I am NOT sorry! Sorry

I am not really sure how to start this one.  I am really upset with this whole Zimmerman/Martin thing, but not in the way that you expect a person to be upset with it. 

I am upset that this has been made into a black and white thing.  It is not and was not a black and white thing. 

I am tired of Quenelle X saying that this was a racist thing.  How in the hell does he know that?  Was he there?  Oh, I forgot, everything with him is a racist thing! 

He stands there and talks about his family being slaves. Really, and when was that last year?  Ten years ago? 50 years ago?  Oh, you mean over 149 years ago!  Yea I can how that might still hurt you.  That must have been hard on you.  You know because some people that you don't know and have never known were slaves.  Oh and you know without a shadow of a doubt tha the slave driver was a white person because there is no such thing as a black slave driver.

I am what one of my best friends calls a "southern Belle".  I think it's cute.  When I tell people that I am a white woman from Texas, most of them think automatically that I am a Racist.  I am not a racist.  I am southern by blood/heart/mind/soul/and choice.  I say and do things that you may look at and go, oh she is so racist by saying that.  No y'all, that is just the way that I was raised and I will not change for you or anyone else! 

Please think before you say that someone is a racist.  It may sometimes seem that way but it may not always be true.

I read a blog this morning, it was about a man that was once a young man.  He was in college and it was late and raining and he pulled his hood over his head and walked across the campus with his head down so he could get to his dorm. 
      Now without me telling you his color, a security officer stopped him to ask him where he is going.  Instead of answering him he turned and asked him, why?  did I do something? 
      Why ask someone that is trying to keep a campus safe why they stopped you?  Just answer the question.  Here or There.  Real easy.  This boy is black, and seems to think that that officer stopped him because of his color.  I would not be able to tell what color someone is at night in the rain while they are wearing a hoodie.  Maybe, just maybe that officer could and that is why he stopped the only person out in the dark and pouring rain, because it was a black boy. 

Come on!  give me a break!  Really!?!?!  How stupid are you to think that the only reason that man stopped you was because you are black!!!  UGH!!!  I am sure that if it was a white woman he would have stopped her too because under a hoodie in the dark rain it is hard to see what color you are. 

I am just so over all of this and I needed to speak my mind.  Thanks for listening.

My name is Dawna and this is my story...

When I was asked to write this, I didn't have to think twice about it. The first answer that came to mind was absolutely, yes I will, but before I do so, it needs to be said that mental disorders or diseases of the mind are no more shameful than diseases of the heart, the lungs or any other organ of the body. They are just harder to comprehend, even by those of us who suffer from them. 

My name is Dawna LeMay and ten years ago I was diagnosed with PTSD, Bipolar Disorder, Generalized Anxiety and OCD.

The first thing you need to know, is that I never would have taken the first step to see a psychiatrist to

get a diagnosis if it wasn't for the fact that I had a 4 year old son at the time and it was about 6 weeks after the death of my mother, who I had cared for, for four years. He was doing some silly thing that 4 year olds do and it was just more than I could take at that moment, and I sat on the staircase, literally ripping hair out of my head,crying and repeating, "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you." Words my son doesn't remember, but I will never forget. That even at this moment bring tears to my eyes.

Over the next year I went through extensive therapy, covering everything from sexual abuse by an uncle, a brother and a family friend, to the sometimes abominable way my own mother treated me and disrespected me growing up, causing me to question her love, almost right up until her dying day. An abusive relationship in my teens and a close call in my twenties...the cherry on top being in the position of playing 24 hour caregiver to the woman I still wasn't entirely sure loved me, but was certain that this was the one way of earning that love. Watching her slowly die for 36 months, spending long days in hospitals and longer nights at home struggling with whether I hoped she lived or died. I suppose you can understand where the PTSD comes in now?


