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Surgery with Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction
Thank YOU, Dr. Towfigh. I’m back home now, but I’ll be back down there for surgery soon, I hope. I really appreciate your help by recommending the high-resolution, dynamic MRI with the valsalvic maneuver. When I came down to see you, I thought I just had a small right-sided inguinal hernia, but the MRI showed 2 femoral hernias, one on each side, which are the kind that are most likely to strangulate, and the biggest surprise is that I have a huge uterine fibroid that ha stretched my uterus up into my liver. It’s now the size it would be in an 8 month pregnancy.
All of my doctors completely missed diagnosing any of this in me. A couple of them blamed me for gaining so much weight, and one thought that my hernia pain was from nerves stemming from my sprained low back.
My husband and I are very grateful to finally have a diagnosis that explains so many of my odd symptoms. In 2008 I went to my doctor because I was concerned about a new lump that had grown under my left rib cage. She couldn’t find it but she palpated the spot I told her it was at, and then she explained to me that the only thing they could do would be exploratory surgery to see what was wrong, and that once you cut the abdomen open, a whole host of health problems can emerge, so the best thing to do was to just ignore it.
A few years later, I noticed another lump under my right ribcage, and I did what she said, I ignored it. It is possible that those lumps are just lipomas from my fibromyalgia, but now I wonder if they’re from the fibroids. .
During the last few years my gynecologist was just amazed at how big and hard my tummy keeps getting. He would palpate it in wonder and look very perplexed. He said he was amazed at how hard my tummy is.
Over the last 6 years, I have been in more and more pain, especially when I lean into the counter or anything presses on my belly, as I’m going about my day. I kept thinking it was just the fibro, and maybe it is, but maybe it’s part of the fibroid.
I also have this odd-shaped, pooch-like thing at the top of my tummy when I lay back on my exercise ball to do crunches. I showed it to my husband last year, and said I thought I should bring my ball to the doctors and show it to them, but he said I shouldn’t, so I didn’t. I’m curious to know now if that’s part of the endo. I know my body, and I’ve done crunches all my life – my belly never had that extra pooch-like thing before.
I really want to thank you for getting me right in to see Dr. Aliabadi, the gynecologist, the next morning after my MRI. She gave me real validation for my health situation instead of shaming and blaming me for gaining so much weight. I can’t tell you what a relief that was.
I’m grateful that you were both so understanding about me needing to cancel my surgery at the last minute this time. I need time to get my aftercare in place because, this is a whole new ballgame, and with my disabling chronic illnesses, there’s a lot we have to plan for.
My husband and I visited Serenity when we were down there and we think they can probably meet my needs, but we’ll definitely have to modify the bed in some way. I can’t handle memory foam with my fibro and low back pain, but maybe we can put some kind of mattress padding on it. They were very willing to try to make it work for me, so I’ll be calling them and working that out as soon as I’m able, and I’ll be calling your office and Dr. Aliabadi’s as well.