Autoimmune Hepatitis.

Thursday November 10, 2011. 

I woke up in the early morning, before my alarm, to go to the bathroom. I stand up out of my bed and I am instantly frozen. My body hurts so badly that I cannot not move my legs enough to walk over to the dresser. I lean against my bed and just breath for a minute. I gain some amount of energy to walk to the bathroom. I am half bent over walking very slowly to the bathroom. 

I get to the bathroom. Feel light-headed (I have a past of passing out when i am in pain, so i knew what to do when i felt it) so i grab the wall in the stall and slowly slide down to sit. I sat on the ground and verbally pray for God to heal me and take away this excruciating pain. I could not do anything. My hands were swollen and my legs were swollen and basically doing anything ended in severe pain. I lean my head against the wall and passed out. After who knows how long, i came out of it and began to pray again out loud because i could not move. As i began to gather myself and get up, someone walked into the bathroom. I got up and opened the door. I look and a girl from my floor Alissa is looking at me with wide eyes. 

"Are you alright dear?" 

"Uhm.. i don't think so.." and i began to tell her of everything that just happened. She took me back to my room slowly and helped me get back in my bed. 

I sat in my bed for the next hour in so much pain that i could not move my feet in my sheets, i began to just lay there and cry to God for help. I had never felt anything like this. 

-before this i had been having SOME pain in my joints and i thought that it was maybe because of exercising more or sleeping funny-  

When my alarm went off, i told my roommate of all that had happened and then called my mom and told her. She found an immediate care for me to go to that morning. I got a friend of mine to take me. We got there and i almost passed out again. They put me in a room quickly to wait for the doctor. Mind you, this whole time i can barely walk. The doctor came in and i explained it all to him and everything that had been going on. He told me that they were going to take blood and then get some results. In the mean time, he gave me pain medication so i could function. 

Tuesday November 15, 2011

I am walking to Old Testament class and i get a call from a Chicago number that i don't know, i assume it is the doctor. I answered and the women on the other line told me they had my results. I was preparing for her to just tell me and then tell me what to do about it. She then asks if i can come in to see the doctor that day before 12...instantly i knew that it wasn't something little. I called my mom and told her about it, she reminded me that my dad didn't have class that day, so he came with me for support. 

I get to the office and walk back in the room. Over these few days the pain medicine has been doing wonders and i am feeling fine. I only am a little stiff after sitting for a while. The doctor sits down and tells me about the results. He shows me that everything is fine on the first sheet. Then he says "well everything seems normal except your liver count. is out of range. One of them is 800 and should be 20. The other one is 1255 when its supposed to be 40."  I just looked at him and said "wow". He then began to tell me what that could possibly mean. He told me that the results showed up that i autoimmune was detected. Which meant it was either Lupus or something called Autoimmune Hepatitis. The doctor said that the lab was doing more work on my blood still and would have the results in a few minutes. The phlebotomist came in and took more blood. Little did i know that the five viles from the first day and the five viles from the second day would be nothing! 

Doctor came back in and sat down. He told me that the autoimmune system was detected again in the results so it wasn't a false positive from the first test. Then he looked at me and told me that i had autoimmune hepatitis. Which means my antibodies were attacking my liver because they thought it was an intruder of my body...but it wasn't. Essentially leaking toxins throughout my body. Symptoms: rheumatoid arthritis. Which explains why i could not move and was in severe pain for the past days. 

As he explained this i just listened and nodded and figured out what to do next. The doctor was surprised i wasn't freaking out a little more. I told him there was nothing i could do about it, so i just need to know what to do next. I don't think the thought of this being a disease had set in yet. The doctor left to go do something, i immediately texted my mom, dad and best friend to tell them. I left the doctor's office with an appointment with a liver specialist the next day at Northwestern Hospital. 

Wednesday November 16 2011

I woke up the next morning planning on going to the hospital with my dad, then leaving to go home for thanksgiving break. Once again, woke up to take a shower and i could not move. I began to walk to the door and had to stop and my roommates bed and sit because i was about to pass out. I laid on her bed for   a minute, then got up and went to the shower. I got in the bathroom, sat down on a bench, leaned my head against the wall and passed out again. I came out of it, and went into my room and just got ready to leave. I met my dad downstairs and i slowly but surely made my aching push to the car. I had not taken pain medicine this day because i didn't have breakfast yet. 

Got to the hospital and made it to the liver specialist in a slow manner. The doctor and her med student assistant checked me out and asked questions and asked medications i had been on and so on, the normal things. They told me that it was most likely cause by a medicine i had been taking for my skin since i was 14. They told me to completely stop taking that. They wanted to do more tests to make sure it was the medicine and not just my body doing it to itself. I was told to stop taking pain medication too. I was so shocked i thought i was going to be in pain forever now. They then told me that i would get some steroids to take in the mean time to help with that. The nurse said that the steroids would make me hyper and i would not feel a thing. I was praying she was right....and she was! After we met the doctor, she sent me to get more blood drawn and then to get an ultrasound. My dad had to wheel me around the hospital because i couldn't move at all. It was excruciating.  

We left the hospital after multiple hours of being there with a prescription for steroids and a note to get my blood drawn in a week again. We headed home and as we got there, i told me dad i was scared to get out of the car because it hurt so bad. I made my way inside, hugged my mom and began to bawl in her arms. I was finally in a safe place where i could cry and feel scared and sad and worried. I began to take the steroids that day. 

Thursday November 17 2011

THANKSGIVING DAY! 

i woke up a little sore, but not nearly as bad as before. By the time thanksgiving meal was over and i had my seconds steroid in my body, i could run. After the meal, i hopped on the treadmill and ran a mile, no problem.... WHAT?! Not 24 hours before that, i could not even walk to the door from the car. 

-From that week on, I have had blood drawn every week or every two weeks to check my liver count. Praise God, every week they have been coming down in dramatic ways. I started off taking 2 steroids a day and then 1 and a half and now i am down to just 1. I am hoping that soon it will be just a half!- 

• Up to this point i have had 25 viles of blood taken, in just under 2 months

I am getting better, i don't feel any pain and nothing is swollen anymore. Though, i don't like the side effects of the steroids..in the long run, it is so much better than dealing with that pain ever again. 

So, the problem was the medicine i had been taking for a long time, so now that i have stopped that, i am seeing results in my liver which means it wasn't my body attacking itself out of no where.