Fall of 2011 was the beginning of my college carrier.
Little did I know that it was also the beginning of my health problems. Barely
into my first semester, I was pouring over my books one evening when I realized
that my hands were shaking like crazy. I had no clue what was going on with me,
but I did know that no matter what it was I had some meetings I had to attend.
By the time I went to my first meeting my whole body was shaking as if I had a
very high fever. I was very cold, my cheeks were burning and red, and I felt
horrid.
My sister asked our Prayer group leader what we should do
and they took me to the dorm nurse. The nurse took my temperature and it was
fine. After putting me to bed, the nurse asked if I had blood sugar problems.
My sister told her “no” and the nurse told me to drink some juice and go to
bed.
That was just the beginning of everything! Throughout
that first semester I had occasions off and on where I was a little shaky but
none where as bad as that first time and I sloughed them off as no big deal.
Then, over Christmas break things got worse.
My second semester of college is when I finally had to
tell my parents. I should have told my
parents earlier, but I still wanted to believe that nothing was going wrong. My
symptoms included : tremors, lightheadedness, fatigue, blurred vision, extreme thirst, excessive urination, slight
headaches, almost passing out a couple of times, flushing of the face,
extremely dry skin, foggy brain,
occasionally even slurred speech, and by midsummer tears where non-existent
half the time.
Several of my friends observed what was going on and
asked if it was low blood sugar. This got me to wondering. So, I purchased a
glucose monitor and decided I would see for myself. The first time I checked it
I was at 75, but I was having all the symptoms of hypoglycemia.
One day, I was sitting in a noon class and my hands
started shaking, I started feeling awful, and got very anxious. During that
class period, all that I could think about was getting out of that room and
somewhere to get something to eat. When food did not help I went to a friend’s
office who had Type 1 Diabetes. She gave me something to try to get my blood sugar
up. When the shaking finally wore down enough that I could check, the glucose
monitor said that I should have been fine. However, that whole afternoon was
awful! What was going on?? That was the incident
that scared me into telling my parents what was going on.
My parents got a doctor’s visit for me and of course the
first thing the doctor checked for was Diabetes Mellitus. When that test came
back perfectly normal, my doctor referred me to an endocrinologist and got an
appointment set for not long after school got out. Summer finally came after
what seemed like an eternity. My first Endocrinologist visit ended with the
doctor ordering a whole battery of tests done to check for hypoglycemia and a
myriad of other things that might be causing the symptoms. After most of the tests came back perfectly
normal, I was distraught, but there was one more test that the endocrinologist
wanted to do to check for sure that my glucose levels were okay.
A couple of days after the final test I needed to get
alone, as I had several times before, to just talk things over with the Lord. I
went to a spot that was secluded and just poured my heart out to the Lord. I
asked him what his purpose was in all this. I remember asking the Lord over and
over again why he could not have just given me diabetes because at least that
would have been easy to diagnose and could have been treated.
I knew that if I did have diabetes that I would live with
it the rest of my life. However, in my mind having something diagnosed that
could be treated would be better than living with something that no one could
figure out and could not be treated. I begged him to let the endocrinologist
find something.
As I poured my heart out to the Lord, I cried and no
tears would fall. It was awkward crying without the relief of tears flowing
down the cheeks. I remember saying to the Lord “Lord, I need relief from
crying! Why won’t you just let me cry? Why will tears not fall? Why can’t I
cry? “ My conversation that day with the Lord started out rather angry but
ended on a slightly better note. I thanked God for what he was doing and asked
that somehow, someway He would just use this all for His glory and for my good.
I begged him to draw me closer to his side through this whole thing and again I
asked him to please help the doctors to find the problem.
That same day I went home and got on the computer to try
out a symptom checker. I plugged in my symptoms, as I had done several times
before, but this time along with all the normal stuff that always came up was
something I had never heard of before. Something called Diabetes Insipidus.
After checking it out, everything seemed to match up!
