The Story Continues....

So this woman whose life is turning upside down tries one more doctor. He takes one look at her and visibly pales. "You are SICK," the doctor said. She almost breaks down, never thinking she would want to cry and thank someone for telling her she was sick.

The woman goes to a sleep study, where she finds out that her oxygen levels at night go down as low as 27. She is woken up half-way through the study to be given oxygen.

She must now be on oxygen 24 hours a day. The first day she literally gets high because her brain has been so deprived of oxygen. The woman's thoughts are still so scrambled.

The doctor that saved her life by sending her for a sleep study sends her to a neurologist. The woman is more frightened now than ever.

Her brand new husband (who put her hair up on the day they got married because she couldn't hold her arms up to do it) goes with her.

"It's a tumor on your spine," the neurologist says, without ANY diagnostic testing.

The newlyweds look at each other in stunned terror. "How can this be happening?" they both wonder.

The woman goes for another test called an MRI. She is afraid to be put in that machine. She asks the doctor to sedate her. She goes for the test, gets sedated, gets laid flat, and quits breathing immediately. She turns blue. She must be emergently intubated to stay alive.

There are no tumors. But there are no answers. Every test comes back negative or inconclusive. The doctor tells her she cannot leave the hospital until they figure out what's wrong with her.

Four days later, she is unconscious, intubated, on a helicopter, flying to a University Hospital 150 miles away. She doesn't remember the next 2 weeks. Later she's told she got MRSA pneumonia, and almost died.

To get her off the ventilator she had been on for 15 days, the doctors perform a tracheotomy. It is temporary, they say. "I sure hope so," she fearfully thinks.

The new calendar month brings new doctors, who abandon all previous treatment, and tell the woman that she is neurotic. One of the neurologists stands by her bed and rubs her arm gently. He tells her if she will only accept her mental condition, she will improve.

The woman cannot speak because of the trach, so she writes, "So you're telling me I'm crazy??" To which the "doctor" condescendingly nods.

The woman does not understand what is happening. She can't believe she's losing her mind.

To Be Continued......