My somewhat condensed history

I'm writing this for anyone who might not be familiar with what has been going on with me for the past few years. If you already know all this, then feel free to skip this entry because I'm going to write another one to update you all on what happened at my doctor's visit yesterday.

I thought I would go into some detail on my medical issues on here & explain how things have gotten to this point. But honestly, I only have the energy to give the very condensed version and honestly even that is not as condensed as I’d like. Here goes: Basically, I’ve been through the medical wringer – being bounced from specialist to specialist for years. I’ve been diagnosed with severe allergies, recurrent kidney stones, narcolepsy, heart problems/cardiac issues, dysautonomia (malfunction of the autonomic nervous system), and others I either can’t recall or don’t care to. My husband, M, told me 3 and a half years ago that I should quit work because my health was going downhill. He wanted us to focus on finding out what was “really going on”. It seemed to us that it couldn’t be “mere coincidence” that all of these things were going on. It would make more sense if there were one underlying root cause and that all these “diagnoses” were really just symptoms of something larger. Of course, what could we possibly know, we were just the ones living with it day in & day out – ha!

We tried all the medications and all the strange diets and basically did whatever the doctors told us, but I ended up having more symptoms or existing symptoms would get worse. Through much prayer and following where we felt God was leading us we found another doctor. He thought I might be dealing with Lyme disease and he ran some lab tests that were a bit more rare. That was back in late January and the results came in a month later. While my Lyme tests were “indeterminate” the other tests did show that I basically have a chronic case of mononucleosis and that my immune system is compromised and not functioning like it should. This was no surprise to me. I already had blood tests that showed my immune system was weak. But the one test this doctor ran that really stuck out to me was a special stain of my red blood cells. It showed that I have a bacteria living on and in my red blood cells. The picture showed a bacteria that looked like mycoplasma or hemobartonella. Bartonella is a co-infection of Lyme disease. The doctor said all of the results seemed to him to be “highly suggestive of late-stage or chronic Lyme disease”. He said he wanted to send me to a clinic in Kansas City to see a doctor who specializes in diagnosing and treating chronic illnesses. Unfortunately, even though we called to make the appointment in late February, the soonest we could be seen is June 10th – June 12th.

On the POSITIVE note, we knew people who had been there, who had seen this specialist, and by all accounts had received what we consider to be miraculous healing and recovery. When we talked to people who had been there we learned this doctor views the body as a WHOLE and believes, like M & I do, that one part of the body can’t malfunction without affecting the other systems in the body. We just KNEW that this was the doctor we were meant to see and felt like God had intervened in many ways to get us there! THANK YOU LORD!

However, any of you that know me can attest to the fact that I am NOT a patient person by nature. The idea of waiting almost 4 months seemed unfathomable. However, I prayed about it all. Without God’s help I would be a basket case by this point, but I’m not. Of course, I have to pray every day for patience and some days are worse than others, but I’m working on it!!!

For now I will say that my some of my more difficult symptoms are my heart issues, exhaustion, muscle weakness and loss of some muscle control, difficulty with speech and with thoughts, pain (both muscle and bone/joint pain) and my central nervous system that just can’t seem to handle much of anything from noise, to excitement, to sadness. Anything sets me off and I have no idea when it will hit or what will cause it. The one that has been the most difficult for me to deal with is feeling like I am losing my intellect. I have to search for words that used to be part of my daily vocabulary. I have a hard time conveying ideas verbally and now even when I type. I never can tell if things I write are really making sense, so I just pray that God gets whatever point across that He wants me to make. All of this is difficult but I know it is all part of a much BIGGER plan that God has for my life and I TRUST that His plan is much better than the one I had! If you have any specific questions about any of this you can comment & ask & I’ll do my best to answer.