Part 1

“Matthew, can you count backwards in 3’s from 100 please? You won’t notice a thing”, the nurse said with a big smile on her face. The lights in the room were bright and Matthew pretended not to notice the doctor sticking a needle into his left elbow. “100, 97, 94, uhhh 91”, Matthew counted as the nurse gave him a big smile. Finally, when he was down to 13 the doctor announced, “I think we’re done here” and proceeded to cover up his arm where he had just given him the biopsy. Matthew was just glad that it was over and when he saw a bag of Doritos in the closet, the nurse decided to give it to him so that he could get his mind off of the procedure.


“I can’t believe it, he’s only 6!”, the doctor proclaimed as he looked over the blood tests. “How can he have this disease? There is such a small chance of someone getting it, let alone a child.” the nurse said, “Poor child, I just hope his body can fight it off.”


“Matthew? Matthew! Can you hear me right now? Oh gosh we have to get him to a hospital” yelled Matthew’s dad. He was a regular guy that worked a 9 to 5 office job, and when he found out a year ago that his son was diagnosed with dermatomyositis he wasn’t completely understanding of it’s implications. Now, as he called his wife downstairs so that they could take their son to the Children’s Hospital in Baltimore on a rainy Saturday afternoon he wondered why it had to have been his child.

The hour long ride seemed like forever as they traveled on the Interstate to get to Baltimore, and Matthew was feeling even weaker as he sat huddled in the back of the car. When they finally got there, he was moved to the children’s ward and the renowned arthritis specialist Dr. Smith was there to help Matthew. As he explained the effects of the dermatomyositis and how the skin would become inflamed as calcium built up at his joints in the hallway, Matthew was lying on a bed in the room, enjoying the newest Playstation 2 game that was out.


Part 2

“Nice to see you again, Matthew, any inflammations these last 6 months?”, Dr. Smith asked him. Matthew was getting tired of these biannual visits, ever since he had gotten off of the steroids that “cured” him he had gone to visit him in Baltimore an hour away. The days of having pills in his yogurt, applesauce, ice cream, or whatever other malleable thing his parents could provide for him for two years were ones that had a great effect on him.


He did not quite notice these changes, but his body was growing fatter and his vision started to get worse requiring him to get a pair of glasses. Even in the third grade, when the disease was finally leaving his body, he was too embarrassed to put on the glasses and was humiliated further by his chubby cheeks. But he was confident enough to talk to the other kids that he had known the years and they pretended not to notice the changes in his physical structure as he deteriorated.



Sitting on the soft, squishy bed that seem to be in every hospital room that he had been in, Matthew was very worried about what the nurse was about to do to him. He was going to have to take 6 shots because he had delayed taking 3 of them on time at his last visit to the doctor’s. In fact, this was his first appointment in 3 years with an actual children’s doctor seeing as he had spent so much time with his specialist Dr. Smith instead. However, before he got those shots, he would have to wait for 30 minutes as the doctor went through the usual measurements and questioning one thing she said garnered his attention. “Wow Matthew, you’ve dropped from the 92nd percentile to the 62nd percentile in weight since the last time I saw you” she had said after measuring his weight. This was around the same time that his dosage of the steroid Prednisone was being reduced but this barely registered to him and he thought nothing of it as he still had to take 6 shots later, including the dreadful tetanus shot.


However, looking back on it now, he was getting slimmer even faster than before with only small attempts to really change his weight. Maybe my body is getting back to normal Matthew thought to himself as he was no longer a chubby, insecure child. Of course he started to feel pains in his arm again and his joints started to become immobile and swollen, especially his left. A relapse? REALLY? Why me? I was just getting back to normal. These were all thoughts running through Matthew’s mind as he sat in bed crying from the pain. The calcium was pausing up again and it felt like heavy chunks in his arm were stuck in his elbow as only small amounts of pus would leave his body. His parents could only watch their son suffer that night until the next morning when they rushed him over to Baltimore for an emergency appointment with Dr. Smith. There, a crude but successful maneuver was pulled in a painful, hour long ordeal in which tears escaped Matthew’s eyes. I just want to be like other kids he thought to himself.



Only a year later, Matthew was a tall, skinny ninth grader who just wanted to blend in the crowd while he focused on his schoolwork. For the most part it worked but the tiny relapse and constant remarks about how skinny he was caused Matthew to want to build a shell to protect himself. Winter was coming, and he was glad for it too because the more that he had on him, the freer he felt. He didn’t have to hide anything because the clothing did the work for him and that was when he was happiest. What he dreaded was the spring before summer break when he would get questioning looks and intruding questions like “Oh my god, what is that thing on your arm? Why are you so bony??”. These types of things would always follow him as long as he felt insecure and now was the time to change it. With no relapses in over a year, and feeling more confident about himself than since he first got the diagnosis, Matthew wasn’t afraid of what his projected image towards others was as long as it was an optimistic one. Life is too short to worry about physical abnormalities, and he realized that if his friends really were his friends that he would have nothing to worry about.