First and foremost, I am not a doctor so everything I share should be taken simply as my own experience because it is not a professional opinion so never use anything I say as medical advice.
I had to check myself in to our local hospital a month ago because my doctor advised me to after all the recent blood tests came back with not so favorable results. (I was diagnosed anemic two years ago with a level 10 Hemoglobin. My physician at the time had me add an iron supplement into my diet to get me back on track and six weeks later I was declared “cured.” My level was healthy again.). Fast forward almost 2 years later and apparently the anemia is still active.
Generally speaking a normal healthy female hemoglobin level is 12 -15. (My hemoglobin red blood cell carrying oxygen) was dangerously low at 4. People can flatline at 3. So, I’m kind of a walking corpse. Nice. My love of zombie shows, movies and Spoiler Alert, I am a zombie. Minus the groaning. I went to the ER and although the ER gave me 3 units of blood and I immediately changed my eating habits from living to eat to now eating to live, like lots of spinach and red meat, my body is weaker than ever.
The last several months my husband immersed himself in research, looking for answers and asking, “what is going wrong with my wife,” as he worried I was wilting away to nothing. I was busy teaching and doing activities with our daughter. I was not by any means in denial about my ill health. I just didn’t want to deal with more stubborn-ass doctors with predetermined diagnoses. Perhaps I should have found a different doctor. My husband has been aware of the excessively heavy menstrual bleeding for a while. Being someone who tries to keep some things private between my husband and I, the thought of sharing my nightmare was on the horrific side. But I think he figured out some things when he heard me in the bathroom cursing at inanimate objects (pad failure). I should have invested a small mint in Kelly Clark. Because feminine products could have arrived in trailer shipping containers with the rate I was going. Understand I had to be prepared!
You might consider this fair warning to stop reading if you have a sensitive stomach or become queasy at the mention of blood.
But here’s what happened in the six months following the cured declaration. I stopped taking iron and I got weaker and weaker, thinking i was fine internally but because a doctor never said anything, I figured I was getting worse each day on my way out because of some other unknown culprit. That’s not suicidal. It was just a realistic acknowledgment that I thought I’d l ikely be gone before end of year with my list of health issues and all doctors pointing to MS before even asking questions or giving me the opportunity to explain my symptoms. I went to more than a dozen different doctor appointments in last 12 months asking questions and not one took the time to write up lab orders for blood tests because they already had pre-formed ideas or assumptions for what was going on. MS, anemia, osteoporosis… But what I consistently explained to doctors was that I’ve had MS almost 30 years and my symptoms do not physically feel like MS symptoms. And look this up docs, the symptoms are different and consistent with anemia. But because MS is the “bigger” health issue, no one has bothered to leave MS alone for a moment and focus on only the newer symptom stuff.
For example, I went to a lab appointment last spring and stepped out of my rig, and felt that gushing sensation (not urine, but menstrual blood) and got back in my vehicle to promptly return home and discover there was indeed an accident. A big one. Blood all over the back of my jeans. I just might need that truckload of supplies on an ongoing basis. But goodness, the truckloads I had to use. I got used to bleeding every 2 weeks with these obnoxious clots and assumed it was normal with getting older and probably indicative of menopause. Oops. That was yet another of Jenn’s misdiagnosies.
I made another appointment with my OBGYN and told her what was going on and after she examined and did some tests, she suggested uterine fibroids. She initially mentioned fibroids a year ago. I thought they might eventually go away. Oops. My bad again. The fibroids got worse. B also discovered with anemia, that might be the culprit when he came across blood disorders, anemia and fibroids in a search with bucketloads of responses, he said, Let’s make an appointment.” I needed a referral so I saw the first available physician at my clinic to get that referral.
But this time around at a new PCP, the physician I saw was different and she asked a lot of questions to understand how I determined I needed a hematologist referral. Because of my weakness in walking, I requested that B join me and he always provides wise insight as I explained everything going on. I explained my symptoms and that my weakness was increasing and I needed something to help me get better. Like today. A key component of this, that I didn’t realize was relevant is the fact I had some very very very heavy bleeding each month. And the fact that my periods lasted about 10-12 days apiece, and had a not so typical schedule of starting every two weeks, not 28 days. I was clearly bleeding about 24 days of each 31 days. Problematic. My body has been losing way more than it can possibly replace so it’s seriously no wonder that I have little strength to walk anywhere without losing my balance or falling. I can’t bleed one week each month like a normal woman. I have to bleed up to 24 days. About a year ago I gained the extra 10 days as my period bonus round. So, mathematically I was bleeding more than I wasn’t each month.
Back to the OBGYN who mentioned fibroids last year at my annual, but my failure was to not research or take it seriously. Those hell-raising fibroids are precisely why I’m anemic. She denied the possibility that anemia had any involvement with the uterine fibroids issue. One thing she did correctly was to give me a couple of referrals for surgeons. But the failure was her stating there’s no correlation between anemia and fibroids. But the surgeon said the fibroids and anemia typically go hand-in-hand. And when I was in the hospital, the physician asked if my periods were normal. Nope. They immediately scheduled a pelvic ultrasound to take a look at my abdomen, and see what they could see. Low and behold, there was something, but only doctors share the findings . The hospital suggested I make another appointment with my OBGYN. But instead, I got a call from a cancer surgeon a few days after I left the hospital. The scheduler said, “You have a mass” and scheduled an appointment with one of the physicians a few days later. Apparently there’s a reason receptionists are not supposed to say anything about anything. I shared with B what was said and between my family, friends and church, we likely have had close to 1000 people praying for me. The term “mass” leaves much to the imagination and by my own uneducated misunderstanding of a great many things, I figured I’d be dead before the end of the month with the mention of a “mass”.
We went to see the surgeon and she immediately examined me, said my uterus is the size of a cantaloupe, and went into scheduling a hysterectomy and she never mentioned “mass.” I asked if the mass would also be removed with the fibroids and hysterectomy. Is it cancer? I think she was confused and said she’d be right back. As she looked at my chart as she walked back into the room, she said, “there’s no mass, there’s no cancer.” Praise God! Because my level of worry made me sick. Literally.
Here’s the other screw-up…. The whole process of going to the ER, filling the prescription, taking the prescription, only to realize when I finally reacted with an allergy five days later from the blotchy skin, that I had hives despite the warnings all over my profile at the hospital as well as the pharmacy that I’m allergic to the primary ingredient in that particular iron product. It’s really a comedy of errors at this point with stinking everything becoming something. So it really has not been unreasonable to anticipate my life being over shortly by something ridiculously silly like a known but ignored allergy.
When I called the pharmacy and asked about the ingredients, that employee apologized immediately because she said they shouldn’t have sold me that and asked me to get some benedryl immediately to counteract the allergy. Everything else has gone wrong, so why not this too?!? The sales employee saw the flag, got a supervisor to override the allergy flag when she looked at it and the supervisor ignored the flag and sold it anyway. My poor husband. He was pissed that the pharmacy missed the flags. Then the supervisor called me and she apologized up and down after my husband had a conversation with her. I think he made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. Kidding. B never loses his temper when he is communicating a frustration with anyone. While he doesn’t yell or make a scene, I’m confident he shared his grave concern of the employee repeating her egregious error with another customer.
I guess God isn’t done with me yet. Because there were several opportunities in last five weeks for Him to figureatively “pull the plug,” yet here I am… thank you, Lord. The hysterectomy is Friday and I’m anxious to report what happens next.
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