Love is a disease

Chapter I

Disclaimer! I do not own any of the characters, they all belong to Shonda Rhimes and ABC.

I'm not a native speaker, so I'm sorry for any mistakes I may have.

I don't actually know much about medicine, given I'm just 14 y/o, so there's a probability that my medical explanations aren't accurate.

Thanks for reading.

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Life hasn't been exactly the best for her, not even as a baby, she was always in hospitals, either as a patient, or now, 27 years later, as a doctor. 

Her family didn't exactly know why she chose to be a surgeon, after being most of her life trapped in hospital beds, someone would think that she would hate them, but it was the opposite, it has always been hard to understand her autistic mind. Every chance she got as a child, she would read some medicine books since it was all the hospital had. 

At first she despised them, not because she hated medicine, she loved it for as long as she could remember, but because it reminded her of her mother, the woman who left her not even a week after she was born, the woman that didn't care enough to take care of her, she didn't really understand why she hated her own mother, she just knew she did.

At the age of twelve, she was able to forgive her, thinking it was the best thing it could have happened to her, if it wasn't for Ellis, she wouldn't have the incredible family she has; her two sisters and her parents, they were worth it. 

Yes, sometimes they were loud and would upset her, but the good moments she had with them would easily top that. She knew her mother was 'The Great Ellis Grey' and worked at some hospital in Boston, but she really didn't care.

After some time, she finally understood why Ellis left, and while it wasn't a good reason by any means, she didn't blame her, not anymore. The woman was centered in her career, just as much a Meredith was now, and she would be a huge obstacle for her mother to achieve that. It was clear from the start that taking care of her would be just as hard as an internship, except she would get even less sleep. 

Meredith was born with dextrocardia, it consists of the heart being pointed toward the right side of the chest, this made her lungs and abdomen organs to be a 'mirror image'. But as this apparently wasn't enough for her body, she also got ventricular septal defect and double outlet right ventricle, both very common things that came with dextrocardia, and as whoever who was up there watching everything seemed to hate her guts, she also was autistic.

Having dextrocardia led to have Kartagener syndrome, meaning the hairs in her nose that filter the air going in didn't work pretty well, this added to her low immune system wasn't a good combination, but the meds helped a lot with it, at least since she's old enough to take the stronger ones. 

A ventricular septal defect is a hole on the walls that divide the left and the right ventricle, hence the heart can't work properly, but as soon as the doctors discovered it, they went to surgery and fixed it, since the murmur was loud enough to tell it was a big hole, not a little one that can be fixed by itself.

And finally, double outlet right ventricle, there are two arteries connected to the heart, the pulmonary artery and the well known aorta, the pulmonary artery is supposed to be connected to the left ventricle, while the aorta goes with the right. But ORV means both of them are in the left ventricle, and the body just gets oxygen-poor blood.

Meredith thrilled whenever she got to explain these conditions during medschool, because no one would be able to understand them as much as she did. 

It was all fixed with seven surgeries during her first year of life. It's a miracle that her heart didn't fail, as her doctors said.

Then, in her childhood and adolescence, she fought different types of cancer and some heart attacks due to forgetting to take her meds (which was pretty rare since her autism made her have a specific routine that should be followed step by step), which she had to take three times per day: two pills in the morning, a shot after lunch and two more pills at night.

All of this: the surgeries, the chemos, radiation, tests. All of that wouldn't had been worth surviving if it wasn't for her family or her best friend, Jackson. They met when they were both nine years old. Catherine Avery was visiting the hospital to do a surgery, and she took her son with her, he got lost and when Susan found him, crying in a hallway, she took him with her to Meredith's room and paged a nurse, hoping she could find the boy's parents.

Both kids bonded pretty fast and ever since, they are like siblings, they made plans to see each other every weekend, it was helpful when Meredith was low due to the chemos. Catherine started to pay for almost all of Meredith's medical needs, even though the Grey family could afford it, she saw the little girl like a daughter and was willingly up to help her.

As she was sick most of the time, she had school from home, it wasn't quite easy and it made her social skills to be almost non-existent, but it was the only option since she was sick most of the time, and school wasn't safe, because of the bullying she would suffer for being too small for her age (a dextrocardia consequence) and being autistic doesn't help either, besides, all of the virus those kids may have wouldn't do any good, specially in the flu season, even a common cold was a reason to have her admitted at the hospital.

Once she chose to study medicine, Catherine tried to convince the Dartmouth professors about give her private lessons in the house they would rent in Hanover, but it didn't work. They started a treatment to make her immune system stronger, and this time, it worked just a tad more. Still, Meredith was a good part of her time in med school. 

It was then that she met Amelia Shepherd, she was her roommate, even though she was in her third year of medical school. They became best friends soon and the brunette was always defending Meredith from the jerks that insisted that she shouldn't be studying medicine. When Amelia met Jackson, all of them would do sleepovers or have 'parties', although it was just the three of them since Meredith didn't really know anyone else. 

Meredith woud never change anything, even if she knew it would make her life a lot easier, it also meant that she wouldn't have her sisters, or her friends. And she would't be working at the Mass Gen, the hospital she had always dreamt about. 

......

I changed the hospital so that the doctors don't know who Meredith is since she spent almost all her life at Seattle Grace, but the main characters of the show will be at it, except for Richard, but he still appears in the story.

Meredith's autism might be closer to AuDHD rather than just autism, but I'm using my own experinces. 

This is pretty short, but it's just a little explanation about Meredith's Life.