To all of our family and friends, Thank You!
Thank you for worrying about me and my mystery illness. I have had many calls, texts and emails from you asking how I'm doing and what you can do for me. It's really very humbling to have so many willing to do so much for me and my family.
I've really tried to keep this quiet becuase, really, there are many people I know going through things much harder than this, but lately I have really had to rely on family & friends, and I so appreciate all the help we have had from everyone.
Because this blog is really our family journal, and to make updating everyone easier on me, here's what is going on. . . So forgive me if you don't really want an update. . . it's for posterity!
Also, I thought by sharing, someone might come across this blog and maybe have some insight as to what this mystery illness could be. . . please feel free to share.
For about the last two years or so, I have periodically gotten sick. No big deal. It had happened frequently enough, however, that I noticed a little bit of a pattern to it and thought perhaps it was food poisioning. I tried keeping track of everything I ate to see what might trigger it.
I can always tell when it's coming on because it always starts the exact same way. . . upset stomach, burps that taste like rotten eggs, and a few quality hours spent in the bathroom. Within about 24 hours, I'm feeling fine, but completely exhausted. It honestly takes me about three days to fully recover and get enough energy to function again.
Normally, that's it. And then a few months later, it'll hit again. However, starting at the end of October, it hit me over and over and over again. One episode right after another - starting again anywhere from 7 to 10 days after the last episode. That makes recovery very difficult, as you can imagine. So, after getting it on Thanksgiving and then again just seven days later, I had run out of patience for this little evil bug inside me . . . I finally turned to my sweet, intelligent, loving, kind & hard-working hubby and informed him that if he didn't sit down and start trying to figure out what was going on with me (it is, after all, what he does for a living) I was going to take my co-pay elsewhere!!!
Now of course, he was concerned and had been trying to figure it out for a while, but we had just kind of hit a wall. He ordered some lab work and blood tests and when they all came back negative and normal, it was time for the specialist to step in. To make a long story a little bit shorter, I had some really horrible not-so-fun prep on New Years Day for a couple of not-so-fun scopes. My wonderful parents took the girls while Chad took me to the surgical center. I felt peace going into my procedures thanks to a blessing Chad and my dad gave me minutes before. Thank heavens for Priesthood blessings! After I woke up from my scopes the Dr. came in to talk to us. Knowing Chad's profession, he relayed a bunch of info to Chad in some foreign language that I think they call "Medical Talk" or something like that. . . and basically it boiled down to "everything looks great!" Exactly what I wanted to hear, but not really what I needed to hear! I wanted to hear some kind of diagnosis of some sort so we could move on. It's so frustrating being sick so much, but I think it's much harder not knowing why.
We scheduled some more tests for this next week and a follow-up appointment for next.
Hopefully something will come out of these next two weeks!
I'll keep you posted, but that's about the latest for now.
It's really a wonderful thing to have such good family and friends!
Thank you again for all of your help, calls and prayers. Prayers were defintely answered as I was not sick for our Christmas trip to California!
I am so grateful to know I have a caring Father in heaven who answers prayers and reminds us daily of how much He loves us.
