It's gotten to the crazy part of the semester, so I've been busy doing that whole college thing... but, I'm a nerd and I absolutely love learning, so I'm really enjoying classes. In the past few weeks I've been able to dissect a frog, visit a Hindu Temple, and run chromatography on fruit fly heads (which involves killing the flies, cutting off their heads, and then crushing their heads! It's probably the cruelest thing I've ever done...). I don't have very much energy, so that makes it difficult, but I always get ahead on my homework each weekend because I know that I get really exhausted by the end of the week. I was really sick and out of it on the day we went on a field trip to the temple, and right when I thought I couldn't feel any worse, some guy came out and started banging on a gong! Now, it makes me laugh... but it wasn't funny then!
There have been a lot of ups and downs since my last post. I haven't been able to get through to my doctor at the clinic, and I was starting to feel like we had reached a dead end with testing and trying to find a diagnosis... but... God is crazy awesome, and before long my dad had told me that my eye doctor (very random) was getting in touch with doctors that he thought would be the best for me to see! Of course, that would mean more traveling, but it was reassuring to know that not everyone had given up on me. Last week, we were able to schedule my breath-test for SIBO (I will have more on SIBO in a later post). I ended up getting to have it done on Friday! I went home on Thursday evening and had the test in the morning. The nurse felt terrible when she gave me the stuff to drink before the test, but I made sure to let her know that it was MUCH better than the 4 colonoscopy preps and the several bottles of Barium that I've had to drink so far. It was pretty much like drinking syrup (it was either glucose or lactulose), and the amount you have to drink is based on your weight, so I only had to drink a tiny bit! Then, I breathed into a machine thing every 15 minutes for 90 minutes (Cleveland clinic's website said 3 hours... hmm...). Both of my parents were with me (we tend to travel in packs for testing =P), and, of course, we ended up laughing hysterically about random things, so it wasn't bad at all. I've never been so thankful for my family's sense of humor than I have been throughout the past few years of being sick... these tests would be miserable without all of the laughing that we do.
My fever was kicking my butt again after the test, but I was able to rest at home which is so much better than trying to rest in a dorm room when you get fevers every day. I also somehow wrote a paper about how chronic illnesses affect development while I was home. I do a whole lot of fever-induced paper writing lately. I'm pretty sure Jesus writes them for me. On Saturday, I was able to help out at the Section III cross country championships for a little bit, which was really exciting because my family has gotten to know the officials and the people who do the timing pretty well. I only stayed for part of it because I was feeling pretty sick, but I was really happy to be there for a little bit! Oh, and my mom made meatloaf while I was home. There's nothing like a home cooked dinner in the middle of a crazy semester :)
My doctor is supposed to be calling me this week about the test, so I will write more about it then... we're having a decorating contest for our lounges, so I need to go finish helping (so we can win ;)!
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