Introduction Continued Part II

This is now Sunday April 25/10.  I feel a little more restored than I did the last couple of days.  I'll continue my introduction now...

A twenty year illness surfaces  (this part explains the beginning of this illness)

It was over two years ago (2007) that my health took a turn for the worse, to the point I had to stop working.  I had been experiencing most of these symptoms for years periodically, but it hadn't bothered me in a while.  I might only have a few episodes a year.  I was once hospitalized over ten years ago for a week because my system shut down completely leaving me in a paralyzed state.  The doctors never figured it out and I never pursued it after I was better.  I just figured it went away.  But it didn't go away completely.

Where it all began

When I was in my early twenties I had become extremely ill with flu like symptoms.  I had fever, chills, extreme sweating, swollen throat and cold sores.  I had never had a cold sore before this time and knew I had gotten it from my boyfriend / future husband.  I really didn't know what they were.  I thought they were just pimples.  NOT.  I was so sick a doctor came to my apartment and gave me antibiotics.  One night I was dilirious and sweat right through the house coat, drenching the sheets.  My boyfriend rang out the house coat in the bathtub.  I am a petite women and really don't sweat noticeably, only if I workout really hard I might get some small beads of sweat on my nose.  So this was very unusual for me.  I was off work for three weeks.

It would be after this time that I started getting an unusual symptom.  After work I would feel so exhausted and when I laid down to rest my left arm started twitching, flinging my arm across my chest.  It wouldn't stop.  My husband and I went to emerg.  This was so unusual.  The doctor ordered a CAT SCAN.  When I went to get this done the technician told me this dye was the least likely to cause an allergy reaction.  I wasn't concerned, since they said it was safe. 

The minute the dye was injected I felt it hit my head and it felt like it was going to kill me... my head and eyes started to shut down.  As quickly as I could,  I announced I was going to pass out!!  They quickly injected me with medication to stop the reaction.  I instantly swelled causing my breathing to become difficult and I felt drowsy all at the same time because of the medicine.  Thank goodness they had it ready.  My left arm started twitching out when this happened because my body was jolted.

After a short while they aborted the dye plan and just put me into the machine.  I don't know if they could even get a great picture without the dye, but they said they could still do it.  It apparently showed nothing.

I was later sent to a neurologist.  He was an impatient man and had an air about him I didn't like.  He turned my head and I was dizzy both ways.  He brushed me off as it was only stress.  I couldn't imagine what I would have been stressed about.  I was newly married and a happy girl.  I knew this was an unusual symptom and knew it wasn't from stress.  So I didn't pursue it any further.  I had lost confidence in the doctors.  I wasn't one to go to the doctors to complain anyways and  I wasn't hurting anywhere so I left it.  My left arm for many years would still twitch out if I over exerted myself.  It never twitched out if I was emotionally stressed. 

I was always an active person and physically fit.  I liked to do a lot of things and just did it.  But then after I had my two children I began to collapse at home.  I could always feel it coming on so I would go to the couch and lay down.  The first time it happened my whole body shut down causing my body to be in paralyzed state.  I was coherent and could feel my body.  My eyes were fixed only enabling me to blink slowly.  My left arm would twitch out and that was it.  This lasted for about a half hour and then I slowly came out of it and felt very slow.  There was no pain so I never went to the doctors. 

This would happen periodically over the next few years.  Until finally I was having more episodes like this and they were happening more often.  Then one day after I had an episode my friend suggested I go to the doctors.  I realized then that something was going wrong and I should find out.  When I walked into the doctor's office I was standing at the desk and then I collapsed.  They didn't know why I had come in.  But there I was on the floor jerking and paralyzed.  Again I could hear and feel everything and my eyes were fixed only blinking slowly. 

