Category Archives: Health Related

What’s that something else is wrong with me? Why not :)

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So during the time that I was getting diagnosed with Celiac Disease I also had something else going on that I ended up at the doctors with. Whats that you ask? I was dealing with very heavy periods. For the past several years when I would go to the doctor I would ask about my periods because they were heavy and all over the bored as to when they would arrive. My primary doctor just chalked it up to the fact that I was probably going into perimenopause.

In 2018 I discussed options with my doctor as it was just getting very old and I wanted to know if I had any options. The tough scenario with me was I had a blood clot in my legs and lungs many years ago caused by birth control and breaking my leg (great combination). This then means I can’t do the easy way out and use birth control to level out my periods. Nope I have to take the hard road for everything. My doctor said we could do either an IUD or ablation and gave me information to review. I went home and after much review decided I wasn’t ready to do anything at that point in time.

Speed ahead to 2019, my periods are all over the board sometimes super light, sometimes heavy, sometimes non-existent, and sometimes never-ending. In the summer of 2019, they became so heavy I could barely go an hour without needing to change my pad. I was to the point of complete frustration and decided I couldn’t wait any longer. My doctor couldn’t see me until December so I went to talk to an OB/Gyn.

The OB/Gyn then proceeded to draw some blood and did an ultrasound. The blood test revealed everything except my iron was completely normal. My iron was extremely low 6.2. She said I was in the heart attack zone and immediately ordered me to get two iron infusions. This brought my iron up to 9 which was still low but better. The ultrasound detected that one of my Fallopian tubes was extremely enlarged. The doctor then told me it had to come out.

Now mind you in the middle of this I’m going through all the testing for Celiac Disease and determining that too. So let me say at this point I was a bit overwhelmed but glad to be getting answers.

In January 2020, we scheduled surgery to remove my Fallopian tubes and to do an ablation so that “hopefully” I won’t have periods again. My doctor did say its very possible they will come back but hopefully not so heavy. She recommended that versus hysterectomy at my age due to other complications that can arise.

During surgery they were able to remove my Fallopian tubes and discovered that I had the worst case of endometriosis that my doctor had ever seen. Yay for me! So she removed as much as she could and then did the ablation.

Since I had such severe endometriosis she said I had to get a Lupron injection for 3 months so stop my hormones from encouraging it to live. She warned me it would cause me to be very moody (told my husband to not piss me off 😉 ) and that I would go through multiple menopause symptoms (yay). She said I could go on ad back therapy after a month to offset some of the hormone fluctuations.

In the meantime I was getting a third diagnosis which caused me not to be able to do ad back therapy. On a good note though, so far no periods (hallelujah), moodiness sometimes but not as bad as my doctor made it out to be, and definite hot flashes sometimes but all completely livable. Now lets just pray my period stays away!!

Its been a doozy of a year let me tell you and the worst diagnosis was still to come!

Gluten apparently is evil to my body!

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The last six months seem to be a whirl of doctors visits.  I went from going once a year for myself to once a week and why you ask well it all started with a sore throat that just wouldn’t go away. 

 At the beginning of September I noticed that it was painful swallowing foods in particular breads and meats (denser items).  At the time I figured it was my allergies acting up and decided to change allergy medications.  Two weeks past and no real changes and so my parents suggested Flonase so I thought I would try that.  It definitely seemed to help my allergies but not my throat.  At that point I decided I better see a doctor as it was not going away.  

First doctor visit;  I started with my family doctor who proceeded to give me a strep test to cover the bases.  Came back negative which I knew it would so she sent me to an ENT.  The ENT did a scope and told me that my vocal cords were inflamed and that even though I wasn’t have symptoms of reflux I was most likely having LPR (silent reflux) so he prescribed me omeprazole and said he would see me in three months.  A week into seeing him I had to call as the omeprazole was causing me to have major headaches so I got switched to Lansoprazole.  He also said I needed to cut back on coffee and alcohol (not that I had much to begin with).  

In the meantime, I also started having menstrual issues (a different blog post to come) and started seeing an OB/GYN.  She after discussing and doing tests found out my iron was extremely low, I was severely anemic.  She said normal is 12, low is 8-11 and any lower is extreme; I was at 6.2.  She later informed me, after it had come up a bit, that I was in heart attack range, thank goodness she didn’t tell me that initially.

A month into taking the pills my throat was a little better but not resolved so I reached out to him and he sent me to a GI Doctor.  The GI doctor listened to everything going on and said we need to do an endoscopy to confirm there isn’t anything else going on and so scheduled it the day before Thanksgiving.  Got up that morning and noticed a rash forming all over my body and so after talking to my GI doctor I got to postpone my endoscopy a week and go to another family doctor to be diagnosed with tinnea versicolor and given a medication that is hard on the liver but should resolve the rash.  

A week later I go in for my endoscopy and mention all the new problems, low iron, rash, etc and ask if its possible (after doing research online) that I have celiac.  He agrees its a very real possibility and says he will check for that while he’s doing the endoscopy.  A week later I get the results and he tells me from the looks of my intestine, the blood work, and the sample that it all confirms that yes I have celiac.  So he tells me start a gluten free diet and we will discuss more after the new year.  So now I’m starting down the path of teaching myself what all celiac entails, relearn to cook/bake, and converting my family to a gluten free lifestyle!

