Hard month.

Kerissa • Jun 22, 2017

“I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse.”

~Philip Yancey

Hello friends,

Oh, where to begin??

On June 2nd, I decided to try a little more of my medical cannabis chocolate because I had a pounding migraine and my strong pain med wasn’t helping.  Well, I had a terrible reaction to it which landed me in the ER by ambulance.  I experienced a pounding, high heart rate, muscle jerking all over (I was afraid all the jerking was going to cause a seizure), extreme muscle weakness, and drowsiness (so bad that I had to try my hardest to stay awake because I didn’t want to stop breathing).🙁 Thankfully, all of this slowly wore off after 2 hours of monitoring in the ER.  The pain was still there, so the doctors decided to give me a migraine pain cocktail of 3 IV meds.  I had each before, but the combination of them made me so sleepy.  I started thrashing around, saying I can’t breathe, and then coughing a ton.  It wasn’t an allergic reaction, though.  The 3 meds worsened my sleep apnea.  It was such a scary evening!🙁

Then, just 3 days later, the pounding migraine pain was so very bad which caused me to have horrible nausea and vomiting….even after trying many different medications to help the nausea and pain.  So, we went back to the ER since I still felt terrible.  The doctor consulted with the neurology team.  They decided to try giving IV Keppra, a very strong anti-seizure med.  They also gave me an IV anti-inflammatory med together with a very fast liter of IV fluids and IV magnesium.  On top of that, they gave me IV D10 with IV carnitine.  All of that brought the pain down somewhat, but we didn’t get home from the ER until 4:45 AM.🙁

We think we know why the pain was extremely severe.  It might have been because my CBD oil ran out, and I didn’t buy more.  Maybe the oil does help a little bit..  So I did go ahead and buy another bottle.

I had a follow-up with my GI specialist last week.  He added D5 (dextrose) to my daily IV Magnesium bags.  He wants me to try this tincture of 9 different herbs that often helps his GI patients.  We also found out that my blood phosphorus level was elevated, even though it has never been high (I get it checked every single week).  So he had the mineral taken out of my IV nutrition, and he’ll continue to monitor my labs.

This past Monday, I saw my nephrologist, and she ordered a bunch of tests to figure out if my kidney function is getting worse as a certain marker has slowly crept up.  Elevated phosphorus can also indicate worsening kidney function.  Even if the tests return normal, she’s glad she’ll have a baseline now.

Today I had an appointment with my pain dr.  She’s going to start me on a very strong pain patch so that my body can have a break from the current medication I’ve been needing to take every day.  Praying it will work just as effectively!

This month has been so very rough.  I was in tears at one point because the pain was unbearable and all over. :'(  I had to keep crying out to the Lord for His grace to make it to the next day.

Thank you for continuing to pray for me!  I read this verse recently.🙂 “Like golden apples set in silver is a word spoken at the right time” (Proverbs 25:11).  Your prayers and encouragement truly help me so much!!

By Kerissa Lee 23 Jan, 2024
Hi, friends, I had a whole other post ready to go with some good news, but instead, I have an urgent prayer request. I started experiencing sudden onset numbness, tingling, and weakness in my whole left leg, and it’s been so scary. 🥺 It just came on out of the blue. I was doing so well with physical therapy each week (able to walk fast on the treadmill and leg press 40 lbs), and now, I have to limp because my left leg is soo weak. I really want to avoid the ED as much as possible, so I saw one of my doctors today. She’s concerned I’m having a big motor nerve issue. 😭 The plan is to see a physical medicine specialist, have a nerve conduction study, get an urgent MRI done, as well as see my PCP and pain doctor on the 25th and 29th for further evaluation/testing. I know I already said this, but it really has been so scary to lose function so quickly. Can you pray that I will trust the Lord and not worry? It’s been very hard, so I’d really appreciate your prayers and support in the coming weeks. Thank you so much. ❤️
By Kerissa Lee 01 Jan, 2024
"Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth." Hosea 6:3
By Kerissa Lee 11 Dec, 2023
"This hard place in which you, perhaps, find yourself, is the very place in which God is giving you opportunity to look only to Him."  Elisabeth Elliot
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