Now, put that PTSD on top of some Bipolar. (Which is a condition both of my parents were diagnosed with. My father, back in the day when it was still called "manic depression" and my mother in her early 40's) I was told I was "rapid cycling." If you ask my son what that means, he will tell you that it means: "You'll be having a really funny conversation with her in the kitchen and she'll be making up her hilarious lyrics to songs while she's making dinner and by the time you're finished eating she will be sitting alone and want nothing to do with anyone." Yeah...that's rapid.

 I have been out of therapy and off medication for 8 years. A year after my mother passed and I had gotten myself more together, I moved with my son to CT to live with his dad and we finally got married. I weened myself off my meds and thought everything was going to be fine, since I was removed from all the things that were "triggers" for me.


However, over the course of the last several months I had begun to notice myself having less and less of my "highs" and they didn't last as long. My "lows" were coming more often and lasting longer. I was drinking more often (which was a big red flag for me, because I am a BIG TIME self medicator!!) On "Ash Wednesday" I went to the psychiatrist. On "Good Friday" I had my last drink
and on my grandfather's birthday (god rest his soul) I began trying to put my life together once again.
It is very important for people to know that there are so many places out there to get support. With todays technology you just type in the word and you have thousands of links to choose from!

If you suspect that someone you know is in trouble, talk to them, maybe you can encourage them to seek help, or even convince them to talk to their primary care physician who could advise them. Mental illness doesn't just go away over time (as I am finding out). Mental illness is very serious and very seriously overlooked. Many times because there are still so many who attach such a stigma to it.

I was asked if I wanted to post anonymously and I said that anonymity didn't matter to me. Helping matters. I don't care if my name is attached to it or not. But, if it isn't attached, I don't want anyone to think it's out of shame. I am very proud of everything that makes me who I am, including my struggles. Without my struggles, you wouldn't recognize my triumphs. <3 

 

 

My Child has........Oh so much

Friday Awareness Post From a friend.........

My SON is my 5th pregnancy.  My daughter passed away in1999.  When I found out a was pregnant, I was not excited, I was terrified.  I'd been down this road so many times.

I got prenatal care 3 weeks into this mess, week 6, 7, 8, and 9 went by, and then by week 10 I knew something was wrong!  With my blood working and internal ultrasound they found I had CRV(Toxoplasma gondii)from cat litter and uterine cancer.  The doctor says you need to consider an abortion because the fetus will never make it to term.  Well I said a few choice words and found another doctor. In my first trimester I was being monitored very closely.  Week 18 I started to bleed bad. The doctors gave my son (in utero) Christian shots to develop his lungs right then and there and stopped my labor.  Week 23 my uterus started to descend.  I stayed at a 90 degree slant upside down until week 32 then my water broke!  June 24 @ 6am they gave me a pill to dilate my cervix and every hour they probed me and it was so painful!!  Then at 6pm another pill because apparently even thou I am a larger person I have a small and tilted vagina...go figure.  Around midnight, 18 hours later and I'm only at 2cm...they hook me up to potassin...Then around 2ish Christians heart rate becomes erratic and then flat lines, they unhook me get me ready for emergency surgery when he starts to come around, so they let me be.  6am on the 25th roughly 24 hours later and I am still at 2... so they hook me up to potassin again with the same results.  The doctor schedules a C-section for 10 am. While monitoring my sac fluid.  I got into emergency surgery at 2 pm...got a saddle block (the parts of a patient's body that would touch a saddle if the patient were sitting in one are anesthetized by injecting a local anesthetic into the spinal cord) because they are running out of time.  I'm telling this bitch I feel her cutting, but she doesn't listen!  Then they pulled my baby boy out.  The last thing I remember is telling my biological mom I love her and to takes care of my son.  I knew I was dying. I seized ....fell off the operating table and went into a coma.  2 weeks had past when I woke up...so much more I could tell but this lies the foundation for what plays ahead.......

He was so long and only 4 pounds.  He was my beanpole. 

