And so we begin....

And so we begin...I'm going to chronicle the efforts and results in trying to get a diagnosis for Terry and his health issues...I'm taking a two month leave of absence from work in order to focus on his health issues and prompt (demand!) medical professionals to figure out the problem, so I have a finite time line and a definitive goal...this is not a new issue, so making a concerted effort to get it diagnosed and treated if possible, is a priority.

The real beginning of all of this is hard to pinpoint...Terry is my husband of almost 19 years, and on Feb. 11, 2000, he suffered a massive heart attack that caused significant damage to his heart, and necessitated his application for disability...this application was approved on the first submission, six months after his heart attack, so I've known all along that his medical record is indicative of poor heart function, and as a result, compromised health conditions.....he had a pacemaker/defibrillator implanted in Dec. of 2000 for the defib capacities.....in March of 2004, he had open heart surgery to remove staph infection that had located to his heart chambers....it was not believed his device caused the infection, but the wires from the unit to his heart had allowed the infection to invade his heart....he had a second unit implanted (on the right side this time) in Aug. of 2004. In Nov. 2004, he began vomiting....

For more than five years he has had repetitive vomiting that threatens him most days a week, and consumes him monthly....once this begins in earnest, there is no stopping it....he cannot keep down even water for hours, and I have to take him to the ER where they hydrate him with IVs and use meds in the IV to slow or stop the vomiting....after six of these hospitalizations this year, five of them in the past six months alone, we are no closer to knowing why than we were when we began...

He's been to specialists, and has been scoped down one end and up another and they find nothing...on Dec. 11, they took him by ambulance to Olathe Medical Center when he was vomiting up blood...a scope the next day showed some gastritis, which they are actually attributing to the vomiting and irritation from it, but nothing that should have been producing the blood he was vomiting up....

There are general indicators when this happens that add up to the major ordeal as opposed to the daily struggles....if there has been a significant change in the weather his head becomes very congested and drains down into his stomach....he doesn't get sick whenever it rains, but major shifts in the weather cause the allergy triggers that create the congestion....there also appears to be a cyclical pattern to it, although that pattern seems to be speeding up...

I do not believe, nor does he, that it is psychosomatic in any way...he's seen specialists, and no one seems to have a clue....I've requested a case conference at KU Med Center in KC, but they "don't do that"....at one point he was called by them when we were attempting to get appointments scheduled, and told he needed to discharge his primary care physician before they could see him...

This is the abbreviated version of five years of frustration, obviously, but the frustration ends here and the resolve to get this figured out takes over.....I'm putting this out there in the hopes that someone knows someone who might have a clue....at this point, no potential is too crazy or out there....whatever is happening is not common, or they'd have diagnosed it by now.....

If you're interested, follow along on our medical mystery tour....it begins now.....