GI, allergy testing, and anaphylaxis

Well it has been just a bit longer than I expected to get to the rest of my medical Journey! It has been a long month that is for sure! Well we will start after the surgeon decided not to do the Chiari surgery in July of 2010.

In September of 2010 I was experiencing severe abdominal pain. My primary care physician was worried it might be appendicitis so we went to the ER. Thankfully it was not appendicitis, but they did not know what it was. They did a CT scan to check my appendix as well as multiple blood tests. I was sent home with a pain prescription and told to make an appointment with an OB/GYN because they suspected my pain might be from a ruptured ovarian cyst. Well after this appointment the doctor told me my stomach pain was not from anything to do with my reproductive system and she referred me to a gastroenterologist (GI doctor).

The GI doctor was fantastic! He was not sure what was causing my issues, but he was determined to rule out anything and everything possible. He was concerned that I might have Chron’s disease or another serious digestive ailment. He first did an ultrasound to check my pancreas and other internal organs and he also order a barium swallow test to see how my digestive tract processed material from the mouth through the upper GI tract. These, as well as the blood tests that he performed, all came back normal. At this point he decided that he wanted to do an exploratory surgery to view my upper GI tract. I was sedated and a scope was inserted into my throat and down into my stomach so that he could look for any abnormalities that may have been present or damage to my GI tract that occurred. Again this came back entirely normal… Well at this point he had ruled out all of the serious, and more benign conditions too, so he said that it must just be irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Well feeling defeated once again, we decided to take a break from all things medical and let me try to just enjoy my high school years without constant doctors appointments. Well of course being me that did not work out so well! In December of 2010 I was having a relaxing night at home with my mom and my fiancé (well then boyfriend). After he left and my mom got in bed to read I decided to take a shower. About 10 minutes into my shower my lips started to get all tingly and they felt puffy. I got out of the shower and looked into the mirror… my lips were huge and my skin was getting all red and blotchy! Well I showed my mom and dad and off we went the emergency room again. By the time we got the ER I was swollen all over my body and red, blotchy and itchy. The scariest part though was that my throat was swelling shut. That is the fastest I have ever gotten into an emergency room! Well they blew two veins trying to get an IV in, but finally one of the nurses got it in. It did not take long to get me back to my original size and color and send me home exhausted. They determined that this was a severe allergic reaction to something, but we were unable to figure out exactly what caused this.

Well they recommended that I get food allergy testing redone, as well as environmental allergy testing to see if we could pin point why exactly I had this life threatening allergic reaction (called anaphylactic shock). Well no luck with that either! I have no food allergies, and moderate to severe environmental allergies, which we knew from the previous round of tests. Again we had zero answers to this medical mystery. I just had to carry around an epi-pen in case it happened again. Thankfully I have not had another anaphylactic episode since this, nor did I ever have one before this.

Well after this episode I went back to the local neurologist and begged him to do something. He basically said that he had no other ideas and I just needed to learn to live with my symptoms. At this point I was exhausted!!! My family and I couldn’t take any more of this so we left all doctors alone and I just learned to tolerate my symptoms for the next year.

Well I will write more later, but this gets us to about January of 2012. Hope you all are doing well!