When May comes... (a VERY delayed part 6 of my health story)

If you have followed my story at all, you know that May is an important month for me every year because May marks another year that I have made it through healthy.

As the end of May approached this year, I looked at my pill bottles and I knew...
          I knew that I was running out of pills
          and I knew that I was out of refills
          and I knew that I would have to make the dreaded appointment
                       to have blood drawn
                       to have tests run
                       to see the doctor

Now don't get me wrong. I love my doctor. He is a close, personal, family friend and a godly man. I don't even mind having blood drawn or filling little cups, really, I don't.

What I do dread is the reality of what those tests may tell me and what news my sweet doctor friend may have to give me. I can feel fine but if just one number on one test is wrong, then everything is wrong. And I don't want it to be wrong.

I felt healthy, I really did but I made the appointment, I had the blood drawn, I filled the cups, and I walked into the doctor's office. I kept telling myself that April had passed and May had come and so I was okay...and this time I was right. My kidney tests were completely and totally clear. I made it another year with healthy kidneys, marking 12 years of remission.

But as the reality of this flooded over me, I was reminded that I never really finished out the rest of my health story. I started part 6 of "When May comes..." but I never finished it. I stopped at the point just after I went into remission and life was good and I was healthy...but that wasn't really the way the last 12 years have gone. Much has happened since then to me...and to my brother...and the health road has't been quite as simple as it sounded.

To recap, I was 21 when doctors discovered blood clots in my lungs which led them eventually to diagnose a rare and incurable kidney disease. The doctors were able to miraculously put the kidney disease into remission quickly with HIGH doses of corticosteroids (prednisone) but the disease came back about 6 months every time after completing my round of steroids (always in March/April). I went through this cycle twice before I met "Doc Hollywood" who decided to just give something new a try because the steroids were going to eventually wreck the rest of my body.

That was 12 years ago...

About 2 years later (10 years ago), my brother (an incredibly healthy fireman) was rushed to the ER with unexplained breathing difficulties. The nurse just happened to ask his wife, who is also a nurse, if there was any family history of blood clots or pulmonary embolisms. She told them about me but assured them that mine were a result of my kidney disease because that's what the doctors had always told me. Luckily, they looked anyways and found them in him, everywhere. They found his lungs and legs inexplicably FILLED with clots. It is something he has struggled with ever since and continues to battle even today, even on medicine that is supposed to thin his blood and keep it from clotting. In direct contrast, I have never had another clot, at least that I know of, and I have been told countless times by countless doctors since that my kidney disease should not have produced clots.

So, why did I throw clots that one time early on?

Because God works in ways we can not begin to fathom.

Get this and don't excuse any of it as circumstance or chance.

If I hadn't thrown clots, there is a good chance that the doctors would not have found my kidney disease in time to treat it effectively. (Interestingly enough, countless doctors since have told me that my specific kidney disease doesn't cause clots...but it did that time for a reason!)

If I hadn't thrown clots, there's a good chance that the doctors wouldn't have scanned my brother in time to save his life.

I fully believe that God allowed me to have clots that ONE TIME so that the doctors would find them in my brother and save his life. I don't think that they would have ever looked for them in him otherwise, at least not in time.

They did save his life but his fight for health continues on more fronts than even I know about. He is incredibly brave and incredibly strong but perseveres against much so please pray for him.

My body battled on as well.

I just wasn't aware of it because my kidneys were fine.

I just wasn't aware of it because it all seemed like unrelated bad health luck.

Unfortunately that will have to be continued another time because like I said above, this journey has been anything but simple.