After the feeding tube came out the fun began. 7 formulas until we found alimentum, which is $25 a can and wic only gave us 8 a month...so you figure how many we had to buy.  We were at the doctors weekly because something was wrong.  OK, so again I will cut to the chase cause so much more to tell...Bean had 13 sets of tubes, 3 corrective eye surgeries, tonsils and adenoids out all by the age of 2.  He was doing breathing treatments since he was 3 months old and started singular at 1 year, crushed in applesauce.  He still was mute, so we taught him ASL(American Sign Language) which he still knows.  He hit most of the milestones, but let me tell you, I have video proof lol, he never crawled, he was up and running at 9 months.

By 1 he had already had 4 sets of stitches.  I never "hospital shopped" I always went to same er, even if it was a bump, just to make sure.  CPS showed a few days later, interviewed all my neighbors, they told her they had never seen a more amazing mother, even with all my health problems, (I had had 23 surgeries in my sons first 2 years of life) anyway CPS was there 11 minutes and I was calling 911....bean came running around the corner and hit the staircase head on.  She said ladies case closed, good luck at the hospital!

He was soooooo tall but sooooo behind in weight.  He was on formula until he was 3 1/2.  At 4 years old he reached 30 pounds, his asthma and allergy's were  finally under control, but to this day he dehydrates within minutes.  Oh yeah and when He was 16 months he was completely potty trained.  He wasn't having any part of the diaper thing! 

Skip ahead five years, yes bean was placed in preschool and as an educator I could already see developmental milestones not yet met, but I continued to push his verbal skills, so there are no words.  At the end of his kindergarten year sight words and reading were average, geography and science soaring above average, so what's left, math and communication skills didn't exist so I decided to hold him back.  The next year seemed to zoom by, he had caught up for the most part but he still was behind in math and communication, worst of all he had gotten to make one friend, then it happened I got sick.

6 months I was gone, and my baby had been bounced between our home and his grandparents.  So much more to tell but not enough time.  When I returned home from the nursing home everything had changed, Christian had relapsed in his studies, social and emotional skills were gone and my baby, who I fought so hard for, for 7 years, was unrecognizable to me.  Cruel and disrespectful, didn't give a damn about anything, not even school anymore.
  No one saw this?   No one told me, was everyone that ignorant.....really?  I know what you are thinking...why didn't I see, simple I had sepsis, I wasn't allowed visitors, I was contagious and he already had enough medical issues.  We talked everyday but obviously it wasn't enough.  School personnel said "He doesn't focus on his studies"  "He refuses to participate in the extra studies program I placed him in"  "He bounces of the wall, gets distracted easily, focuses on something and than obsesses"  "what social/emotional skills he had were gone"  I decided to seek help for him for us for everyone.  16 hours of testing, while starting individual therapy, and parents child interaction therapy each one weekly still to this day.  He has been clinically, legally, diagnosed with PTSD Severe OCD and ODD...ADHD and Asperger's moderate on the autistic spectrum of social/emotional disorders, basically a got mess and long ass road ahead.

We tried Adderall and his poor tummy oh it was bad, so that was only 3 days.  I let a month go by and we tried Focalin.  Um, yeah, no that was a week trial period and I pulled him off.  He was aggressive and beat the hell out of me with a broom after I came home from surgery.  Destroyed and broke everything, and I mean everything, I did have a lock down in someway....I was done with this. 

Another month went by and he was struggling in school and getting beat up almost daily for being different, so I put him in a program called trauma focus day treatment and education.  They were lacking in educating these kids but were fantastic in coping with all kinds of issues and social skills.  You name it they did it.  Meanwhile we tried the Daytona patch....again no...if he actually kept in on.  He was an emotional mess and if you looked at him wrong he would cry.  He was going great in day treatment, but I started to get concerned, he again was falling behind educationally, so I pushed to get his meds regulated, we tried conserta, a month went by with a very slight improvement, increased the dose, 2 months later or little more so we increased the dose and nothing changed, we increased the dose to max for his weight but still one more level, We couldn't touch so I did about one month worth of research on intutiv and asked  his doctor what she thought.  She thought that he was a little better but I knew that around Christmas time I wanted him in a real school, but in his "special" environment he needs I knew what I had to do. 

