The clue

April 2012

Cindy:

Since late April 2012 my mom had been complaining she was throwing up everything she ate.  It was strange though, because it didn't look like regular throw up it just looked like spit if that makes any sense?

She would constantly say how everything  tasted funny and how she constantly felt like she was sucking on a penny.  Food no longer carried any flavor for her and she was slowly edging away from eating for fear she would throw up.  The pounds were flying off and found myself buying her a couple pieces of new clothing every other week because nothing was fitting her quite right. So like most we tried to self diagnose, ruling out the flu because this had been going on now for probably about a month and when she had last gone to the hospital they had said it was nothing. We thought this could possibly be some sort of acid reflux and so she took Prevacid for the next 14 days.  Obviously not working and my mom still feeling horrible we decided to go back to the nearest hospital ER where the doctor's ran all kinds of tests and proceeded to diagnose my mother with Pancreantitis, gastroenteritis aka the flu, and possible inflammation of the appendix.  Three days later, unsatisfied with this diagnosis, I packed my mother into the car and drove her to the hospital I worked at which is supposed to be one of the best.

We started all over again MRI, CT, ultrasound the works. This time we walked out with a diagnosis of gastritis and a small aneurism in her celiac artery. I mean no matter which way you look at it this was still a shitty hand, but at the very least we knew what kind of cards we were holding this time, we thought.