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Tag: bezoar

Disabled? I Don’t Think I’m Broken

who cares if you're disabled when it's your birthday party, opening birthday presents at my 19th birthday party

I’d had a rough ride through childhood and had spent it going in and out of hospitals due to gastroparesis, an inability to maintain a normal heart rate and rhythm, blood pressure issues, frequent passing out, hypovolemic shock, frequent infections, and dehydration. For much of my childhood, I’d been dependent on an NJ tube for feedings. I’d been followed by an adolescent medicine doctor, a gastroenterologist, a cardiologist, a psychiatrist, a therapist, an infectious disease doctor, and a nephrologist (kidney doctor). It was a couple of days before my one-month follow-up with Dr. Green, the nephrologist, but on July 2nd I was celebrating my nineteenth birthday and I was also celebrating my graduation from high school and the end of my first year at Holyoke Community College. My family and I were too busy to worry about how disabled I was, we were celebrating two major milestones in my life … Find Out What Happens Next

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Gastroparesis: My Definitive Diagnosis

An image of myself going through the CT scanner as part of extensive testing for gastropareisis

The whole genre of my healthcare had changed when I first woke up, swathed in warm blankets after my emergency surgery to have 2.5 inches of dead bowel removed. It wouldn’t be until almost a week later, after all of the testing was complete, that I would find out I had a disease called gastroparesis. The NG feeding tube formula they had been pumping me up with had congealed inside me forming a hardened mass called a bezoar. This in turn had caused a bowel obstruction. After four days of being ignored while I was supposedly being “treated” for an “eating disorder” in the children’s inpatient psychiatric unit, the obstruction had finally just ruptured causing my surgical emergency and the death of that 2.5 inches of bowel.

At ten years old I weighed 38 pounds. For the last two years, everyone had passed me off as a psych case. At … Find Out What Happens Next

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The Monster Has a Name: Gastroparesis

The tube feeding bag and pump I used when I first began my battle with the monster of gastroparesis

My very first symptoms started when I was eight and couldn’t stay standing up through the whole prayer service at my Orthodox Jewish Day School every morning. Also that year, I started having trouble with holding down food and drink. Between ages eight and ten the issues just intensified and turned into a monster that threatened to tear my whole family apart, including the lives of my two little brothers, Michael and Jonathan (names altered for privacy issues) who were having their own issues that got shoved to the back burners because my issues were life-threatening and there’s were just life-altering. My GI issues were so intense by the time I passed out in an elevator at age ten that I hadn’t even been able to hold down any food or drinks at all. Not even sips of Gatorade.

I had my first hospitalization after passing out in that elevator. … Find Out What Happens Next

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