After measuring my water intake, I found out that I was
drinking 3.5+ gallons of water and was going to the restroom over 24 times
within a 24 hour time frame. My mom told me that I needed to ask the doctor
about DI at the appointment and needed to tell him what I found out about my
water intake and output.
The day came to go back to the endocrinologist, he seemed
very determined that there was nothing wrong with me and showed us that my
insulin levels were perfectly normal. I was fine in his eyes, and there was no
need to go any further. While at the
follow up visit my mom had me tell the doctor everything that I had found
out. The endocrinologist restlessly
listened to what I had to say. He acted like he did not believe me at all. And
when we asked him about Diabtetes Insipidus he was not very pleased and did not
seem to think that that was the problem. But my mom convinced him to check it
out. At first he said that the only way to see if I had it or not was to go
through a water deprivation test and to do that I would have to go to the
hospital. But then he excused himself from the room and came back with a paper
of different tests that he wanted run. He wanted them done as soon as possible.
We decided we would do the test on Friday morning. I was
not supposed to drink anything from 10 in the evening till after the test- that
was awful!!!! We went in to the lab Friday and I had the test done. Just a few hours later the endocrinologist
called back and told us that I was unable to concentrate my urine (no, huge
surprise here). He then proceeded to tell us that I needed to have the water
deprivation test as soon as possible. Basically to verify that I had DI and to
determine what type I had and how to treat it. So my test was then scheduled
for the following Monday. The doctor did tell us that it would not be a
pleasant test and would be risky.
The night before the test I challenged the Lord. I told
him that if the test results came back normal I would hate him forever! Well,
the test came and went and the results came back normal. I was very angry at
the Lord!!! However, the Lord did not allow that very long.
It was the week of
VBS at our small little church and they needed help with all the kids. So, I
went to help out. That week between listening to the children quoting Bible
verses and watching souls come to Christ, God got a hold of my heart and showed
me that He had a reason for what he was doing. After that I began to read more
in my Bible and God began to do a work in my heart. I began to realize that God
had a purpose for what He was doing even if I could not see it at this point. I
would like to say that after this point I never doubted that God’s way was
perfect but that would not be the truth. I still had my ups and downs, but God
always brought me back and showed me that He was with me – in fact this was one
of those times when he was carrying me.
Anyway, it wasn’t long and we were back in my family
physicians office, pretty much back where we had started. This time, my doctor
wanted to send me to a Christian counselor, he said that there did not appear
to be anything wrong with me physically and that sometimes the symptoms that I
was having could be caused by a spiritual problem. Well, my parents were not
too happy about that, and pushed to get my doctor to send a referral to another endocrinologist. My parents were confident that it was not all in my head.
Although, I have to say by this point I really did not know, and was even test
shy because all the tests were coming back normal. I was afraid that we would
go to this new endocrinologist and get the same response that we did everywhere else.
But we did not. The new endocrinologist agreed
to do another water deprivation test. He also ordered a 24 hour urine sample, a
lot of blood work, a MRI, and a scan of my kidneys and bladder. I filled two
and a half of the big jugs that they give you to collect your urine in and
completely shocked the people at the lab. They had never seen anyone come in
with that many filled in a 24 hour period (normally a person will not even
completely fill one).
The time came for the water deprivation test. That was a
hard day, but God was good and I was at peace the whole time. At the end of the
test they injected DDAVP and even thought that whole day had been awful after the
DDAVP kicked in and I got a little bit of water I felt better than I had felt
in a long time!
The day after the water deprivation test, we had an
appointment with a Nephrologist and with my Endocrinologist. The Nephrologist said that I did not have Nephrogenic Diabetes
Insipidus and that the results seemed to indicate that I was okay. When we went
to see my Endocrinologist he said that the results did come back basically
normal, so far, but that he would go ahead and let me try DDAVP and see if that
helped (at this point all the blood work from the water deprivation test where
not in).
A couple weeks later we got the results back from the test.
The results were right on the border line, and it was debatable by looking at
the test results whether I had Diabetes Insipidus or not. But after several
months of being on DDAVP and it helping tremendously, the diagnosis of Diabetes
Insipidus was finally given.
