On the last day of fifth grade, I made sure everyone signed my yearbook, after all, I had just completed elementary school. While my friends wrote "HAGS" (Have A Great Summer) and teachers wrote well wishes, someone put a bandaid in my yearbook and drew a smiley face on it. The culprit was my school nurse, someone who most kids didn't like, and yes, she did have an attitude, but I spent so much time there that I guess I got used to it.

Sometimes we have our off days, we're nauseous, have a headache, just feel down in the dumps. For me, it seems like that almost everyday. Since I can remember, there's always been something wrong on each day.

In first grade, my mom was the library mom for the week for my class. I told her I didn't feel well and she said I was fine. Needless to say, when they announced her name over the intercom system and told her to come to the nurse's office, things weren't peachy keen. After throwing up on every lunchbox of the kids in my class, I was being sent home. I'm not sure how they handled that messy situation, but I knew I was sick.

In third grade, I always had headaches. Sinus headaches, migraines, normal headaches, you name them and I had them. It got so bad that I would sit in class with what my pediatrician called a "headache journal." I would write down every last detail of my headache -- where I felt the pain, when it started, when it ended, and any other symptoms that went along with it. Somewhere along the line I got bored and stopped filling it out. I'm not sure what she was trying to look for, but I gave up. I still get headaches, probably three to four times a week.

Just when you thought I couldn't get worse, I went to sleep away camp. I spent 10 summers there both as a camper and finally a counselor, and let's just say I got very close with the infirmary staff and the parents who came up for a week at a time to be doctors.

In the summer of 2006, I went with camp to our annual trip to the Wayne County Fair, just a short five minute drive from camp. On a hot summer day, nothing is better than a milkshake, so that's what I went for. I think I took two sips before it hit me and I had to run to the disgusting shack that they called bathrooms. That's when I realized that for the whole summer whenever I had dairy I would get ill. I came home and told my mom and dad that I was lactose intolerant and my dad thought it was me just complaining again. Lactaid, a stupid little white pill that's an enzyme, costs around $18 a box. Now it was something that we could definitely afford, but my dad was not having it. He took me out to dinner at a hibachi place where everything is smothered in butter. Needless to say when I spent the rest of the night and the following morning getting sick, he believed me.

Even in high school and college, my continuous loop of not feeling well continued. I found out that I have GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease), which explained why I was living on Tums and always nauseous. A month into my freshman year at college I ended up in the E.R. because student health thought my gallbladder needed to come out. Sophomore year, I spent five hours waiting in the emergency room just to be treated for food poisoning and dehydration.

Moral of the story, if you ask me how I'm feeling, there's a good chance there's something up, but that's OK. I'm used to it by now.