March 24th, 2017, is when I gave birth to my beautiful daughter, and the first time I thought I wasn’t going to make it through to the next day. 35 hours of labor that ended in an emergency cesarean section in order to save our lives. I lost just enough blood to not need a transfusion, but my blood count took a hit and I needed Iron medication to level me back out in order to go home when my daughter was released from the hospital.
April, 2017, for a few days I had a horrible pain that kept hitting the center of my chest-like getting kicked in the heart from the inside-that would go away and come back, but I was caring for a jaundiced newborn so I just let it go. Then we were walking around Wal-Mart one night, the night before my daughter turned 4 weeks old, and the pain hit-so intense I felt I couldn’t breathe-and so I told my boyfriend I needed to go to the hospital. Hands above my head to open my airways the entire 45 minute drive, 15 minutes waiting in an emergency room yelling at the receptionist I couldn’t breathe and nearly choking on my tears, and an EKG followed with an entire syringe of morphine just for them to tell me I overreacted about stomach acid. We drove home, I was doped out and as the morphine wore off, the pain hitting my chest came back-I knew something was wrong. I left my daughter with her dad and drove myself an hour to an ER in the city, waited in a freezing room with no food or water for 4 hours, and was tested for everything that could be causing my pain. After an ultrasound they found out my gallbladder was nearly ready to burst and immediately admitted me for emergency surgery in the morning. They said had I waited any longer, or accepted what the other ER had said, it would’ve burst and I probably would’ve gone septic. That was the second time I nearly died in a month. My daughter came to visit me in the hospital the day she turned 4 weeks old, and I was still there 2 days later to get a splint in my bile duct(the opening stomach acid goes through). My body began rejecting the splint a week later and I had to have the removal bumped up 2 weeks to keep me from being in more pain.
 December 2017, time had passed and I thought the worse of my troubles were over. I had turned 20 in November without so much as a paper cut. Silly me for hoping, because then my hair started falling out. Slowly at first, but then progressed to clogging a drain after just one shower. The sides of behind my ears, the front, the nape of my neck. The hair just kept coming out.
February 2018, I began noticing my right arm felt funny…weaker than I remembered it. It was weird, noticing how I went from being able to carry 2 five gallon buckets of ice in one hand, to dropping just one and my arm feeling so strained from so little work. I didn’t know what was happening, but I figured it was time to get checked out. This was my first Dr appointment of the year, bringing to my physician’s attention not only my arm, but the hair loss as well as it had progressed to the sides of my head being nearly bald at that point. He tried to tell me it was tension Alopecia, that my ponytails were too tight. I had been wearing the same tightness of ponytail since I was 5 years old; there’s no way that’s what caused it. He reluctantly said that it must be a different form of Alopecia, but that there’s nothing he can do about it since the steroid liquid he gave me wasn’t helping. He had no idea what was wrong with my arm, why it was getting so weak, so he sent me to the Orthopedics to have them run tests.
March 2018, Orthopedic center came back with nothing. My arm was cleared of any orthopedic problems, yet it continued to get worse. It was difficult to hold my now year old baby girl for extended periods of time, and it bruised my arm one day when I had tried. I mentioned the bruising to my Physician, and the fact my arm was still getting worse, and he checked my blood levels. Well, they came back with results we didn’t expect. Not only had my Iron begun to decline, but my Factor 8 Levels(a coagulant-clotting factor) came back at 182% when the normal range ends at 156%. My blood count was decreasing and my risk of blood clots or strokes was increasing.
April 2018, this was the month my Physician made a referral for me to see a Hematologist(a blood specialist). And while we waited for the appointment to be made, we watched and waited as my blood work results came back worse. My arm was slowly getting weaker, and my gums began to bleed.
May 2018, my first appointment with the Hematologist at a nearby cancer center where he is located. My first official diagnosis for the records-I’m anemic, and probably will be for the rest of my life. My red blood cells are too big, my body won’t absorb enough Iron, and I’m not making as much blood as I should. My Factor 8 Levels raised again, this time to 222%, which put me well within the range to get a diagnosis of a blood disorder, but my Hematologist didn’t want to do it.
May 2018, my primary physician ordered Iron infusions to pump the iron straight into my blood stream. 5 times over a week and a half I sat at a hospital with an IV in my arm for nearly an hour each time, clinging to the hope that it would make me feel better. Maybe I wouldn’t be so tired, not so drained. That was a lost hope. This was the month I made the decision to buzz my head. All of my thick, long, wavy hair was gone. I was tired of watching it fall out and made the choice that it was going to come out on my terms. I was tired of explaining to people who saw the sides of my head that no, I didn’t shave it as a fashion statement, it fell out cause I was sick. Getting looked at like I was a wounded animal got to be too much, and I had more pressing things to deal with-like my arm getting worse by the week and the fear that I could have a stroke at 20 and not be able to see my daughter grow up.
June 2018, I had an appointment with a Neurologist for my arm, and when he said that at my age, he’s concerned I might have Multiple Sclerosis, I was devastated. What 20 year old mom wants to hear they have a life long disease that eats away the protective covering of your nerves and strips your muscles, leaving you weak and in pain?? He scheduled a brain MRI that I’d have to wait til next month to have. So we waited…
July 2018, well the MRI itself went fine, I slept through it even though I had a cage over my head. The appointment with the neurologist to go over the results, however, has me worried and scared every day now. They found lesions on the part of my brain where the 2 halves connect. I have irreversible brain damage. The neurologist is now heavily leaning towards MS, but doesn’t want to make the diagnosis himself so he’s sending me to a more experienced neurologist in a bigger city. My blood work showed no progress.
September 18, 2018, well it’s now September and August showed no improvement in my health. Nowadays I’ve been getting regular headaches(which aren’t normal for me), more and more frequent dizzy spells, my arm still hasn’t improved, and I look like a domestic violence victim with the amount of bruises on my body put there so easily by my worsening anemia.
Welcome to my story…
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Brianna's Health Story 