medical history

my medical history is a long one so grab a cup of tea & get comfy. as a baby & as a kid i was always kind of fussy after eating. my parents would try different baby formulas or different foods, but it didn’t usually make a difference. gradually as i got older the pain got worse & worse. when i was about ten, the pain after i ate any food was so excruciating that i would lie in a ball on the floor screaming & crying. my mom took me to emergency room after emergency room with no luck. the pain was becoming a deterrent from eating. not even a year passed by & i was down to sixty pounds. you heard me right. i was almost eleven years old & i only weighed sixty pounds. one morning i remember fainting four times in just the span of a few hours. so we knew it was time to try another emergency room. i had become too weak to tie my own shoe laces at this point. we arrived at the emergency room & most of this day is kinda hazy to me. i remember being transferred in an ambulance to the hospital’s main campus as the emt was telling me to breathe & keep my eyes open. i’m aware it sounds like a television drama, but that’s what was happening. cincinnati children’s was the hospital that saved my life. we finally had an answer to what was killing me. eosinophilic esophagitis. it’s a mouthful i know. basically my body was attacking food like it was a virus causing a build up of eosinophils in my esophagus & stomach. a build up of these cells can cause pain, vomiting, difficulty swallowing, constipation, diarrhea, et cetera et cetera.. in order to get the nutrition i needed they placed a feeding tube up my nose, commonly called an ng tube. i stayed in the hospital for a couple of weeks, but was finally able to come home. after awhile i still wasn’t progressing as much as they had hoped so they surgically placed a feeding tube straight through the lining of my stomach, commonly called a g-tube. i’m not going to lie, it was a painful surgery. along with the surgery they also put me on the elemental diet. this means that for the first couple of months i can’t have any food at all, relying completely of the feeding tube. then, i would introduce one food at a time to see the reaction my body had. i would go back to the hospital every twelve weeks for an upper endoscopy to see if the eosinophils had diminished or multiplied. this combination of tube feeds, the elemental diet, medication, pain management therapy, et cetera.. helped me get back on my feet. in may of 2017 we decided that i was doing well enough to remove the g-tube & get my nutrition solely through food. unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. after a couple of months i had lost weight again, putting me at ninety-eight pounds when i was seventeen. i was admitted back into the hospital where they placed the ng tube again. some time passed, i put on some weight, & we decided that the best route was the g-tube again. i had the surgery only a few days ago actually & i’m currently recovering well. it’s a lot to digest, but if you’re interested i’ll keep posting updates here.