After spending six years battling worsening pain, Olivia I. Bland stopped telling people why she’d taken a sick day at work, missed an exercise class, or bailed at the last minute on dinner with friends. “I was too embarrassed and tired of telling people that I felt like crap,” said the Albuquerque accountant, now 37.
Between 2012 and 2018, she consulted her own doctors and made eight trips to an urgent care center or emergency room for severe abdominal pain. Bland was also suffering from a low-grade fever that descended late in the afternoon, along with crushing fatigue. “I could chuck two cups of coffee at 9:30 p.m. and be sound asleep by 10,” she recalled, only to wake up 10 hours later still exhausted.
Her internist had advised her to eat better; after a rheumatologist found nothing wrong, he told her he didn’t want to see her again. But in July 2018, a radiologist reviewing Bland’s latest CT scan spotted two problems that had apparently gone unrecognized. Her rocky road to effective treatment would consume another year.
“I think about my pain every morning when I wake up,” Bland said recently, sounding surprised by its absence. “I can’t even put into…..Read Full Story Here…………….
