My Story

            All my life I dealt with unexplained illnesses. When I was a young girl I would get a severe “stomach virus” no one else would get. It happened more and more until it was once a month. I would be curled up in a ball in so much pain sleeping on the bathroom floor because I couldn’t stop throwing up and that cold tile floor felt good on my hot face. Finally, that all came to a head. My mom and baby brother were in Arizona at my uncles wedding. I was so sick and my daddy called to check on me. The phone was right by my ear and it rang 104 times and I never heard it. At the same time mom and Micah had no clue I was even sick but they were driving home from Arizona and saw a ring around the sun. They were going to pray and thank God for the ring and Micah said, “We need to pray for Betsy.” Dad rushed home took me to the doctor and then the hospital where they did an emergency appendectomy. When mom called to check in dad told her the surgery went great. She naturally freaked out and drove home through the night. I was better for a while. As time passed I would end up in the hospital dehydrated and in severe pain and no doctor could explain it. My health kept declining and I thought having no answer was the worst thing ever. I was wrong. I remember sitting on my bed in 2008, my hair falling out of my head and crying out to God. He spoke to me as plain as day. He told me it was going to get a lot worse but then He promised that He would heal me. Then He showed me a vision of myself standing up in front of thousands of people telling them what He had done for me. I trusted Him with all my heart but had no idea how bad it would get. I had surgery to remove my gall bladder which had quit working and still my health declined.

By 2009 I had a diagnosis, idiopathic Gastroparesis, the doctor looked at me and said, “We can try this one medication, if that doesn’t work there is a drug out of Canada we can try. If that doesn’t work then there is nothing else I can do for you.” Gastroparesis literally means paralyzed stomach. Your stomach is always working, mine was not. I could barely eat or even drink water. I had a friend that was in a case study with a world renowned expert on gastroparesis. The doctor was in Jackson Mississippi and if I wanted to get in to see him it would take 2 years. Because of my friend I was able to talk to the nurse in charge of the case study and discovered I qualified for 2 case studies and would be able to get in to see him within a month. People came from all over the world to see this doctor and I not only got to see him, but get special attention. I was deemed the worst case in the study, but the best part was that he was able to use me to further his research on a disease little was known about. In the summer of 2010 I had an experimental surgery to connect a pacemaker to my stomach. They opened me from my sternum to my belly button and the surgery almost killed me, but it saved my life. For 6 months I was able to eat and my constant severe curl up in a ball and cry pain had subsided for the most part. In February of 2011 that all changed. They discovered there was nothing wrong with the pacer but my nerves quit responding to it. During that time, they also learned that my issue was genetic. Autonomic Neuropathy caused all of my problems. It shut down my appendix, my gall bladder, my stomach, and eventually my small intestines. It was known to systematically shut down your organs and many people had to have a multi visceral transplant including their stomach, small bowel, ilium, pancreas and liver. That is where my body was headed.

Strangely enough, through all that time that I could not eat or drink God sustained me. My bloodwork looked normal. I had doctors refuse to give me IV fluids because I must have been eating something I wasn’t telling them because of it and because I hadn’t lost that much weight. They could tell I was dry but refused. It wasn’t like I was asking for any medication, just fluids. Two days later I ended up in the hospital. I explained the ZAP method that Dr. Abell, the expert used. Nothing by mouth, Iv fluids and two IV nausea medications. I was in the hospital a week and it did not get any better. I went from holding down very little to holding down nothing, my pain was unbearable, and the doctors decided there was nothing more they could do so they unhooked my IV and sent me home. Two weeks later I ended up right back in the hospital. They decided to put me on IV nutrition. I went all the way to the Mayo Clinic for help, but there was nothing anyone could do. I eventually had my gastric pacer removed and lived with home health nurses coming to my house every week checking my central line and drawing blood to keep my IV nutrition balanced. I was also on so much medication several just for the nausea that I had to take around the clock and it barely put a dent in it. The pain was like no other pain in this world and I never knew you could have so many different types of nausea. I spent most of my time on the couch. I would lose days, weeks, even months. I had this awful disease where I slowly got to starve to death and the worst part was that my family whom I adore had to stand by and just watch. As the wife and mother they knew slowly slipped away horrendously.