I was sent to the next city closest that could do more testing.  I was there for a week.  They did an eeg and some blood work, but nothing too extensive.  I was coming in and out of this state of paralysis for the next week.  One night it was at the point my breathing had shallowed down to the point it even stopped.  I was paralyzed I couldn't hit the buzzer for the nurse... I couldn't take that breath and I was scared!  It went as far as it could go and then my breathing came back.  What was that all about now?  This was new.  This happened several times that night.  This was now concerning me that this could turn seriously life threatening.

In the end the doctors couldn't figure this out and just called it stress.  I was so appalled at their lack of investigation.  When doctors don't know what's wrong they call it stress.  I have discovered doctors learn the basics and then study whatever they want from the point of their graduation.  It's their choice if they want to learn more. 

That was the worse time I had with the collapsing and then it pittered out.  There was no rhyme or reason.  I didn't let it consume me.  I just carried on as before.  I was a stay home mom raising my children so I had no worries.  If I didn't feel well I just simply laid down so it would escalate to the point of collapsing me.

When we moved out to the country and started to have a little hobby farm with chickens, etc., there was work to be done.  Some mornings when I would go out to the pond to pick up buckets of water, early morning, and I would feel suddenly sick to my stomach feeling instantly drained.  I knew I was going to collapse, so I charged to the house and on the way I was already shutting down.  I couldn't speak and my body was going numb, then I would flop on the bed jerking about.  This would last about an hour.  After I came out of it,  I was very slow with my speech and movements after.  Every single time I've collapsed I was coherent and could feel everything.  My body felt like it was in a deep sleep and there was nothing I could do to wake it up.

Several years later...  (I was now working full-time providing for myself as a single mom)

2007

Since being in a fulltime position at work I had been feeling out of sorts for several months and noticed my memory was glitching way too much, so I went to the doctors to find out if cortisol levels were out or my hormones.  My thyroid had been out for a few years and was taking .25mg of synthroid which helped through that time.  After work I would go home completely exhausted and run down so I didn't do much, just rested.  My blood work didn't show anything unusual.

By the next month I had been getting a lot of vertigo and just took tylenol to try and curb this headache dizzy feeling.  It was hard at work becuase you have to move quickly and be on the ball.  This dizziness was slowing me down and frustrating my co-workers.  I would try not to move my head too fast from one side to the other or I would get real dizzy, but I still got dizzy anyways if I turned my head.

A short while later that month, while at work one day,  I could tell my body was starting feel numb.  My head was fuzzing out, making me feel blank in the head with a numbing sensation across my forehead leading into the rest of my face.  Then I felt the rest of my body going with numbing in my limbs.  My left arm started twitching, as it had always done when my system got run down.  I had learned to cope with the twitching of the left arm for many years, but never knew why it was doing that.  I just knew it twitched when I was physically exhausted.  Now this numbing sensation with more dizziness was starting to occur.

Shortly into these symptoms starting up I could tell I was going to collapse, so I found a chair and rested the back of my head on the back of the chair slouching in the chair.  Then I shut down with my left arm jerking.  My co-workers lifted me to another room to lay down.  One lady suggested I was having a seizure and I should go to the doctors.  So I went as soon as I was able to get up and function properly.

Shortly after arriving at the clinic, while standing at the counter talking to the girl I could tell I was going to collapse again.  I told the girl to come around and help me I was going to collapse.  She waved me off and told me to just take a chair the will just be a short while.  I hugged the counter and told her I was going to collapse again.  I couldn't have walked from the counter to the chairs and I knew I was going down.  She came around to help me to the chairs by this short moment I could no longer speak, my legs were going numb and I was collapsing.  She drapped me on the chairs and then got the doctor.  Good grief!

Once they carried me to the room the doctors did a who check over and again they didn't know why I was there, but it was unfolding for them before their eyes.  They called an ambulance and took me to the hospital.  They had given me something to put me out.  The next thing I remember was waking up in emerg at 9:00 pm.  By then they had taken a chest x-ray and done a CT SCAN.  I was in the hospital for a couple of days.

For there on my journey got more interesting as doctors fuddled their way through.  I will continue this in part III.