My life

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I've been sick with something or other for a long time. As a small child I had asthma and frequently got bronchitis, nearly every year. When I became a teen I started gaining a lot of weight and had back and neck pain. I was taken to the chiropractor and was told I had a 13% abnormal curvature of my spine, but I was too young to understand what that meant. My family wasn't able to continue treatments (financial) so my back and neck pain never went away. I knew I had bad posture and tried so hard to fix it but simply couldn't. I always slouched no matter what. 

Fast forward 10 years and I was diagnosed with diabetes type 2 (due to being obese), severe anemia due to abnormal menstrual cycles and secondary hypoparathyroidism due to low vitamin D/endocrine issues. 

In 2005 I had a gastric bypass (rou-en-Y) and lost over 150lbs, but I was still obese. I hit a plauteau and have been unable to lose any more weight no matter what I try or do.

In 2008, I had several cosmetic surgeries to get rid of all the extra skin from rapid weight loss.

In 2010, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Welcome to pain pill central!

In 2011, I had a supracervical hysterectomy due to non-stop bleeding out of control, it was killing me. Post-op pathology finally found 8 uterine fibroids that were hidden and not viewable on ultrasound, as well as adenomyosis. Glad I had that done. 

In 2012, I had severe side/stomach/back pain and was coughing up blood. It took the doctors 6 months to find out my gall bladder was bad because once again they couldn't "see" the 6 gallstones I had that. A normally routine surgery went horribly wrong and I was on the table for over 7 hours while they tried desperately to save my life. I was in the hospital for 2 weeks trying to survive. After the surgery I got a major staph infection that once again was so horrific it almost killed me and I went back in the hospital for another week. That year was not good for me!

In 2013, my neck/back pain reared its ugly head again and my thyroid problems turned into Hashimotos (joy and rapture, I'm on levo for life now). Fast forward the last 4 years, I've seen over 10 specialists to have done: 8 different MRI's, 2 CT scans, 3 sets of X-rays, over 300 trigger point injections, 2 shoulder joint injections and 3 nerve blocks (SNRB's) and FINALLY today 6/23/17, I got 2 diagnoses of Ehlers Danlos and Scheurmann's Disease. 

Even through all of my medical issues, almost dying twice and easily spending over $200,000 in medical bills, RX's, surgeries and durable medical equipment to survive with these multiple conditions, I try to stay positive. I'm in school part time and I'm still able to work full time. 

I wish the medical community would all pull the sticks out of their backsides and STOP BLAMING THE PATIENT'S WEIGHT for literally everything! I'm sorry, but uterine fibroids and adenomyosis were NOT caused by me being fat! Ehler's Danlos and Scheurmann's Disease were NOT caused by me being fat! 

So to any/all medical professionals reading my story, TALK to your patients. LISTEN to them! Stop looking at images of their insides and saying there's nothing there and writing them off. Stop telling them they are being overly emotional because they are crying in your office when you refuse to help. Stop rejecting their symptoms as nothing, as though they aren't there or aren't related simply because you can't "see" anything on images. People are NOT only images. They are NOT just another hypochondriac looking for narcotics! Contrary to popular belief, quite a lot of people DO NOT like narcotics! But it's the only thing that slaps a temporary bandaid on the problem.

Patients have feelings, symptoms...DISEASES that need help and can't get any from the doctors who refuse to live up to the oath they took when they became doctors. Stop taking new patients so much that you only have 3 minutes per patient - you simply cannot be an effective doctor for ANYONE in 3 minutes. You're going to kill someone someday. Maybe you already have through lack of concern/care/attention. Well, be a better doctor!