My journey to the Mayo Clinic

Greetings blog readers! My Dad and I arrived in Rochester, Minnesota on Thursday January 5th. In short, this place is AMAZING. The facility is unlike anything I have ever seen and the staff is friendly, organized and professional.  For those of you wondering what on earth I'm doing in Minnesota in the middle of January, let me bring you up to speed.

In 2011, my body broke. That's really the easiest way to describe it, but let me give you a few more details. Following months of tests and ridiculously bizarre diets, I was diagnosed with gastroparesis in early May. Gastroparesis means that I have a paralyzed stomach. My fine dining options include non-fat/non-fiber/non-dairy liquids, egg whites, white rice, white bread and the occasional potato. Don't worry, if you're really lucky, I might invite you over for dinner some day!

After several months of additional testing and joining a clinical trial, I was hospitalized in the fall for malnutrition (shocker). While there, the doctors decided to look into my ever-growing list of unusual symptoms. They ran numerous tests, stared at me with bizarre expressions and uttered the phrase, "well I've never heard of THAT before!" more times than I could count. Before sending me on my merry way, I was diagnosed with Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease. UCTD is a polite way of saying that my body hasn't quite decided what connective tissue disease it would like to claim as its own. In short, I carry several symptoms/traits of several different connective tissue diseases (lupus, scleroderma, etc.). The way I figure, my body wants to be able to make an extremely educated decision and it wants to try out lots of options before reaching a final verdict. See, I'm just outsmarting everyone, really.

While in the hospital, my doctors also decided that I did not posess enough bling and needed to accessorize. They weren't thrilled with my 30 lb. weight loss, and with Thanksgiving coming up, they really wanted me to get my own special version of Thanksgiving dinner. A few weeks later, I got surgery to have a PEG-J feeding tube inserted into my stomach and small intestine. Turns out that "failure to thrive" applies not only to babies, but also to anyone who only eats baby food. Who knew?

Just in case my husband and family was getting bored, the doctors also discovered that I have superior mesenteric artery syndrome. SMA is a super rare condition that means my aorta and superior mesenteric artery are squeezing my small intestine like pliers. Oops.

So. Add this past year to my arsenal of allergies, raynauds disease and graves disease and you will see, my friends, why I have decided that January was a great time of year to visit balmy Minnesota.