Funny, because, later that day I got a phone call saying Christian is am amazing child and was more than ready to graduate from the program than most seniors who get aged out, fastest child to ever complete the program!!

My baby did it and WE as a school and as a family celebrated for a whole week, anything he wanted to do we did, in this time conserta and intutiv still seemed to be worn off my noon.  We could not even do a fire drill at home because 3 pm was to late for him....He was more concerned about how the fire extinguisher worked, the a b c meaning, blah blah blah.  I continued to make phone calls to a private school that some of my own students had transferred to, and got him am interview. I wanted them to see him at his worst so there were no surprises so we went in the afternoon; more testing and monitored social interaction.  Guess what? My SON, was accepted as a student for the upcoming new school year.  He is in transition now slowly until we continue to tweak his meds and continue therapy twice a week.  We have recently added a very small dose of Ritalin at noon, no noticeable changes or effects but its only day 3, I have not really talked about home life because each day is different.  Do I believe in sun down syndrome hell yes....full moon effects hell yes...is the weather making him more hyper or more down...hell yes...do we argue....hell yes...do we play...hell yes....do we need space from each other...hell yes but you know the best question asked....DO WE TEACH AND LEARN FROM EACH OTHER....HELL YES.

Because no matter how sick I am....I fought with all my might to bring my special angel into this world and I will crush any disease or human who stands in his way to becoming an extraordinary person....

 He forever will be my beanpole.

Gastroparesis, Ever Heard Of It? Well now you are aware!

Gastroparesis is not all that rare, But odds are you have never heard of it.  That is because most people are misdiagnosed sometimes even told it is just in their heads.

This blog is being wrote for a friend.

Living life with gastroparesis is very hard, there is no cure and not very good treatments. 

We need awareness so that more research can be done and we can filly have our lives back.   Gastroparesis affects everyone differently making treatment much harder.  The main symptoms of gastroparesis are weight loss, weight gain, malnutrition, extreme nausea and vomiting, bloating (to the point we will look nine month pregnant), heart burn, extreme pain, poor blood sugar control, feeling very full after only taking a few bites, GERD, poor appetite and when we are hungry we are still physically unable to eat, and many more.   It feels like we have a bad case of the flu and food poisoning everyday all day. If more research could be done we could find a way to cure this life altering disease that is affecting 5 million people. Gastroparesis translates to stomach paralysis. Our stomachs can not empty food in a normal fashion due to damage of the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the nerve that regulates the digestive system. When the vagus nerve is damaged it prevents the muscles in the stomach and intestine from functioning, which in turn prevents food from traveling threw the digestive system properly. Most times the cause of gastroparesis is unknown, I am one of those people. They call it idiopathic, idiopathic is when the cause or source is unknown.

However there are also known causes some of them are uncontrolled diabetes, surgery where the vagus nerve got damaged, Medications like narcotics and some anti depressants, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, and other diseases, stomach viruses can also cause it. While highly uncomfortable for us it is also highly dangerous, when food stays in the stomach too long it can actually ferment, which leads to the growth of bacteria. Food in the stomach can also harden into a solid mass called a bezoar. Bezoars can cause obstructions in the stomach that keep food from passing into the small intestine, they are highly painful and can be life threatening. People who have both diabetes and gastroparesis may have more difficulty because when the food doesn't process threw the system at the normal rate blood sugar levels become unpredictable. Gastroparesis is misdiagnosed a lot but when it is diagnosed they use a few test.   There is a barium x-ray, Gastric emptying scans, scopings, the smart pill, ultrasound. To me the worst test is the gastric emptying scan. We are asked to eat eggs with a radioactive tracer within 10 minutes with two pieces of toast and a glass of milk. We also have to keep it all down, if 20% or more of the meal is thrown up you have to restart it. Last month i did this test again and vomited so i had to repeat it the next day, it is very hard for us to eat and eating sets of nausea, vomiting, and pain very bad for us.

