Health Update

A little over a month ago, I got a cold. It was a bummer because my symptoms were at their worst on the very day that we had planned on having all the women in our apartment building over for dinner. Everyone had already confirmed and it was all set. And I got a cold.

Living the sniffly cold life in a
cold Brazilian winter

Some of you may remember that last October I got a cold and ended up spending two and a half weeks in the hospital. This time I got over it all on my own (huge yay) and haven’t had any problems since. I wasn’t able to properly celebrate this victory online because I haven’t posted anything about my health on social media before. So I wanted to share a catch up/update.

We were eventually able to invite our
neighbors over for São Paulo style
hot dogs (yes, those are mashed potatoes)

Catch up: Last year I experienced very elevated levels of anxiety and grief, which I’ll explain in a bit, but my physical symptoms started in May of 2021. At first it was fevers, then fevers followed by a rash, then swollen and painful joints. I got some blood work done in September that flagged very low thyroid levels. I was diagnosed with slightly low thyroid levels some ten years ago, but since I wasn’t experiencing symptoms I never took medicine. The doctor explained that thyroid is basically gasoline for the body in that it keeps everything running. It maintains everything from weight to body temperature to hair growth to sleep and mood patterns. But it shouldn’t cause any of the unusual symptoms I was experiencing.

Two days after I started thyroid medicine, I got a cold that quickly developed into a throat infection. I started antibiotics, but the infection didn’t go away. I went back to the doctor who ran some bloodwork and found that my white blood cell level was basically nothing (it’s supposed to be between 3,600 and 11,000 and mine was 100), which resulted in the hospital stay. The first goal was to fight the throat infection that had spread to my mouth and gums with antibiotics in an IV. The second was to figure out what was going on with my white blood cells. Even after the infection was healed, my white blood cell count never got very far above 2,000. HIV and hepatitis were easy to test for, but leukemia could only really be ruled out with a bone marrow draw. (I’m going through this pretty quickly, but you can probably imagine all the emotions around having a fever for ten days, staying in a hospital in a foreign country, hearing the words HIV and leukemia, and all while very much in a global pandemic) (and again, thank you to all of you who were praying and comforting my family during this time)

Calling my parents to let them
know I did not have cancer and
was being discharged from the
hospital

The bone marrow draw came back negative for all types of cancer and shed some light on my situation. My body was producing white blood cells, but they weren’t growing and being released to my blood stream like they are supposed to. The first update is no, we still don’t know why that happened. A couple weeks after I got out of the hospital my white blood cell count rebounded on its own and stayed steady for a few months. It dropped again in March, but I didn’t get sick and it eventually recovered on its own. When I did get another cold in May, my body was able to fight it off on its own (with the help of lots of tea, soup, cold medicine, etc).

Just let me know if you want my lemon,
garlic, cinnamon tea recipe

Update: over the past few months we’ve been trying some things to make my blood healthier overall (I have a tendency to be slightly anemic) with treatments of folic acid, B12 shots, and iron tablets. We’ve also been monitoring some small issues with my spleen and liver, not sure if they are causing or reacting to my blood issues. The bottom line is, I feel really great. The thyroid medicine has helped a lot. The symptoms I had last summer are typical symptoms of autoimmune disorders. I don’t have lupus, but my thyroid disease is caused by an autoimmune disorder and my bloodwork has flagged some other autoimmune issues that we are keeping an eye on. Hormones are kind of fidgety and it takes a long time and multiple confirmations to diagnose. Again, since March I’ve only felt better and better. I had some weird pains that have gone away. I’ve put on more weight and have more energy. I of course appreciate your prayers for health and wisdom as we continue to figure this out. For bureaucratic reasons, I lost my health insurance last week and I’m in the process of getting a new plan. I appreciate your prayers for the transition and that the new plan doesn’t interfere too much with my regular doctor and bloodwork.

These are the people I do life and ministry with. They are
also the people who took care of me when I was feverish
and we didn't know why, have accompanied me to many
doctor appointments, and stayed long hours with me in
the hospital. 

This is getting too long, but I did promise I’d double back to the anxiety/grief from last year. A year and a half ago, I accepted that it was really time to deal with, work through, figure out my anxiety. Anxiety is one of those monsters that rears its head when you finally start to fight back; it got a lot worse before it got a lot better.

Before I became a missionary, I lived in Meridian and taught fourth grade for four years. I lived with my friend Lisa for three of those years. She got married a month before I moved to South America. In May 2021, she and her baby boy Milo died in a car accident along with her older sister Laurie. Over a year later, we are all still dealing with the shock and grief and joy of a life lived marvelously well. Even if you don’t know them, pray for Lisa’s husband Dan, her twin sister Amy, and her mom Judy as they are figuring out how to live in a reality they never expected.

Lisa's wedding with her friend Amanda and
sisters Amy and Laurie

Lisa with her husband Dan
and their son Milo

If you read this all the way to the end, I’m proud of you. Thank you for praying for me and supporting me and God’s will for my life and ministry! As you can imagine, being immuno-compromised extended the pandemic/quarantine life for me. Now I'm so thankful to be healthy and free to go more places and do more things. Many of us have already gotten accustomed with normal life again, but remember to enjoy today and do all things you wanted to do when we were in lockdown!