Autoimmune: This Is My Story

The First Blood Test

I sat my summer exams towards the end of May. They didn't go spectacularly well. I think my concentration while revising was a bit askew and I was feeling tired a lot. That's probably why I didn't do as well as I could've. But, they could've been worse too.

Throughout the summer, my symptoms came and went again in fits and starts. Some days were worse than others. But, the sporadic periods of my symptoms slowly started to expand. By August, I was in pain almost every single day. Again, I had put off going to the doctor, as it had seemed to have died down. But, by this stage, my symptoms were becoming unbearable. Still unsure of what was wrong with me, I took a visit to my GP to request a blood test, still entertaining the possibility that I could've had coeliac disease, possibly alongside another illness.

My mother asked if I needed to be consuming gluten for some time for the blood test to be accurate. My GP said I didn't. So, he went ahead with the test. His receptionist called that weekend. She told me one of the tests came back "a little high", and that I'd have to come back for a repeat of the blood test to confirm the results. The next week, I found myself at my GP's again, with a nurse prodding both my arms to find a vein that wouldn't collapse as she jabbed me with the needle. I asked which of the tests had come back "high", and she said my previous blood test had shown my liver function to be a little higher than normal. I asked about the results for the coeliac test and she said that they had come back negative. She also said that I would need to be eating wheat for six weeks for a result to be accurate, contradicting what my GP had previously told me.

High liver function, I thought. What does that even mean?

My parents had booked another trip to visit my grandparents for the end of August and use it as a business trip to purchase some new stock. Similarly to the Easter trip earlier in the year, I spent most of the time locking myself away. I pushed myself to write as much as I could. For me, it was a way of coping and without it, I can imagine myself having gone insane.

I was sleeping an awful lot. Even when I caught eight to ten hours sleep, I was still exhausted when I woke up. I'd often find myself taking two to three hour long naps per day. Even going with my granddad to the park to take their dogs for a few laps of a walk around the park would exhaust me. And while all the sleeping was what my body needed to recuperate slightly, it really started to take a toll on my mental health. Having to lie in bed for such long periods of the day, contradictory as it was, it drained me. It made me feel down. It put me in low spirits. What frustrated me even more was family members and friends telling me I needed to be more social and that it wasn't good for me to be in bed for that long each day. But, it was easy for them to say that, for they didn't understand what I was going through. I didn't fully understand what I was feeling myself, and why I was feeling so low spirited, so I guess I couldn't have fully expected them to either.

My mother seemed to be the only one sympathetic and understanding enough to realize that I wasn't just locking myself in the bedroom because I was being "anti-social". She knew I really wasn't well. Her phone call to the GP surgery backed that up. She rang from my grandparents' house. We didn't want to wait until we returned to Ireland to learn the results and I didn't physically have the energy to pick up the phone to talk to someone, so she called for me. When she talked to the receptionist, she told my mother, that once again, my liver function test was high. I was being referred to a specialist in my local hospital and would be placed under observation of a team of gastroenterologists.

Shortly after my return to Ireland, and a week into the new school year, I was sent a letter for an appointment with the consultant. A series of investigations into what was causing my liver to play up were soon to begin. A few days before that however, which was my second day back at school, I found myself already ringing my mother to take me home early.

I had been constantly feeling like there was acid rising up my throat and some sort of fluid building in my stomach. When I tried explaining this to people, they looked at me as though I was crazy, but on this day, it finally surfaced. I didn't just retch. I retched and I actually coughed up some of the fluid. I had not been imagining it. It was thick and white and chalky. My condition was worsening.

This was the start of what would be a very tough, daunting school year. What would make it even more challenging was that this was my last year of school. The year where I'd have to sit the exams that'd define which colleges I'd be accepted to. A year that would play a huge role in the quality of the rest of my life. Which career path I'd ultimately end up going down. I had a stressful few months ahead of me. And this was only the beginning.