Modern Medicine Saved My Life At Age 27

I Don’t Hate Medicine

I’ve been highly critical of “Modern Medicine,” for many years. My public-figure “reach” was obtained by sharing my crisis-to-health story starting in 2006, in the days of the internet’s youth.

And then helping people detach from what some of us call the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex.

I got well when I took responsibility for my health, and made corrective lifestyle changes. There were no bloggers or online docs, when I was seriously ill and mostly in bed for four years. (I had to read BOOKS, LOL.)

But there’s something else you should know. I would have surely been dead, as a 27-yo mother of a one-year old, if not for emergency medicine.

I’ll tell you the story, as briefly as possible. So you know that I see why American emergency medicine may be second-to-none, and kept me from being a statistic—

—even if I also believe we lean on antibiotics, surgery, psychotropic drugs, opiates, vaccines, and more, as we hand our health off to the nice people in white coats.

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I didn't even know I was pregnant, in 1994.

I was in Arizona visiting my husband's parents, with my little boy. (Who was a twin, and his twin had died in utero).

At my in-laws’ home, with only my one-year old, and my 16-yo sister-in-law, out of the blue, I suddenly had a searing pain in my abdomen. Within minutes, I started going in and out of consciousness.

My teenaged SIL called my MIL to come home from work at the post office. They literally carried my unconscious body to their van, and drove me to an E.R.

Some random stranger superhot MD came in during the night, about my age (27 at the time). Dr. Folkstadt cut me open and cut one of my ovaries off, which was spurting blood up into the air, a foot above my body.

Half my blood supply had bled out, by the time he cut a crazy, jagged opening to my abdomen and cut off and cauterized my ovary. My whole abdomen and thoracic cavity were full of half of my blood supply. The doctor later told me I would never have lived until morning.

To back up: when I presented in the ER, they had done an ultrasound, to figure out what was going on. I was writhing and howling — because they didn't know they were JABBING that giant ultrasound thingie, into an open wound. (My ruptured ovary.)

The ultrasound tech said to me, as I was sobbing and begging her to stop: "I can't see, there's too much 'fluid' in here!" and called the radiologist in.

Then someone burst into the door and told the radiologist: "She's pregnant, her pregnancy test just came back positive!"

Being pregnant had not occurred to me. I’d left for the trip to Arizona on day 11 of my cycle, and I was there in Arizona alone, my husband back in Utah working. I always had clockwork menstruation, and had not been trying to get pregnant.

Plus, getting my one-year old was a five-year ordeal involving five artificial inseminations, and many months taking the ovarian-stimulating drug Clomid.

To this day, it’s a mystery to me how I could have been pregnant. But I was.

After they got a positive pregnancy test, suspecting a ruptured ectopic pregnancy (1 in 200 pregnancies) — they laid me back, flat on a gurney.

That's when the worst pain of my life started. Apparently when pooled blood flows up into your thoracic cavity, your whole body starts muscle spasming.

I was crying and shrieking. I never shrieked ONCE in any childbirth, in the following years. Or any other time. I’m not a screamer! But that is the one time I was utterly beside myself. Far worse pain than natural childbirth was.

The hot young doctor, on call late at night, walked up to me in a hospital hallway, and introduced himself. I grabbed his coat, sobbing, and said, "PUT ME OUT! Please! Put me out, I'm begging you!"

They hurried me into the operating room, and several orderlies picked up the sheet under me. I was in such pain they couldn’t touch me, to lift me otherwise — and moved me onto the O.R. table.

I was so relieved as they counted to some number, and I never heard anything after 3. That hot young doctor cut my ovary off that was spurting blood up into the air, after I was cut open. An ovarian ectopic pregnancy, unlike the more common fallopian-tube pregnancy, is extremely rare.

Dr. Folkstadt told me that an OB/GYN might see ONE ectopic pregnancy on the ovary, in a career. He’d never seen one before, and was kind of “winging it.”

He saved my life, in the middle of the night. I had bled out half my blood supply though, with my in-laws in the waiting room, both with my blood type, but the healthcare professionals didn’t know that. They just knew I was a visitor from out of town.

After days in the hospital, after I was wheeled into the house by the in-laws, the first thing my one-year old did, set in my lap, was punch me in the face. “Why did you leave me?” he seemed to be saying.

I spent a few weeks in bed, before I could even sit up or stand up, to be able to get on a plane. (Weeks later, my mom flew out and carried my toddler and pushed my wheelchair onto the plane.)

Now very low in iron (and blood!), I craved giant bowls of steamed spinach with a little vinegar. Which is not something I've eaten a lot of, before or since!

The body is a miracle. It knew to make me crave one of the most iron-rich foods!

Consider this: how do you survive something like that, after years doing infertility treatments, including drugs (yikes) — and go on to have 3 more children, with no issue except one miscarriage?

It was after this experience, that I changed my diet radically to what it is now, and have been blessed to make it to almost 56 years old and have the opportunity to raise all four to adulthood.

Emergency medicine is what we do well. That said, that young doctor made a CRAZY gash on my abdomen. He basically told me afterward, how spooked and in a hurry he was, and he apologized for the crazy gash (now a faint white scar), as he examined it.

I am grateful for everything I’ve learned about the human body, since this health crisis, as well as my childhood on frequent antibiotics, and my flu vaccine injury that really tipped me over, probably the “final straw” after that surgery, all the infertility drugs, and the Standard American Diet I’d been eating.

Let it never be said that the GreenSmoothieGirl hates doctors or Medicine. I am grateful for “Modern Medicine.” I owe our advancements in crisis medicine my life, and my children’s. I believe our problem is that we Americans have a long, increasing tendency to “overdo” a good thing.

For instance, antibiotics are a miracle. Too bad the average American takes a course of antibiotics once a year, when antibiotics could be a once-in-a-lifetime intervention. (Check out my list of alternatives, in the plant-based natural world, that I keep on hand, for the first signs of any pathological symptoms.)

If we cleaned up our diet, detoxified, broke a sweat almost every day, and learned about natural plant-based compounds that are anti-bacterial and immune-strengthening, we’d all be more empowered.

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