In January of 2013 I started my Blog, Countdown to Healing. I knew I would get worse but I never knew how bad. But I also knew God would heal me and I never wavered in that faith. Through everything God brought people in my life, even strangers who knew nothing about me or my circumstances would come up to me and give me hope and reassurance. Churches all over prayed for me. One lady took a prayer to the wailing wall in Jerusalem for me. I started my blog because my sweet baby boy, Elijah, believed so strongly that God would heal me. He used every wish and every prayer to ask for my healing. He would constantly ask me, “Mom, are you healed yet?” I would have to tell him no, not yet, but God will heal me. One year he asked if he could use his birthday wish on himself. His sweet spirit amazes me.  My family is everything to me and they stuck by me through it all. This journey had to be so difficult on them but they stayed so strong for me.

On top of my illness we suffered so much loss. My mom and dad were so sick. My mom with Parkinson’s, Diabetes, Thyroid disease, Sarcoidosis, and more. My dad had part of his bowel removed. I was the only child still here and so I did my best to take care of them until I could no longer take care of myself. We lost my grandad in 2013. Then in 2014 my mom and on the same day my daughter-in-love’s dad died suddenly. We lost my dad the end of May 2016 and my grandmother soon after. We had their funerals the same weekend Friday was my dad’s and Saturday was my grandmothers. That was a rough weekend but that Monday June 6^th things went from bad to worse. Elijah had 2 friends over and my body began contorting and seizing and the pain was unbearable so I called on of his friend’s mothers to come over so I could try to take some pain medication to make it stop. I took the medicine and it didn’t stop it got worse. She stayed with me until my husband go home from work. She prayed with me and cared for me. I remember shivering and jokingly telling her maybe this is how God is going to heal me. She said she didn’t think that was how it worked. He got home from work and brought his sister and brother-in-law, they had no clue how bad it was but asked if I wanted to call an ambulance. I said yes. By the time the ambulance got there my temp. was 107.5 my lips were blue and I could not stop seizing. They took me to the hospital ER where I was left in the hall for over an hour to die. I was screaming in pain begging for help. I was covered in my own urine, blue lips high fever. My kidneys had shut down, my heart enzymes were elevated, at one point my blood pressure dropped to 50 over 30, but I did not learn this there. No one took my vitals, nothing. I remember fading in and out. I could see and feel the overwhelming love of all the people who had passed before me and I remember saying, “No, I have too much I have to do. I have my kids, a grandbaby on the way. I have to live.” Thank God my ambulance crew stayed with me. I remember hearing them talking to the desk asking about diversion and the people at the desk telling them they could get in trouble for moving me. They found me a bed at another hospital and asked if I wanted to go. I was so out of it I told them to ask my husband who they had not let back. He walked in right then because the nurse accidentally triaged him. They couldn’t do anything for me and yet they triaged someone who wasn’t even a patient.

We went to the other hospital and they learned that I was septic. They put me on a blood pressure medication they don’t use anymore because it can eat through your skin and it took 12 hours to get my blood pressure back up. I was in the ICU for a week. Finally, I got to a regular room was there for several days then as they were about to release me they popped my central line and the nurse was still going to let me go home that way. Even though I was just septic and the line was 3 centimeters from my heart, and now wide open. I refused and the next day Radiology tried to remove it only to discover it was broken under my skin and was the cause of my sepsis. If they had snipped one more tiny bit, the line would have been lost in my system caused a very extensive surgery and I would have spent the rest of my life concerned about a piece lodging in my heart and killing me. Thank God they stopped! The next day surgery was scheduled. I talked to my aunt on the phone and she prayed with me. The I called my granny and she prayed with me that God would not only heal me but restore my organs, make them brand new! When my doctor walked in I had a huge God smile on my face and he asked why I was smiling. I suppose I didn’t look like someone about to go to surgery. I told him my granny just prayed for me. After surgery I was sent home and that night for the first time in ten years I had bowel sounds! I began to eat, slowly at first just soup. But everything began to work like the body of a brand new baby! I gradually ate more and more and I knew our prayers had been answered. People had prayed for me from all over the world and if you were part of that, thank you so much. Your prayers do matter. They are heard. I always knew when people were praying for me because I could feel a strengthening I could not explain. People would often tell me they would pray for me, that was the least they could do and I would tell them, “No, that is the most you can do!” God healed me from an ugly incurable disease that most doctors didn’t want to deal with because there is nothing that can be done for it. God healed me and I believe He will use me and my story to change so many lives. He can heal you! He is still the God of Miracles, today, tomorrow and forevermore!