Pregnant after 35 is it worth the risks?

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So my husband and I continuously talk about whether or not to have a second child.  we were blessed 5 years ago with a wonderful little girl and even though I wasn’t sure about it at first I wouldn’t change it for the world.  Since then we have halfheartedly tried for a second child.  Never going over the top with all the extreme methods to conceive.  I am now 35 and to be honest overweight (even though I battle it and exercise daily 🙁 ).  We started seriously talking about the fact that we both wouldn’t mind a second child.  I have read about the risks associated with having a child after 35 especially if you are overweight of course if you are even lucky enough to conceive.  It sounds like everything is stacked against you.  Is it worth risking everything including the child’s life to do it?

Pregnancy and old broken ankle equal very swollen ankle

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So I broke my ankle now about four years ago and chose to left the metal in as my doctor stated that it would make it stronger.  I don’t regret that as I haven’t had any issues with it.  Every summer though my ankle swells a bit and I wonder if it has something to do with the metal (foreign objects) in my ankle.  This year on top of it being summer I’m pregnant, nine months as of now and for the past several weeks (since about July) my ankle that I broke several years ago gets so swollen I wish I could stick a pin in it to let the liquid/air out of it:).  I now wear compression socks at night to try and keep it down during the day.  My doctor says that its normal as my other ankle somewhat swells up also.  Its just part of the fun of pregnancy in combination with old injuries I guess but let me tell you I don’t care for my cankle look too much!

Baby coming soon August 2009

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Well I thought I would write and ask for any and all advice.  We are going to be having our first child in August.  Currently I’m five months along.  So far I have been lucky no sickness, not much weight gain (yet), everything has been going smoothly.  We had our ultrasound on Friday and so far as we know everything looks good but we will have to see after we meet with the doctor on Monday.  What I’m looking for is advice, advice on where to find good maternity clothes, where to find good kids deals, how to be a working mom and balance life and work, etc.  I’m looking for any and all advice you have to give.  Thanks for the help!

Pregnancy-How do you balance work, home, personal life?

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I’m not pregnant yet but we have discussed the possibilities and one of the questions that always come up is how do people do it?  How do you balance having a fufilling career and still spend quality time with your family?  Also I can’t forget how are you able to achieve all of the things you wanted to in life…. say travel?  It seems unreal to me how people do this as all I can think is how expensive babies are.  Don’t get me wrong I love kids dearly but I’m just asking of the world out there are there women who can do this all?  I know there are and so what I’m asking is how do you balance it all and not lose yourself in the mix?  Just curious.  Any advice would be much appreciated.

Wall-E Merchandise & why there is a lack of it

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So my husband has been looking for Wall-E merchandise since it came out.  I have come to a conclusion though why its not everywhere like some movie merchandise.  The whole movie is about how people have so much waste that I think it actually makes allot of sense that there isn’t merchandise everywhere.  I have read allot of posts about Wall-E stating that its ironic that Disney is making a movie about how much waste there is everywhere and that this movie would just create alot of waste.  Seriously though if you look at say Wal-Mart or Target its hard to find anything Wall-E related.  I’m not sure if that’s the reason behind it or not but I thought it was interesting.

Update-Broken Ankle-1 Year later

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So its been about a 1 year (and a month) since I completely broke my ankle (broke every bone and dislocated it) and I’m proud to say my ankle is basically healed. I have scars on both sides of my ankle and it still swells bigger than my non-broken ankle but overall I can do everything again that I could do before I broke it. In fact I have started running at the Gym and it holds up well. Every so often my ankle will tell me if I’ve done too much by causing some pain or if the weather is changing. I still have all of the metal in my ankle as I figure that I’m going to at least enjoy the summer before deciding if I want to get the metal removed or not. Any of you out there who have broken an ankle before do you still have the metal or not? Is it as simple a procedure as the doctor says to remove it? Do I have to go back on crutches at all?

TRIA Orthopedic-Surgery on the wrong leg

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So I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about people going in for surgery and the surgeon operated on the wrong body part.  I know I had but I always thought it was one of those tall tails that didn’t happen very often until today.  My co-worker’s mom went into surgery yesterday for a repair to her ACL.  The doctor signed the leg that he was supposed to do surgery on and then left the nurses to prep her mom.  During that time some of the nurses went on lunch break and others took over.  During the middle of this somehow the nurses ended up prepping the wrong leg.  The surgeon started performing surgery on the wrong leg and got in and couldn’t find anything wrong with the ACL but stated sometime the ACL starts to repair and therefore kept scraping the tendon away trying to find the problem.  He finally realized that they were on the wrong leg too late and then had to replace that tendon because of all the damage caused while in there.  He then called my co-workers father and told him what happened and asked if he wanted the surgeon to still fix the bad leg (the leg he was supposed to fix in the first place).  They decided they might as well go ahead and fix it.  She now has had both tendons replaced even though only one was supposed to be fixed.

I can’t even begin to imagine especially if the surgeon had signed the leg that he was supposed to do surgery on how you mess up like that.  Sad to say, as I’m not a suing kind of person, but this is a lawsuit waiting to happen and this is why our health insurance premiums are so high.  We all make mistakes believe me I make mistakes in my job time and again its just doctors have a higher risk when they make mistakes.