Hello! Thank you so much for your time.

I’m going to try to be as brief as possible.  If you are reading this, it’s because I really consider you to be one of my allies and I trust you to keep my business confidential.

On last Saturday (January 11, 2020), I was hospitalized.  In order to understand why, I must go back to November.  In 2019, I developed a fibroid that grew and grew and robbed me of my nutrients while causing me to have extremely heaving bleeding.  In November, my bleeding was so heavy that when my cycle was over, all I could do was lay in the bed completely still and covered with multiple blankets.  In my mind, I lost a lot of blood and I needed to take iron pills and just eat and build myself back up.

This is the fibroid.  I call her “Big Bertha”.  She has completely taken over my abdominal cavity to the point that I can only eat half of the amount of food I used to be able to eat.  I am on birth control pills to stop my cycles so that I don’t have the extreme bleeding that I have had before – but I am going to eventually have to have the fibroid removed and I’m going to have to have a hysterectomy so that no more fibroids grow.

Fast forward to December 29th, 2019.  I realized on this day that I had food poisoning.  I’m still not sure of the source – but it was a pretty bad case.

Now fast forward to last Saturday.  I had been feeling bad for weeks, and I was so dehydrated that everything I ate and drank tasted like salt.  I was trying my best to drink water and Gatorade, but it wasn’t working.  I felt horrible and I just kept trying to push through it.  My breathing was very labored, but I was determined to force myself to eat and drink so that I could feel better.  The whole day was a challenge for me.  I went to Rocky Mount and ran a few errands and one of my friends said, “You don’t look right.  Do you want me to take you back to Greenville?”  In my mind, I was just tired and I didn’t have on my full face lol so I thought I was okay.  I knew I felt bad, but I had no idea how bad off I really was.

That night, I got ready to go to sleep because I was feeling tired.  When I got ready to go lay on my side, I felt what I thought was a back spasm.  So I did what I knew to do: lay there, breathe through it, and let it pass.  But when I got ready to turn on my other side, my entire body started shaking.  Violently.  I immediately started to pack a bag and I called 911.  

When the paramedics got to me, they informed me that my body was in shock and that my blood pressure was 80/54.  They started an iv and took me to one of the best hospitals there is – Vidant.  When I got there, I went through the most traumatic thing I have ever experienced.  As you know, Vidant is a teaching hospital.  So there was a whole group of medical professionals pressing on my stomach, asking me questions, performing x-rays, drawing my blood, sticking stuff in me – it was the scariest thing I have ever gone through.  It got so bad that they had to give me pain medicine (fentanyl) because all of the pressing and the hard boards from the x-rays and stuff had me in tears.  No one was there with me while I went through this part.  

My friend came to be with me after I left the trauma bay, had a CT scan and was put in a room in the emergency department.  I had two pelvic exams to determine what was going on with the fibroid.  I also had my blood drawn time after time.  Then I was told that I needed a blood transfusion.  Two bags to be exact.  My blood pressure fluctuated and my temp held at 102.  Finally, they gave me some Tylenol and the fever broke.

Once I got to my hospital room, they got me settled and started the first round of blood.  I also had to have a four-hour drip of antibiotics.

This sweet African doctor came in my room and said, “You have a little bug in your blood.  We have to let the bug grow so that it can tell us what it is.  And when we know what it is, we will be able to treat it.”

In other words, I had sepsis.  THANK GOD no one told me that, because I believe I would have lost it.  God knows.

So I got the two bags of blood, they gave me antibiotics, and on Tuesday evening, I went home.