Gardasil.

For me, everything started a few days after I got the vaccination. I woke up one day, choking, unable to breathe. I was feeling ready to pass out. So my parents took me to a hospital. I was stabilized, kept overnight and sent home, just like that. No tests, no medications, no explanations as to why that could have happened.

It all just kept getting worse after that.

First it was just troubles with breathing (which were dismissed with "well, she's breathing now" by every doctor), nausea, feeling faint. Then it progressed to more choking, hyperventilating, panic attacks and soon enough I was getting panic attacks every day, sometimes as many as four times a day.

Then the depression came. This is going to be hard to talk about, as it still triggers a lot of anxiety and depression in me, but I will try my best to tell as much as I can.

Going to psychologists and psychiatrists didn't help at all. All they ever told me was to "take a relaxing bath", "light some nice smelling candles" and "go out with friends". I tried all those things, I tried every single thing they told me to try and yet none of them worked. Still, they didn't seem to care about that and kept telling me to try again and again.

Many times I've been told to "think about all the people that have it worse than me" and many times they laughed after I expressed my thoughts or feelings about a certain topic.

They were late to every appointment, talked about everything with a passive attitude, as if I was exaggerating and making everything up. One of the doctors at a hospital said to my parents that the reason all this is happening to me is because I'm "troubled", and she said it even though I was in the room. Another doctor stood by my hospital bed as I screamed and cried in pain because of back spasms and watched me for about ten minutes before just walking away. I didn't receive any help at that time, no painkillers, nothing. I just stayed in my bed until the spasms passed. A few months later Dad and I went to that same doctor for a check up and, as he flipped casually through my medical file, he said "I don't have any record of pain written down here from that time" and shrugged his shoulders.  Another doctor, a substitute for one of my psychologists, was somehow convinced that my parents were abusing me regardless of the fact that I told him that wasn't the case every time we met for an appointment.

Every doctor we went to dismissed us and tried to get rid of us.

Overall I just felt useless, hopeless, broken. I felt guilty, like all that was happening was my fault somehow. When I didn't feel like crying my eyes out, I felt completely nothing and sat still, staring off into space.

The amount of times I imagined myself dying is terrifying. I was scared of myself. I was scared that I will lose control and start screaming and breaking everything around me from all the pain, terror and anger. I was angry. I was really angry. Angry that my feelings were so easily dismissed, as if they were something you can pick up, explore for a little while and toy with a little, before being thrown out into the trash.

When it comes to physical symptoms...there were a lot. There still are, they still come back every so often.

There were hallucinations of a girl named Trillion that hit me and called me vulgar names. There were episodes where my body would switch itself off and I'd be left unable to move, speak, swallow, blink and yet still able to feel and hear everything around me. That could last from ten minutes to eight hours. My legs would become paralyzed, which could last from thirty minutes to four days.

I couldn't go out at all. Not unless I wanted to get an anxiety attack so bad I would have to return home within half an hour of being out of the house. Being around people made me anxious, it still does.

Once I felt so bad, so depressed, so angry, that I cut into my arm with a needle. I regretted doing that instantly. I still get an urge to do it, though it's faint.

I genuinely had to will to live. I wanted to disappear. I just wanted for all that to stop.

Now, though, I can without a doubt say that I am a lot better after a few months of taking homeopathy remedies than I was after two years of taking anti-depressants.

-          Lidia  (16)