Life with a Flare

When I started this blog back in high school I was a teenager with chronic pain that I wanted a diagnosis for. I want someone to know what was happening to my body so we could fix it. I did not realize the journey I had in front of me and did not understand that not everything could be fixed. I spent a lot of time going from one doctor to the next though and it started to consume my life. At some point it clicked in my head I was not actually helping myself by being so focused on answers, especially as more issues developed. I finally shift my focus to making the most out of life while living with my symptoms, I started to look at treatments from a quality of life perspective with the realization that my quality of life was more important than pin pointing exactly what was causing my body to fail so spectacularly. For a few years that has been my focus. I have actually had a few doctors comment on how impressed they are by the fact I am not super focused on answers, although I have a...

I while back at my first appointment with my PCP he said how amazed he was that I loved a fairly typical life and my new adolescent medicine doctors expressed similar sentiments when I first saw them. The thing is, I have fought to live my life the way I do. I have taken some risk in achieving the  quality of life I have that some people or doctors do not want to take on such as a central line. However I constantly refuse to say no just because of chronic illness. For long time readers you may remember a while back I took up running, I mostly just did that because for the 1st time in years I was completely cleared for all physical activity. When I started looking for a summer job I mostly looked for part time positions that could accommodate my doctor's appointments and even looked at office jobs that would be easier on me physically than the childcare ones I rather be at. However there was one job I applied to that is practically full time at 37.5 hours a week as a camp couns...

I just realized that 3 months have pasted since I last posted on here. They have been a crazy 3 months at that. In my last post I had mentioned uncertainties and hanging on by a thread as I was not tolerating my feeds. I ended up spending a good portion of January inpatient due to ever worsening GI motility. I had some pretty extensive testing that did not give us any answers, which was frustrating. I was finally discharged not tolerating any better but forcing myself to push on with feeds because I wanted to get out of the hospital. I also had to increase my IV fluid to 1-2 liters a day. I now run fluids and/or feeds 20 hours a day, but thankfully I am back up to a healthy weight. I was at such a slow rate at one point in the hospital they used a med pump instead of a feeding one. A few theories were brought up by a GI motility specialist I am now seeing in addition to my normal GI, one being there is an autoimmune issue and the others are all genetic issues which can be contrib...