There are drugs like Reglan to speed up digestive tract however it is black boxed (marked unsafe) by the FDA because it causes tremors, sudden death syndrome, and more. There are no "good" options for us. Nausea meds do not work very often for most of us. Some of it like phenergan can be dangerous also. Zofran is a common nausea medicine given to gastroparesis patients, it is originally intended to be a nausea meds for chemo patients. With my body (and many others i have talked to) the medicine quits working after a short period of time and we are forced to try another one. Every new medication increases risk of drug interactions, adverse side affects, and other problems.

The diet for everyone is different depending on what we can tolerate and that tends to change often. Fiber and fat are the two things we can not eat. Sadly that means that fruit and veggies are out of our diet. Fish and potatoes is what i survive on, others are not as lucky and have to rely on feeding tubes and TPN to get the nutrition they need to live. With any tubes there also comes a lot of risk. Infection is common and also can be deadly sadly. Also often with tubes after a few years you have organ failure and require transplants. With the low amount of research that has been done we are loosing people that are way to young to die.

There is no need for us to continue to suffer in silence and slowly starve to death, please help us raise awareness and get our lives back! There are a few facebook pages that me and many others rely on for advice, someone to listen. To be honest we have all became a big family, I personally could not fight gastroparesis without them. A point comes in your life where everything changes, for some the change is a new job or something great, for others like myself the change is an illness or something bad.

I was a perfectly normal, healthy young adult. It was as simple as I woke up one day and felt like i had the flu, i would eat and throw up like i had food poisoning, i was pregnant at the time so every doctor would tell me it was just extreme morning sickness and that it would go away, it never did. After I had my son i was still very sick every day so i went in to a different doctor and was told it was all in my head (sadly this is a common response we get from doctors due to the lack of research.  Roughly 9 out of 10 people with Gastroparesis have been told it is all in their head. This is very common before diagnosis and sadly even after we are diagnosed. We are told everything from we choose to be sick, we just have a eating disorder, we are druggies looking for pain medication, if it is a rude vulgar thing to say to someone suffering from a incurable disease odds are we have heard it. Not only do doctors do this tho, wives, husbands, friends, parents, many people are not understanding of this disease. I believe this is because it is so scary it is much easier to pretend it isn't happening, and other times i believe it is because we do not LOOK sick.). I continued seeing different doctors until finally one that was just out of med school remembered studying it for an exam and sent me
over to the hospital for my first of many gastric emptying scans. It showed up severely delayed and i was finally diagnosed with gastroparesis. The diagnosis was bitter sweet news for me, while nice to know what was wrong with me I was also informed that there was no cure and very limited treatments. They tried injecting botox into my stomach twice with no success, the gastric pacemaker tends to only work in diabetic patients so it is not an option for me, the pills have side affects, feeding tubes run high risk. I wish we could go to the black market and buy a new stomach, sadly we can't do that so we are forced to live each day in pain, miserable, and malnourished. We suffer in silence and need awareness, we need research, we need a cure or better safer treatments, we need our lives back.

Something to read...http://adventureswithgastroparesis.com/
A good friend of mine and fellow fighter of gastroparesis LaShelle Shuman created the GreensNotEasy Gastroparesis page, their website is Www.gnewithgp.org. She is the definition of a survivor, she has overcome so much and not only holds her head high, she lifts us up when we are down. She has helped so many people, below is her story of her fight with Gastroparesis and PKD (please go to http://www.pkdcure.org/ to learn more about PKD). This story is from her blog that can be found at http://greensnoteasy.blogspot.com/ And here is her story!

