Otsuka

I was diagnosed in 2004 at age 24. My father was diagnosed before me, but we hadn't had any test done before that. And I went out and felt a bit deflated and a bit sort of upset at the time. I phoned my dad and said, well, I've got it as well then. And sort of from then on I started to learn more about it. I think it's just important to be as positive, after the initial diagnosis, it doesn't affect everyone in that way, so that's important to remember that and just be positive about it and you need to be educated about it but not scared really. I think after seeing the doctors and everything I felt slightly more positive because I did take a bit more control over it in terms of making sure I got the blood pressure medication sorted out. There is still hope right? There is definitely. I suppose the worst diagnosis to have when you're walking out of a hospital so it could have been a lot worse but at the same time it was still a bit of a shock. It's like you have won the ticket to the wrong lottery. That's how I felt. But you know I was really happy in a sort of way because then I could manage my future. Was Christmas year, Christmas Day actually 2008, I was the only person in the whole wide world who had this disease and I was so young and I was all by myself at the hospital, New Year's Eve. I was sitting at the window, saw all these fireworks and it's like, what have I done? My life is over. Your life is over? Oh yeah, my life is over. What have I done? And you're still here, right? Yeah, I'm still here. Maybe three months after I got this disease, I was sent to a convent in Stockholm. And there was two fifty persons sitting in this audience, and all of them had their disease. And then I decided, oh, I'm not by myself. All of these have this. Because you're not alone. No. And it's, you can live with it. It's no hard. It's very manageable disease, isn't Yeah, it's just that you got it and you can still have an extremely good Yes, you can. I just continue to live my life. It was hard to accept that I was sick though, but when you accept respect it. It's your body and you live with it. Well I came to terms with it when I just heard it, focusing on the future. Okay, let's get married. I want to have children. I'm going to get myself on a low sodium diet. I want to lose some weight. I immediately started a low sodium diet and it gave me a sense of I'm in control. It was some sort of a support, know, to get eat And eating low sodium, it gave me a sense of, I can do something to postpone me being ill. There's so many delicious things you can still eat and have fun, you know. I was really being busy with nice things and that helped me and the thought helped me that hey, it's going to be, worse in thirty or forty years perhaps, let's say thirty, I can do two things. I can go and lock myself up and feel miserable for myself. And then I can look back and having been miserable for thirty years or I can live my life to the fullest and look back on a life where I've done everything I wanted and was happy.

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