Sharing My Health Journey pt.1

My whole life, up to age sixteen, I was a seemingly healthy person.

Other than minor cuts and burns, I never had any issues.

In July 2019, my family was in Arizona staying at a missions house.

It was a Wednesday night, and we were just about to head to church, but my brother and I were playing a game of pool while we waited for the others. As he was racking the balls, one bounced off the table, and since I'm shorter, it hit me right in the head.

It gave me a good size knot on the forehead. It was excruciating, and I later found out I had a bad concussion. I never passed out, so we figured I would be okay, but the headaches/migraines never disappeared. We were in the process of moving to Texas to plant a new church, and we had to wait to find a new doctor.

They eventually got so bad that I couldn't stand to be in a room with lights. I wanted all the lights off and the room as dark as possible.

Once we were settled in Texas, we began the search for a pediatrician since I was only sixteen.

We made an appointment to discuss my headaches as soon as possible.

The doctor was very concerned about damage to the brain from my concussion. She referred us to a Neurologist to determine why I was having so many headaches.

While at the pediatrician, my blood pressure was slightly elevated, but we just assumed it was from the amount of pain I was in. My blood pressure was even higher when we went to see the Neurologist. The Neurologist was more worried about the blood pressure than the headaches. He sent us back to the pediatrician. From there, she sent us to the Emergency Room.

My blood pressure was at a dangerous level. It was about 192/160, which is not acceptable. The crazy thing is, I had never passed out or felt like I was going to. The only symptom I'd had was unbearable migraines.

When we arrived at the hospital, they gave me a migraine "cocktail" to help with the headache.

Since there are three main causes of elevated blood pressure in pediatrics, they began tests and labs to see which one was causing mine.

The first one they tested was my brain since I was already having these major headaches.

That test came back normal, thus they went to the heart and kidneys next.

When my labs came back, the panels for my kidneys were not good. Several of them were too high, and others too low. It was obvious that this was causing my high blood pressure. The only problem was, there are many kidney diseases or illnesses that could cause this. We somewhat had an idea of what was causing my sickness, but now we had to get to the root of the problem.

By the time the doctors discovered this, I had already been in the hospital for nearly a week.

They didn't have the kind of doctor I needed because it was a smaller hospital. I had to be transported to Dallas Children's Hospital, where I spent the next week.

The doctors here were very thorough and after many tests and scans, they finally found a diagnosis.

I had Chronic Kidney Disease. Something that I most likely had for several years, and it was just now presenting itself as a problem. The doctors said it was because of all the UTIs I had as a kid which is something that, during this time, never crossed our mind. It explained the elevated blood pressure, which was causing the headaches, that were causing me to be miserable.

They also discovered, since I had these blood pressures for so long without knowing, It had caused some damage to the left ventricle in my heart. They told us both conditions could be controlled by medication, which is not what I wanted to hear, but I wanted to do whatever it took to help me feel better.

Long story short they put me on several medications for the kidneys and blood pressure. They also put me on a beta blocker for my heart. Little did I know these meds would cause me a lot of trouble in the future.

We quickly realized it wouldn't be easy to find a medicine that didn't cause me problems.

Some were causing terrible symptoms, like chronic coughing. Others were causing severe swelling and allergic reactions.

The hardest issue for me was caused by the beta blocker. It caused a significant amount of weight gain.

As a woman, this was emotionally damaging to me. I did not want to be in that condition. I hated what it had done to my body. After researching more about that particular beta blocker, we tried telling the Nephrologist that's what was causing my weight gain, but he didn't want to believe it.

He took my dosage down, but by this time it was too late. It had already caused an amount of weight gain that would be extremely hard for me to lose.

While on that medication, I tried so hard to lose weight but nothing was working.

I was never the girl who ate whatever kind of food I craved, drank soda all the time, and never controlled what went into her body. I'd always tried my best to eat healthily and stay in shape.

Unfortunately, this medication made all of that impossible. It didn't matter what I did to lose weight nothing would work.

This was extremely discouraging for me, as you can imagine.

At this point, I decided I had to accept my body the way it was and move on with my life.

I stayed this way until I turned 19 and was able to change to an adult Nephrologist.

Finally, someone who listened to me. She couldn't believe how much damage it had done to my body. She immediately took me off the beta blocker, and we started some new things.

It took almost a whole year for my body to get adjusted to these meds, but it was worth it.

I am no longer gaining weight and can finally start the journey to getting my body back.

I know it won't be easy, and I will continue to live with CKD, but I am grateful for the opportunity to change some things.

My hope and prayer is to inspire others who have been or are currently on this journey.

I look forward to the progress I will be able to share with y'all in the following months!

Thank you for being here!