I can remember almost every detail about the day that I first got sick. My husband was stationed at Camp Humphreys in South Korea on a two-year tour and we were there together. I remember that it was a Saturday night because every Saturday night since my husband and I got married, we make it a point to have date night. As was our usual date-night custom… we wandered through the Ville (Korean market place) looking over the local restaurants. As usual, we picked up a pizza at the only decent Korean pizza restaurant we could find in town and we headed over to the tiny hole-in-the-wall movie shop to pick up a movie to buy and take home.  When we were done window-shopping, we made our way home to our 3-bedroom apartment off base. We didn’t have to look too carefully to see the mushy, wet rice paddy fields behind our apartment as we made our way up chilly marble steps and through our front door. Slipping off our shoes in the tiny foyer, my husband and I quickly cut to the chase by popping the movie we choose into our DVD player. We propped our feet up on the coffee table with the pizza box in our laps and the lid dangling over the edge of our uncomfortably small Korean sofa. I felt really hungry so I ate most of my pizza rather quickly and rested with my arm wrapped around my husband’s neck as the movie played on and the opening credits rolled.
I remember feeling blissfully happy. I was 19 years old (I got married at 18) and I (unlike many other Army wives whose husbands were deployed) got to be with my husband and didn’t have to worry over his safety. I also got to travel and live in another country with the man I loved when all of my friends we’re still stuck stateside. As the movie was nearing the end and I sat there with my arm around my hubby while nibbling on half a slice of uneaten pizza that’s when it hit me. Something was wrong. Something was very, VERY wrong with my stomach and just like that… my life changed forever. I spent the rest of that night vomiting everything I ate in the bathroom toilet. ‘It’s just the flu, It’s just the flu,’ is what I kept telling myself as I hung my head over the cold porcelain edges, but I had no idea how wrong I was.  I hardly remember the last year that we spent in Korea. I was only there for 6 months before I got sick. From the first night that I got sick to many, many months later, I vomited up everything I ate and drank (including water) without ceasing. I slept more than 48 hours

straight without so much as waking up to use the bathroom. I slept more than I was able to be awake. The little stray kitten (known as “Boo” short for “Boo-boo kitty”) that my husband had caught and given me, would lie on my chest and every so often he would pat my face with his paw until I could open my eyes. He would stare up at me with big sympathetic green eyes, and mew at me as if he was checking to see if I was still alive. Boo would then let me go back to sleep and repeat the process every several hours. Having Boo lay with me is a comfort that I will never forget.  I was so sick and malnourished that I could hardly walk to the bathroom to throw up. I dropped weight so fast that I often had to crawl my way to the bathroom or risk passing out from trying to stand up. I threw up until my hands and my body began to tremble and I started having what I like to call “Swiss cheese” memory. People would stop by to see me or call and have conversations with me and Icouldn’t remember any of it, not one word. New friends of my husband’s would stop-by to visit and their faces have since been lost in my memory like the holes in Swiss cheese. As if you knew at one point that your memory was intact but bits and pieces we’re just eaten away by pain and malnourishment. Most of the time however, I felt like I was either dreaming or half dead. 

