Mermaid in sky

by Gjurgica Kjaeva, President of APH Moment Plus at Pulmonary Hypertension r. Macedonia and Female Wave of Change Wavemaker for Macedonia

“The only constant in life is change”-Heraclitus

This is how my story begun – the story of the mermaid who lives between two worlds and doesn’t belong to anyone.

Once upon a time, I was a woman, a Woman who was walking, climbing, singing, dancing…Later came some bad horror weather … I became mermaid…

Now I am a mermaid. A mermaid in the sky. I can’t walk any more, I can’t breathe anymore, because I need sea. I live in the sky; I’ll die if I don’t find the sea that is my home now. I need OXYGEN. Please give me the oxygen to live like a woman, not like a rare mermaid who is trapped in the sky breathless.

Yes, I am mermaid in the sky…

It all happened unexpectedly, during a typical winter’s day. The snow was falling beautifully and snowflakes were dancing. It was all magical, but for me it turned into a nightmare. Out of a sudden, I fell on the ground with a huge pain in my chest, losing my consciousness. I wasn’t aware of what was happening.

It felt like the whole world has crashed on me. As a twisted mirror – the same me, but now I have no strength, I can’t walk… 1, 2, 3… I’m breathing heavily; I can’t even take a breath. My nightmare has begun. When I was 33, my life has changed for 180 degrees. From an active and young woman, I turned into a disabled person whose disability is unnoticed until I start walking.

I am 40 now. I didn’t believe that I would ever turn 40 and that I would overcome the statistic of 2.8 years. I am living a totally different life. We all have dreams, but we don’t know what will happen in our lives and what is God plan for us.

Having rare disease is real challenge. Even though it was hard, I have learned how to live with my disease and to share my problems with my friends, my family. If it wasn’t for this disease, I would have never met all people who I know today, and even though I haven’t met some of them, I feel them as close to me. They are the reason I’m writing this story now.

I hope that soon there will be a cure for this severe disease and that there won’t be lost friends. This is a challenge for sure and a mission to live with. We should fight in order to raise awareness for Pulmonary Hypertension and to be equal in the society, because with a proper treatment we would have, to some degree, a more ‘normal life’ than a life that makes us lazy.

Changing my life, changed me in different ways. I see world differently, I think differently, I feel things differently. Sometimes even unwanted change gives us a positive impact on life. Great things never come from comfort zone.