psalm23

Tag: health

  • Finding hope amidst the disappointment

    Finding hope amidst the disappointment

    Right now, sorrow has overtaken my thoughts, and my soul is feeling crushing disappointment. But first, a little backstory is needed…

    On December 30, 2023, I received the miracle of life in a kidney transplant. The story is one worth telling, and I will at a later date. At the time, everyone told me that the transplant would completely change my quality of life for the better and I had so much to look forward to.

    The post-transplant road was tough. I immediately experienced complications that required additional hospital stays. It took several months of painful healing to get into my post-transplant peak of health. I was ecstatic! After living with a kidney function of 19% pre-transplant, I was now at 60% function. I had so much more energy and I was no longer sluggish.

    This lasted maybe a month. Then the bad news came with my labwork. Once a month post-transplant, the doctor tested me for BK virus. This is a virus that many people have in their bodies and have no idea. It doesn’t present symptoms and you can’t really do anything (known) to prevent it. Most people can fight off BK virus no problem. For transplant patients, BK virus is a death sentence to your new organ.

    The doctors chose to do a kidney biopsy and sure enough, the BK virus had ravaged my new kidney. The treatment plan was no picnic. They dropped some of my immunosuppressants but increased my dose of steroids. I went almost a year with a higher dose of steroids to fight the virus, and I gained 40 lbs as a result! They also prescribed 2-4 hour long IV treatments of IVIG (immunoglobulin), which was a challenge to fit into my work and mom schedule.

    What I thought was a new chance at a better life with my kids and a new opportunity at work, turned into a nightmare. I had committed to a new client at work that involved travel before all of this happened. Suddenly, I am back at the exhaustion of trying to fit in mom and work demands amidst a flurry of treatments, doctor appointments, and lab tests.

    With my kidney function dropping like the temperature in Alaska during the winter, I could no longer keep up with life’s demands. My body was more susceptible to sepsis, and I passed out at the airport after one of my flights home from Philadelphia for a work trip. It turned out that the combination of sepsis and my flight caused a pulmonary embolism and DVT that could have killed me. Thank God for Mayo’s amazing pulmonary team and the kind lady at the airport who sat with me while I waited 20 minutes for the EMTs to show up. Honorable mention to my mother who fought off the airport EMTs and took me to Mayo.

    Finally, my BK virus was at a nominal level and I could go off the higher dose of steroids in December 2024. The doctors had tested me for rejection of my kidney and the result was negative. My kidney function had dropped to the low 30s/high 20s and the doctor said the only thing I could do to stabilize my kidney function was to reduce my stress and lose weight. So, in March 2025, I realized that I could no longer keep working my stressful job with my health declining as it had. Thankfully, we were financially stable and I could quit!

    Over the next 9 months, it felt like my kidney function was a roller coaster. Overall, it stayed pretty steady and I was happy with that (at least as happy as I could be under the circumstances). Then in December 2025, my kidney function tanked for no reason. Since then, I have been struggling with low kidney function and illnesses that have stolen what was left of my health. At my April 2026 nephrology appointment, my kidney doctor told me he was going to send me back to the transplant team to go through the process again. It had only been a little over two years since my last transplant. It was supposed to last so much longer than 2 years!!

    Today, I had my monthly lab test. The news was not good. My kidney function has dropped to 19%, which is where it was at before my kidney transplant. I’m back to ground 0. I am back in the range where I can qualify for the transplant list in the state of Arizona. I am one step closer to potentially needing dialysis, which is a miserable process that involves a machine performing your kidney function for you and a diet that is utterly miserable.

    How do I feel about this? Devastated. Depressed. Grief. Wondering why God has allowed this to happen. Worried. Feeling guilty for being worried. Wanting to eat a whole batch of cookie dough and a panful of brownies. Wondering if there is an island where I can escape my miserable feeling body. Wondering how I am going to take my kids on adventures this summer with the uncertainty of my medical future. Dreading the long process of testing for the kidney transplant list. Wondering when I will be able to plan something out of the city of Phoenix again.

    So many thoughts have been running in my head. Then I get a call from my daughters’ school saying that somehow Rosalie’s hot lunch order didn’t go through and I need to bring her a lunch. I warm up some leftover pizza and get in the car. First thing I do is call my mom and lament. She is a great listener. The call ends, the radio turns on, and “Fight on my Knees” by Evan Craft comes on.

