That’s what one of my physicians told me, literally word for word.
This physician was staring at my x-ray puzzled as to why I looked so swollen and that I literally was full of human excrement, and hot air. Insert the various jokes, of how much I’ve heard that in my lifetime, for one various reason or another. It does NOTHING for your psyche when you are chronically ill, chronically bloated, chronically FULL to the point you can’t eat, sleep, walk, or function.
I wasn’t intending on hearing these words, but that was the most likely explanation, after all, I saw the x-rays myself, and that’s exactly what it looked like to me. Now at this point, we didn’t know I had Mast Cell Activation, we didn’t suspect that my mast cells were swelling my bowels so that they wouldn’t work, but that is exactly what was happening. So, for the first year, and 3 emergency room visits, what do you think they did? Gave me human drain cleaner, I drank more MiraLAX than what was absolutely necessary for a human to do, and WAYYY MORE than a colonoscopy requires.
Eventually when I found a Gastroenterologist that was willing to take my case and LISTEN to me (I did have to fire one.) we identified that all I had managed to do was get an awesome gut infection that required medication that required them to fight with my insurance to cover the $2k plus a pill to get rid of said infection. They managed to get it done, but it wasn’t fun, and it took 3 months to heal the infection. That Gastroenterologist was annoyed that not one PHYSICIAN, ER or otherwise had suggested when I’m consuming massive amounts of human drain cleaner that it would be wise of me to be on a probiotic, it could have prevented all of that mess.
Talk about a blow to the gut, very literally. I was suffering for nearly an entire year and a half, with no idea what I was fighting. Again, we didn’t know MCAS was even a thing then. However, the characteristic of mast cell is that when something is agitated in the body, it gets inflamed, much like the hives, or a mosquito bite or bee sting.
After we were able to get the bowels calmed down, it’s when we found that my lady parts had already been swollen 7 times the size due to polycystic ovarian syndrome, and Fibroids…and then scheduled to have said dysfunctional items to be removed. I’d only given birth to one child, blessed with helping many others grow, and married into becoming a mother to another child, I was okay at the age of 40 to give up my right to birth. I nearly died just giving birth to the first one, it took me YEARS to even get pregnant the first time, my psyche was already okay to give up that part of me. That’s when we found the bladder issue, my bladder had been crushed, it had created another issue in the process, it’s called Interstitial Cystitis of the bladder. Essentially when it swells because it’s mad, it rips the walls open and basically has an allergic reaction to anything I eat or drink, causing great abdominal pain, heartburn issues and the like.
One hot mess is where I was in life at that time. Couple that with beginning to lose my sanity… I wouldn’t wish what I had gone through at this point on anyone.
This was my live in caretaker, and also cousin. My partner in crime, when he was available to attend appointments with me. Blessed to have him with me every step of this journey.
ALLERGICTO YOURBULLSHIT 