What is wrong with me?!

Well, I'm back, and hoping to get this blog going in earnest.  Obviously, it has fizzled out a few times over the past few years, and I think that was due to the fact that I never really had a purpose for the blog.  I was just randomly posting pictures and what not.  BUT...I believe I have finally found a purpose. Before I can tell you about that though, I need to tell you the story of how I got here.  (This will take a few separate posts, so bear with me.)

Many of you reading this may already know that I was having some pretty serious health problems just recently.  And many of you who knew I was suffering may still not know the whole story.  So, here goes:

In mid-September of this year, I began struggling with severe fatigue.  It literally hit me overnight, and it was unlike anything I had ever experienced.  Everyone knows what it's like to be tired.  Most people even know what it's like to be downright exhausted.  This was different.  It was completely overwhelming - every cell in my body was tired.  I had trouble climbing a single flight of stairs, which is not normal for most people, but is especially bizarre for someone who had a 10-miler and a half marathon coming up within 2 months.  On two different mornings, I could barely raise my arms to wash my hair in the shower.  I was also having trouble keeping my arms elevated in order to play the piano - they were just so tired!  So, after about a week, I went to the doctor.  He drew blood, and at my follow up a few days later, he said that everything was normal.  He mentioned that my vitamin B12 level was on the low end of normal, but gave no indication that that could be a problem.

Over the next 2-3 weeks, things continued to spiral downward.  I had new symptoms cropping up at an alarming rate, including shortness of breath (sometimes severe), a dry cough, loss of appetite, nausea, neurological problems - mild motor coordination issues in hands, burning sensations through my arms which kept me up at night, mild balance problems, lightheadedness, severe anxiety and panic attacks, and rapid swings in body temperature.  And even this isn't a comprehensive list!  I continued going to various doctors, including a cardiologist, a trip to the ER, as well as a trip to urgent care.  Many different tests were run, and while they all kept coming back normal, I continued to get worse.  At first, the theory was that a medication that I was on was slowing my heart rate down too far.  But after going off of the medicine, and continuing to get worse, that theory was debunked.  The next theory was that it was an autoimmune condition, because I have a specific predisposition for autoimmune problems.  All of those tests came back normal as well.  My thyroid was also normal, and I was not anemic.

After I nearly ended up in ER a second time, my parents offered to come pick me up and take me back to Kansas City in order to continue to seek answers.  I agreed, and left Memphis for an indefinite amount of time.  One of the first things my mom said when she saw me was "You've lost weight."  Now, those of you who know me well, know that I do not really have much weight to lose.  So, this was a very visible concern, among other things.  She also mentioned later that my color had been awful.

The first doctor I saw after arriving in Kansas City was a neurologist.  He had numerous things he wanted to test for including Multiple Sclerosis, which was not the first time I had heard that mentioned. Well, the MRI had to be approved by insurance.  So, while we were waiting for that, the doctor ran a series of other tests.  Everything came back normal, although he had run my B12 again, and also mentioned that it was low, but still considered within normal range.  I then went to another doctor who tested for Lyme's disease, Celiac disease, and a type of rare adrenal tumor.  No surprise here, everything was normal.  He also agreed with the other doctors I had seen in that I definitely needed the MRI to check for MS.

At this point, I was incredibly frustrated.  I knew in my gut that something was wrong, but I was terrified that they wouldn't find it until it was too late.  I was honestly not very functional at all at this point, and was worried that I was going to end up with permanent damage of some sort.  My mental state was also horrible.  The anxiety and panic attacks had gotten so bad that I literally couldn't hardly think straight.

Toward the end of my two week stay in Kansas City, my cousin called me.  She had just spoken to a woman she knows and had been telling her about my situation.  This woman has Celiac disease and felt very strongly that that could be the root of my problem.  I told my cousin that I had already been tested for Celiac and that it had come back negative.  After talking to my cousin briefly though, I began thinking about the possibility of this being a nutritionally related problem.  This was something that I hadn't really considered yet.  It struck me that the ONLY thing that had been even remotely abnormal, in all of the tests that they had run, was my B12 level.

We were still waiting on approval for the MRI though, which actually came the next day.  Insurance approved the MRI, and the doctor scheduled it for the day before I left KC.  As crazy as this sounds, a part of me was actually hoping that something would show up on the MRI.  At least then, I would have some answers and a course of action...