    Help me to remember my help comes from heaven
    God, when I surrender I find all I need
    Strength in every weakness in the name of Jesus
    Oh, it’s not a secret I fight on my knees
    I fight on my knees (prayers go up)
    (I fight on my knees)

    Sometimes God knows exactly what we need to hear to get ourselves out of our pity party. Yesterday in church, Pastor Jason talked about how our problems can feel so big because that is all we can tangibly see. God is outside of time and already knows my story from beginning to end. He sees the big picture and knows how my story ends. 1 Timothy 6:12 says “Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”

    I can take comfort in the fact that God is sovereign, and I don’t need to try to control my situation. The only thing I can control is my attitude. In spite of my grief, I will choose to put my hope in God and not medicine, lab tests, or doctors. God has been faithful and stood alongside me through many difficult situations already. My last day on Earth won’t happen until God has fulfilled His purpose in me while I’m still living. After all, this is only my temporary home. I am a future citizen of Heaven!

    And yes… when tough times happen, I often preach a sermon to myself :).

    <Gabrielle

  • When the trajectory of my life changed forever

    When the trajectory of my life changed forever

    In August 2011, I felt like the world was my oyster. I had just finished an internship at a Big 4 public accounting firm. I was about to start my final semester of my Master of Accounting degree at the University of Arizona and had passed half of my 4 required CPA (Certified Public Accountant) exams. My wedding was 4 months away and I would start my full-time job in January 2012. What could go wrong?

    Out of nowhere, I had a rough flu type of illness. For someone who had been mostly healthy growing up, I couldn’t figure out why I was getting so weak and fatigued so easily. I finally went to urgent care on the day of my cousin’s bachelorette party, and they gave me anti-dizziness pills. Let me tell you…they were NOT helpful.

    Over Labor Day weekend, I went up to Show Low with my fiancée to visit some of his family members. His great-aunt commented that I looked anemic. I didn’t even know what that meant! My weakness was so significant, I could barely make it to my classes. I had to take the elevator instead of the stairs and I couldn’t shower standing up. I remember worrying that my business communications professor would call on me to make an impromptu speech because I didn’t think I could stand up that long! My appetite also waned so I lost a bunch of weight.

    Finally, I made myself schedule a doctor’s appointment with my primary care doctor up in Phoenix on the weekend of my cousin’s wedding. I hated going to the doctor and did everything in my power to avoid doctors…and needles. Somehow, I drove up two hours to Mesa where my parents lived at the time and somehow, I drove 25 minutes to my primary care doctor. The doctor took one look at me and said, “You have either anemia or pneumonia and I’m sending you to the Emergency Room.”

    In case you are wondering, yes, I was freaking out! Emergency room! My mom was 25 minutes away helping my aunt decorate for my cousin’s wedding. I had to go by MYSELF! I was welcomed to the ER by the sight of a construction worker with a bloody head wound. That made everything soooo much better (sarcasm). When I got to triage, the nurse determined to do blood work and take a chest X-ray. What happened next was a bit of a blur.

    I ended up admitted to the hospital. It turns out that I was, in fact, anemic. My hemoglobin (red blood cell count) was at a 4. The normal range for a female starts at 11! How was I alive? How had I driven myself from Tucson to Phoenix? How had I driven myself to the doctor or to the ER? It was all God my friends. It was truly a miracle.

    They stuck me with a lovely IV (you know how much I love needles). I had my first ever blood transfusion, which is really strange by the way. First of all, it is someone else’s blood being pumped into your body. Second, it is cold as it goes in. The hematologist (blood doctor) gave me the bad news that I would have to stay in the hospital overnight. My first EVER hospital overnight. It was definitely not a hotel bed. The worst thing was that I was very disappointed that I would have to miss my cousin’s rehearsal dinner that night.

    The next day, I begged the hematologist to be released to go to my cousin’s wedding. I was a bridesmaid after all. Thankfully, he was a father of multiple girls and a bit of a softie in my opinion. He let me go to the wedding. Since I was still so very weak, I couldn’t walk down the aisle and had to sit on a stool instead of standing (which was very embarrassing). Ultimately, I was ALIVE and God allowed me to go to the wedding.

    At this point, I was naive enough to believe that this was a onetime thing, and I was done with needles and doctors. Somehow, I had missed everything the doctor told my fiancée and my mom about what was next. Little did I know that this event had changed the trajectory of my life forever.

    ❤ Gabrielle