The Road Continues
Throughout 2 long years, I had multiple procedures, tests, and surgeries to try and figure out what was causing all of the pain. I moved from one doctor to another with the answers nobody wants to hear. “It could be this or that, but I’m not really sure” or “There is nothing wrong with you, it is all in your head”. Not what I wanted to hear! The first thing they thought was another hernia. They sent me to get an ultrasound, CT scan and an MRI. No hernia, but they thought something was wrong with my bladder. They scheduled me for another ultrasound and CT scan and found out that it was my kidneys. They thought I had kidney stones and sent me to have a procedure to remove the stones. I thought, “Great, my junior year of college starts next week and I have to have surgery, again.” I went through with the procedure praying that this was it. Sadly enough, they put me under and never found kidney stones. False alarm!
It doesn’t end there. I went back to the doctor and told him my symptoms and he thought it is either something with your spine and you would need to have back surgery or it could even be endometriosis. Two totally different things! I ended up going to the “Lady Doctor” to see if that could be it. Nope! Try again.
At this point it has been about a year of tests and trials, ups and downs, with absolutely no answers! I was getting really tired and worn down. I started to think this was all in my head (I’m sure everyone else was thinking the same). I gave up for a little while. Went through months of depression, and just went through the motions of the day.
Then, finally my parents had enough of watching me go through everything I had gone through. My mom set me up an appointment with a family doctor and said she wanted every kind of blood work done and wasn’t going to stop until he got to the bottom of this. Most of my blood work came back fine, but the doctor was worried about me having colon cancer or my gallbladder going bad. He sent me in for a HIDA scan, which showed some issues with my gallbladder but they didn’t think this was the problem So, he then sent me to his Gastrologist to get further testing.
This doctor said he has seen so many girls come in with removed organs from doctors trying to figure out what is wrong. He said he would try a few things before he would put me through anything else. He wasn’t too concerned, he thought it might be IBS. For the next few weeks he put me on a FODMAP diet to see if things would calm down. Surprise! They didn’t.
His next step was to have me do a procedure called an endoscopy and colonoscopy to look at the inside of my stomach. Again, a week before the next school year. The colonoscopy came back fine, so no colon cancer. Praise the Lord! However, he said that my stomach was extremely inflamed. In fact, it was the worst he had seen. He took over 20 tissues out of my stomach for biopsies. He then put me on a gluten free diet until the results came back.
I did as followed until I got a call that I needed to go get another type of blood work done to confirm the diagnosis. This was called a tTG-IgA, which means Tissue Transglutaminase Antibodies. When the results came back he called me back to the doctor. He showed me pictures of the inside of my stomach and explained my test results. My level for celiac was over a 20, which is extremely high. He wasn’t sure how I was functioning at this point. A normal person would have a level way under 0. A level 4 is considered high. I am not even sure how you would classify a 20. Anyways, it was then confirmed on September 6, 2017, that I have celiac disease.