Health Crisis

January 15, 2019
I traveled to Chicago because my sister was in labor. When I got there her BD was there. He stayed for a few hours then left. His mom came and stayed for a few hours then left. During this time we fast and pray for 21 days at my church so I wasn't eating until after 7pm. As I got up to walk to the cafeteria I felt a pain in my left calf. I walked and walked and it got worse and I could barely put my foot down on the floor without excruciating pain. I got back to the room, said a prayer and tried to fall asleep. The pain didn't go away so I took a Tylenol. My niece was born the next morning and the Tylenol worked. I didn't feel the pain anymore. When I got back home I went straight to my doctor's office. They scheduled an appointment for me an hour later and she sent me to the hospital to get an ultrasound done on my leg. Yep, I had a DVT.

I was relieved to find out what was wrong, but also concerned. I had a PE in 2004 after my daughter was born. This DVT was nothing to be passe about. My doctor ordered a blood thinner and when I went to the pharmacy to pick it up my insurance had been cancelled so I had to be on the phone for hours getting that taken care of. It was crazy. After clearing up the insurance issue, the pharmacist wanted to charge me about $600 for the medicine. She said because I have a deductible that hadn't been met I the insurance company was only paying for a portion of the medicine so I had to sign up for a prescription program. It was a whole mess.

On January 25 I had a doctors appt with a hematologist. He was reviewing my chart and he kept saying that my condition was acute. I agreed. But he kept saying it and then he said this was long term and that I'd need to be on medication forever. I disagreed and said, not it's an acute problem and it will go away. Then he corrected himself and said no it's not acute, it's chronic. He ordered blood test and sent me on my way.

When the test results came back it said that I have lupus anticoagulant.

This sounds really scary, but basically it means that there is a blood clotting disorder. Of course I've always resisted this diagnosis and sometimes I even forget to take my medication.

In March I started having heart palpitations. I had gone to work out on Monday and by Wednesday the heart palpitations had not stopped. I felt fine, just heart palpitations. So I called the hematologist and he said to go to the ER.

WHAT? I was fine, so I ran a few errands and went to the ER. When I got there, it was packed with people. I guess we had a lot of people with the flu. So I sat in the ER and as I sat I was attacked. It was a demonic attack. My started getting really hot and my heart started racing and then I started to black out. As I was sitting I took deep breathes and the black out stopped. I texted a friend and she came to sit with me in the ER. When they called me back to do my EKG I was shivering so hard that they had a hard time time getting a good read. Once they got me back to see a doctor they took some blood, did a chest x-ray and sent me home I was fine according to them.

This happened again in April and in May. Finally after praying the Holy Spirit led me to start back taking my vitamins and Vitamin D. The symptoms stopped.

OMG...you mean to tell me after heart monitoring (twice) a neurology brain scan, an 8-hour blood glucose test and three trips to the ER, it was only my vitamin D.

Apparently so. I was so perturbed. I mean I spend almost $10,000 on all these test. It was horrible.

By August I had gained 30lbs and I was exhausted. I was at my whits end also. So in October I contacted a nutritionist who was a nurse who was also studying to become a functional medicine doctor. She told me to get some blood work done and that she's help me. I got blood work done in December and found out that my iron was so low. It was 16. A good Ferritin level is 100. My doctor told me to eat more red meet. The nutritionist told me to order some iron. I found a new doctor.

Dr Alan Christianson wrote the book, "The Idiots Guide to Thyroid Disorders." I read the book in 2012 and bought it last year. I googled his practice and was making plans to travel to see him when I found out that his practice does telemedicine. When I met with one if his doctors she told me that I needed iron. STAT. So she ordered two rounds of iron infusions.

I've had my two rounds and now I'm still fatigued because my cortisol levels are really low in the morning. But I can't take supplements because they affect my blood thinner. So I'm on a journey of healing and it's gonna be one condition after the other. I need to get my fibroids together, my thyroid together, and my adrenals. together.