredibly grateful to share that my treatment has been going well and that I now have someone to help me safely navigate this illness.

If you told me in January 2021 that I would study fine arts and play guitar in a music organization two years later, I would lay in shock and probably never recover. Still, I owe this chronic condition for pushing me in the right direction. Movement.

Maybe one day I could thank it properly and bid it farewell.

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Yen Road, 18, is currently preoccupied with thoughts of art, music, or bread. She is studying fine arts at Ateneo de Manila University.