12/19/2023
DECEMBER HEALTH UPDATE - All I want for Christmas is my health and life back :(
SHORT VERSION : Things have gotten worse, and I'm hoping to raise another $5,000 to help cover a new Functional Medicine Doctor and all the testing and treatment that will bring. I have suffered long enough, and I need to go to the best doctor for this that I can find in hopes for proper treatment.
LONG VERSION : I wish I had good news to report on my health journey, but sadly things took a rather awful turn in the last month. SIBO is a terribly debilitating disease when it takes hold, and it’s gripped me tight. Mid-November I tried a treatment protocol given to me by the Naturopath I was working with, and it unfortunately gave me gastritis (intense stomach burning) and heartburn after 8 days and had to stop. In turn I ended up losing more weight, and developed further food intolerances, another bout of malnutrition, and eventually crippling brain fog/fatigue to the point where I was bedridden for several days. Things have stabilized a bit for now after more research and pinpointing the new things that developed and how to band-aid them until I find the proper way to tackle this… I feel like I was put on way too high a dose of herbal medicine and now more damage has been done that needs to be addressed before I can think about another treatment. Still struggling with heartburn and a severely limited diet because just about every food seems to have negative effects on my body. It is also a disease of trial and error since no 2 cases are the same, and I’ve spent several hundred dollars on supplements and vitamins trying to keep myself from falling apart while searching for the right doctor, it’s all so draining. And on top of all of this I finally got my GI to order scans of my kidneys, gallbladder, liver, and pancreas - 2 large kidney stones were found in my right kidney. I tried telling my P*P and Urologist back in August that I wanted to be scanned for them because I was confident they were in there causing some of my pain, but they both refused saying I didn’t show the classic signs. And now I believe they are too large to pass, and will likely need some kind of surgical intervention, but at the moment I don’t have the energy to figure those treatments out. The stones aren’t blocking anything yet but will need to be dealt with before they become another major issue. If anyone has done any of the kidney stone breaking/removal treatments please send me a message.
This past Thursday I had a phone consultation with a new Functional Medicine Doctor, and for the first time I felt a doctor actually cared about me as an individual. The call was supposed to be 25 minutes to see if it was a good fit, she spent over an hour on the phone with me which I was shocked by. She is very much a Doctor House type (as am I if you couldn’t tell by my journey thus far), she said a lot of the right things about treatment approach (without me even asking my questions) which makes me more comfortable in the hopes that she and her team will find a way to help me heal.
At this point I am all in, I have tried everything I can think of and I am so very tired of being in pain, being confined to the house, and battling the never ending onslaught of symptoms, just stumbling in the darkness, and being sick. I will need to fill out a very extensive intake form, gathering all my reports and paperwork from 20 different doctors and specialists, explain my medical history in detail because they look at your entire life, and I also need to make a lifelong medical timeline as well so they can find patterns and piece together the things that have brought me here to this point, and hopefully come up with a plan to put my body back together by digging in deep and working on root causes as well as current symptoms and disease. It is a grand undertaking and I will be using all of my energy to get it done in the next couple of weeks. My appointment is on January 7th.
And this of course all comes at a high price tag and it is out of pocket because insurance won't cover it. As it stands I am hoping to raise another $5,000 which will cover working with the doctor to cover my entire medical history, the initial in-depth 2 hour appointment and treatment plan with a few follow up appointments, 5 visits with her wellness coach, who will be helping sort through my complex eating limitations to get me nourished again, additional support supplements/medications, and a myriad of testing which will come after my first appointment (blood, stool, enzymes, etc). Unfortunately I've had to ask myself "How much is my health worth?" It's one of the worst things you can ask yourself, and at this stage I need to heal regardless the cost.
If you know of any other way for me to raise funds to continue to survive while I’m unable to work, or places to post my story, please let me know. Please share it where you can as the financial support is critical in this whole process. I am doing the very best that I can to find a way to get back to health, but nothing of this magnitude can be done alone, and I need all the support I can get. All I really want for Christmas is to get my health and my life back, please help me in supporting this wish, thank you thank you thank you.
Short Version : My name is Nate, I'm 43, and up until the beginning of … Nathan Quattrini needs your support for Help Nate regain his health from severe SIBO
