Health Care Cracks

My GI doctor said “95% of babies born with this never make it out of the I.C.U. and less than 5% of those don’t survive past 23 years old.” The scary part was I was 22 ½ years old!

Are you FALLING THROUGH THE HEALTH CARE CRACKS, like I was? Either you were born premature in the late 80’s and/or you have health problems that are just not being taken seriously by doctors? If so you might be “Falling Through The Healthcare Cracks,” as I did before finding help. What I mean by this is those born in late 80’s were born between and age where medical technology was just on the cusp of wonderful breakthroughs. Doctor don’t realize you were born right before these brilliant lifesaving techniques. In doing this, doctors forget or just don’t know to rule in problems that were once commonly or sometimes fatally missed; as they couldn’t detect and correct such things so earlier on.  Doctors who mainly deal with adults don’t expect or look for issues now so easily found and fixed in infants. Especially when so few babies survived to adulthood without early detection technology.  I hope by sharing my story, others who are falling through the cracks of medical help might find answers.

I was born in 1989 and was one of the first test babies the miracle medicine known as Surfactant used, which is used to fill preemie babies’ lungs and keep them from touching together and tearing.  I was born 10 weeks early and hand not grown for 4 weeks prior to birth; my total weight was 2lb 12oz. That made me about the size of a 24 weeks gestation baby at birth. Now days they have equipment to save babies born under 1 pound. However, back then it was almost unheard of for a baby my age and weight to live.  I will go into more detail later on the issues I had growing up due to being so premature; for now I want to skip ahead 22.5 years…

I found out at 22 ½ years old what was wrong with my GI track, which I had battled with since birth. The scary part was my GI doctor said “95% of babies born with this never make it out of the I.C.U. and less than 5% of those survive past 23 years old.” I had what is known as “Colonic Inertia” some doctors just sum it up under the generic name “Idiopathic Constipation.” The latter is not as specific and could include a few GI motility disorders.  My Colonic Inertia was due to the nerve or muscles connection with the brain was not made strong enough from being born so early, plus years of laxatives didn’t help this problem.

So I if I have my math correct, I only had a 0.0025% chance of living past 23 years old. (5% of 5% = 0.0025%) Correct me if I am wrong, math is not my strong suit.

See My Other Pages...

Pelvic Floor Pain - See Treatments I'm Doing and Health Updates  
Radiology - See Images from My Sitz Marker Study & Defecogram or poop-a gram as I call it

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