Since my husband was in the Army, he worked a lot. He tried to help take me to the hospital a few times but between the Army doctors and his NCO’s (Non-Commissioned Officers -his bosses), things we’re not going in my favor. His NCO’s wouldn’t allow him to take the time off work to help me and the military doctors told him that I had the flu, that I was starving myself, making myself puke, that I was making it up, and that I needed to see a therapist. It was at this time that my husband started to drink a lot more. He was 19 or 20 years old at the time and he didn't know what to do, who to believe, how to help me, or how to fix it. No one had given us any kind of “how-to-help-your-wife-when-she-is-dying” books or any kind of guidelines. We were young, newlyweds, and he was too lost to help me. As I fell further into malnutrition and starvation, my wonderful husband fell further and further into a disease of his own, alcoholism. I was too sick and too far-gone with my own illness that I never even noticed.  I couldn't speak but a few words in Korean, so I couldn't call a taxi to pick me up to take me to the hospital on post (the TMC) and since we lived off post, I had to walk. To say it was a very, very long walk for a small 5'2 woman who now weighed 64 lbs. would be an understatement. I cried the whole way there. I had to keep making stops along the way. I had to stop to rest and sit on a curb, stop to vomit, stop to hold my stomach while another wave of abdominal pain swept through my body leaving me a quivering mess, and stop to avoid passing out in the middle of the street. I didn’t really “walk” to the T.M.C; No, I crawled my way up the road just to get there. I went to the hospital as many times as I could because they refused to admit me. My clothes no longer fit and hung limply off my body, so I made the hospital weigh me every time I went to see them. I re-explained my symptoms with every visit and I waited as they brought in other patients first and saved me for last. I had nowhere else to go. My life was in shambles, and I was half way around the world from any of my family members or friends. I thought for sure that I was going to die there.  It took almost 6 months of fighting with the Army doctors to get them to admit me. In order to be admitted they had to put me in an ambulance and take me to Osan Air Force base, which was over an hour away. Just getting the IV into my arm to get me to Osan was scary for me. I was SO afraid of needles that I curled up into the fetal position and cried as they put the IV into my arm before transporting me to Osan. I have hated hospitals, doctors, and needles all my life. Before I got sick, I had a strong phobia for any and all things medical. If anyone so much as mentioned having to get a shot, my palms would go damp and my heart-rate would sky-rocket. At one point when I was young I felt as if I would rather have died than have to get a needle put in my arm or have surgery. As afraid as I was, I felt too sick and close to death not to allow them to shove that needle through my flesh. I wanted the pain to end so much more than I cared about my phobia so I forced myself to overcome my fear to get some desperately needed help. I didn’t want to have to suffer any more and after months of pain and nausea, I honestly thought at one point that if this was the way my life was going to be from now on… death was far more merciful.  Once at Osan, I had several tests done but in the end, the only thing that they could find wrong with me was that they said I needed to see a neurologist for a kidney disease called Polycystic Kidney disease (all the CT scans for my stomach came back normal). I was scared to death because they said they were quite certain that I had it. Note: a year later when I got back to the states a doctor who claimed to be a specialist told me Ididn’t have PKD. I wanted to believe him so Ididn’t get a second opinion. It wasn’t until years later while under the care of a GI doctor at Mayo Clinic that I was sent to a better neurologist, who confirmed my PKD diagnosis by doing an MRI (Currently I have 14 cysts on my left kidney, too many to count on my right, and one is the size of a baseball. Eventually I may need a kidney transplant).  When I heard the news that I had PKD for the first time at Osan hospital, I didn’t know what PKD even was and my doctor didn’t really explain it. The first thing I thought was that PKD meant that I was going to die. I curled up in the fetal position wearing my hospital gown, in my small hospital bed as nurses walked briskly past my door and machines beeped and buzzed away. I pulled the sheets up over my head, wrapped my arms around my legs, and I cried so hard that I was gasping for air. That's the way my husband found me when he came to visit me in the hospital, sobbing in the fetal position under the hospital sheets. He wrapped his arms around me after I told him what the doctor told me in-between sobbing heaves and then we cried together.
Nearing the end of my husband’s 2-year deployment to South Korea, I was still vomiting quite often, but the IV’s from the hospital did help kick start me up again. I thought that getting a diagnosis would be the end of my hospital visits or at least give me comfort... boy was I wrong! I had no idea just how sick I was and I am so glad that no one ever told me just how hard my life was going to be. I think that if they had, I would have been so afraid of what was to come that I wouldn’t have been able to go on.  I remember thinking, "it's all over now," as I sealed up some of our boxes in our Korean apartment that were being shipped back to our new home in the United States. To this day, that’s the only thing I really remember about packing to come home to the states.  Six years, two surgeries, many hospital visits, and 6 months spent at Mayo Clinic later, I was finally diagnosed with Gastroparesis. I may not have known the name or the ugly face of GP then, but I sure know what its ugly face looks like now!