No End In Sight

November 8, 2024

You’re either in a valley or on a mountaintop, life doesn’t give you much in between time the way I see it.  That sure keeps it from being boring though.   If  really looked at it closely life is the great educator.  A person just needs to know where the instruction manual is.  In the Bible, James 1:2-3, states, “ consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”

What I had to know when I read that verse was that my Joy did not come from this world or things that happened in this world, whether I was in the valley or on the mountaintop, but my joy comes from God alone.

When I was at the end of my last post. I stated that I had thought it was the beginning of the end, but then it looked like there was no end in sight, that suddenly became apparent.   In February after I had my upper GI the general surgeon and my primary care decided I needed to see a G.I. specialist. They tried to get me in with one I had seen before in Dallas, but he had retired. So we decided to go with a doctor in Longview Texas. The first available appointment the G.I. doctor in Longview had was March 4, 2024 so we took that appointment.  It seemed I was now at my primary care’s office every week in pain with nausea and vomiting, getting lab work drawn and I was an every other week person at one of the local emergency rooms because the pain was so excruciating in my stomach, I could not stand it.  At the end of  February I really hadn’t lost but about 7 pounds, so I’m still in pretty good shape as far as that went. I am about 5 foot 4 and at the time this started in December 2023 I weighed around 160 pounds so by now I was just over 150 pounds. I was still a decent pound weight for me, possibly a little heavy for my height depending on who you talk to you.  Every time I went to Justin‘s office, my primary care, by the way, he is a nurse practitioner, and one of the best I’ve ever met, my amylase and lipase was steadily going up. With all the signs of the abdominal pain, the nausea and that lab going up and where the pain was in my belly, it pointed to pancreatitis.  When March 4 came I went to see the G.I. Specialist in Longview and we set up a colonoscopy and EGD and a gastric emptying study. The G.I. Specialist stated that he thought he knew what was wrong with me but he needed these test to confirm. He stated that we would know more when he finished the colonoscopy on March 27.  On March 13 I went in for the gastric emptying study, which, if you’ve never had one, let me give a little explanation, they cook eggs with a slight radioactive material in it so they can trace it in your stomach and give you a piece of toast with water to drink. They give you a certain amount of time to eat this and then they scan  your stomach.  They wait a certain amount of time and scan your stomach again and this continues for four hours. The purpose of this test is to assess the stomachs ability to empty and diagnose conditions, such as gastroparesis or delayed gastric emptying. I would say this is a long boring test but in my case I was in pain and nauseous the whole time and had to try to prevent myself from throwing up, otherwise the test would have been inconclusive. I guess we could say the colonoscopy and EGD went better on 27th March because I was basically asleep for that. When the G.I. Specialist finished, he came to the recovery area and told my best friend and I it was what he suspected, and I have Gastro- paresis. The definition of Gastroparesis states a condition that affects stomach muscles and prevents proper stomach emptying.  What gastroparesis looks like to me and my body is abdominal pain, bloating, nausea, vomiting, weight loss, fatigue, constipation, diarrhea and many other things that I cannot explain.  When you break the word down, Gastro is the stomach and paresis is a paralyzation, that in itself should give you everything you never wanted to know. There are options for treatment. Of course, in my case the first line of defense that they use as a medication called Reglan, which I am highly allergic to. Then there is a medication called Domperidone.  Domperidone is not manufactured in the United States anymore, so therefore, insurance does not pay for it, and it has to be ordered from Canada.  This medication also has a high incidence of heart arrhythmia and cardiac arrest. The doctor told us about the medication and told us we would discuss it at my follow up visit in one month. In April I started rapidly losing weight. When I mean rapidly, I mean 5 pounds a week or more.   My follow up appointment with the G.I. Specialist wasn’t until May 6. I saw my primary care Justin on April 10 and we discuss the situation and by then I was down to 140 pounds, that’s 20 pounds from where I initially started. On April 17 I ended up in one of the standalone ERs in my local town. I have been there before with my stomach issues and when the ER doctor walked in, He said he had looked over my chart from before and that they were going to transfer me out because I had lost so much weight and he thought I needed to be an inpatient instead of just in the ER. The ER doctor tried to transfer me to where my G.I. specialist was but for some reason the local ambulance would not transfer in that direction so I ended up in Plano, Texas at Medical City Hospital.  I was admitted through the ER and when I got to the room upstairs, I met their gastrointestinal doctors and internal medicine doctors.  I explained my situation to both an after testing was done they agreed with my G.I. Specialist in Longview that I have gastroparesis.  I stayed for 4 days at this hospital and received treatment for my condition with IV Azithromycin and morphine. I did feel a little better after leaving the hospital, but I was very weak because I have not eaten in several days. At this point what I considered eating was in taking a couple of Ensure drinks a day.  The last meat I had eaten was in December 2023 and it was a small piece of pork loin and as far as vegetables and carbohydrates I have finally stopped trying to eat them the first part of March 2024.  My next schedule appointment with my G.I. Specialist in Longview was May 6 of 2024. That was two weeks away from the time I got out of the hospital. I was so sick. I was so sick for the next two weeks that I lost more weight and the pain mostly kept me in bed. They hardly ever expected me at work anymore. My best friend and her husband and my daughter had become providers for everything that I needed. It was not only physically horrible for me, but it was mentally challenging too. I am a woman that started to work just before I turned 16 years old and I’ve always held one and most of the time two jobs to get by. I would say that my hobby was working. I was a single mother for most of my daughters life and I wanted to make sure that I could provide her for everything she needed and most of the things that she wanted. Yes, my daughter was spoiled and I expect her to still be that way. She will also give you anything that she has, she has that heart.  By the time I got to the doctor on May 6 I weighed 125 pounds.  I am down approximately 35 pounds from the beginning of December. I look like a skeleton. I am very gray in color by now and most of my friends are asking me what type of cancer I have. Truly, I’m beginning to wonder what type of cancer I have and if no one is telling me.  I’m so weak that I can barely sit up at the doctors office.  I tell him about being at the emergency room and them sending me to Medical City Hospital in Plano,Texas.   The G.l. Specialist asks about the treatment that they used at the hospital and we discuss Domperidone, the medication with the high incidence of cardiac issues and decided to go with a similar treatment that was given at the hospital.  The azithromycin that was given to me in the hospital my G.I. Specialist said was not something that could be given orally to me so he went with a similar medication called erythromycin.  I was to take the erythromycin four times a day Monday through Friday and skip Saturday and Sunday.  The G.I. Specialist stated that he would see me in six weeks to see how I was doing. I left the office with an appointment for July 3 hoping that I would soon feel better. 

Lamentations 3:21-23 Yet I called this to mind, and therefore I have hope: because of the Lord’s faithful love we do not perish, for his mercies never end. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness!