Dear Friends and Family,

This is a post I’ve been putting off for quite awhile. But I no longer have the luxury of putting it off anymore – not if I want it to get written. My personal journey with ME is near its end. A long time ago, after months of deliberation, I made the decision that if my digestive issues ever got to the point where I could no longer get or keep food down naturally, I would not seek life sustaining measures, but would allow the illness to play itself out naturally. I am at that point, and have been for awhile now.

Let me preface this by saying that none of this is a judgment on those severe ME patients who choose to take advantage of technology like nasogastric tubes, hydration IVs, etc in order to remain alive as long as possible. I believe this is a highly personal decision, and what’s right for me may not be right for the next person (and vice versa). For me, this decision was made based on the knowledge of what ME often turns into for those who accept life sustaining measures. As bad as things are in my current situation, they could get even worse. ME truly can become a living death – except with much, much more suffering – a large portion of which is untreatable. This is difficult not only for the patient, but for loved ones who have to stand back and watch the process, longing to reach out and help but knowing their very presence only increases their loved one’s suffering a hundred fold. I have already experienced much of this. I cannot personally justify enabling it to continue and worsen via medical technology – not in my specific case. That said, each person must decide for him/herself when enough is enough, and where their individual priorities lie in terms of life and the quality it holds for themselves and those around them.

Right now, my body is literally starving itself to death. Even my best efforts to get food down have been met with frequent vomiting, rapid weight loss, and clear disease progression. The fight to get food down is exhausting. It involves closely monitoring nausea levels every single waking moment, waiting for the one minute window I may receive each day where my nausea subsides just enough that I think getting two or three bites down might be feasible. Even then, I nearly always lose the food anyway. The excess weight ME once placed on my body is coming off extremely fast. Just one example: I have dropped over an entire ring size just since the end of May. You don’t lose a whole ring size just from dropping a few pounds. It takes a significant amount of weight loss to make that happen. Everything I own is loose on me. In fact, the other night I was shocked when able to pull my wedding ring off for the first time in years!

Because the food battle has become so exhausting and completely pointless, the decision has been made to stop trying to force feed a stomach that clearly can’t handle it anymore. Ironically enough, stopping all food has actually lessened my nausea significantly. Still, all it takes is one bite for things to skyrocket again and my food to come flying out, totally undigested, either the same day or the one following. So no food for me. At this point, I have already begun experiencing some hypoglycemic symptoms. Also, my resting heart rate has shot up to 120 bpm. Several other new symptoms have also developed. Needless to say, it won’t be long now.

The biggest issue I am currently facing in all of this is a complete lack of medical care. My most recent post explains some of how this happened. Much more has happened since then, and I fully intend to write a post specifically about that as soon as I’m able, but for now, the basic situation is the same. No care. I am in the process of trying hard to get back into hospice care for this last leg of my journey, and will let you guys know how that turns out. My biggest fear at this point is that my husband and I will be forced to go through this completely alone. Among other things, a hypoglycemic coma is almost certain (assuming my heart holds out that long), and it terrifies me to think of my husband having to deal with that alone, with no doctor or nurses overseeing the situation. This should not be happening in today’s society! But it is. And people need to know it happens, often to the very sickest among us. But more on that in a later post.

For now, I simply felt the need to update everyone on how this disease has progressed, where I’m at with it, and how it is most likely to play out in the near future. Should something happen before I get a chance to write future posts, my mom (who works in the medical field) has promised to take over this blog for me. She will write a post updating everyone on the situation, and has my full confidence in being capable of answering any comments or questions left on posts in the future. I appreciate her taking on this responsibility.

My deepest love and gratitude goes out to everyone who has been so supportive of this blog. Several of you have become good friends, and writing this blog has given me a sense of purpose – something we all need in life. I hope and pray this post finds everyone doing as well as possible. I’ll keep working at adding new posts as long as I’m able, so keep your eyes peeled!

Edited to add: Please check out my subsequent post, Clarification, for a bit more explanation of the history behind my digestive issues and various treatments tried and failed. Thank you!