Hello monsieur blog! It’s me again. I just got back from school.

We had PE today. I had to sit out again because we were playing dodge ball. It looks really fun, but I couldn’t join in because of my disease. I want to run around and I want to play rough like the others, but I can’t because of my ‘delicate’ health. It makes me feel different. Out of place. I’m okay most of the time because we have classes, but during PE… I feel so alienated from everyone. My classmates don’t notice though. At the start of the year, they gave me weird looks when I just watched from the sidelines. But they got used to me sitting out, and never gave it a second thought. I know they don’t mean to be spiteful but I can’t help but feel hurt that they forgot about my existence so quickly.

Anyway… During art, I cut my finger.

The dreaded carving tools.

We were lino printing, and I sliced my finger with the carving tool. It really hurt, but what really concerned me is that I wouldn’t stop bleeding. Everyone was staring at me with revulsion and fascination. It was so embarrassing! I’m sure my face turned 50 different shades of red. Especially since the substitute teacher was going crazy. She was on the verge of hyperventilating. I tried to calm her down, tell her that this was normal for me, that I just needed an infusion and I would be okay. But she didn’t believe me. I was just standing there while she ran around being useless. I could hear people snickering quietly, and whispering to each other how I was always causing so much drama. It spread like ripples across water, and then the whole class was laughing at me. I nearly cried. I knew my mum was going to be furious that I hadn’t been careful. But now people were laughing at me at something I couldn’t control! It was so stupid. I didn’t choose to have haemophilia. It wasn’t my fault that I bled continuously if I cut myself. I would’ve given them a right piece of my mind, but I was too busy trying to calm my teacher down (albeit in vain). I eventually convinced her to let me go up to the front office and get an infusion. But I’ll never forget the laughter that followed me on the way out.

Prolonged bleeding is a sign of haemophilia, if you haven’t already picked up on that. I’m sure you curious readers would like to know what other symptoms are, right? Well, some other ones include:
• Easy bruising
• Abrupt bleeding from the nose or mouth
• Spontaneous external bleeding (called ‘bleeds’)
• Internal bleeding
• Joint bleeding (hemarthrosis)
• Blood present in urine (hematura)
• Blood present in stools
• Fever, skin discolouration and pain accompanied with swelling under skin/between muscles

I can’t stop thinking about the art class incident. I heard the names the things they called me. Bloody Zoë, Little Red, Wannabe Emo. I don’t understand. Why did they do that? Have they been doing it all this time? I mean… I’m used to them just ignoring me. But I’ve never heard them call me names. Not once.

It’s really nice that I have you to talk to. I don’t really have anyone to talk to at school. I think they’re afraid of me, or something. They know that I have haemophilia. It’s not contagious. I can’t spread it. But they still handle me like I’m a bomb that’s about to blow them all sky high. They’re all friendly enough, but they don’t like being near me. I can tell by their expressions – that half-smile, half-grimace that screams ‘I don’t want to talk to you but I will because I’m nice.’

Labels: haemophilia, symptoms