Since I was born, I always had food problems, so I always had stomach problems with all kinds of food. My parents didn’t know what was happening to me, until I was one year old. My parents took me to the doctor and he said that I was allergic to soy. So I couldn’t ate anything packed for example: Doritos, tortrix, pork, jam, sausage, pizza, chocolate, and many other things. I could just eat homemade food and my mother had to read always what the food contained so I wouldn’t get sick. I kept growing normally taking care of everything that I putted inside my mouth.
When I was three years old my mother started noticing that I was beginning to swell, she gave me more water than usual so the swelling stopped. The idea of this was that I would go more frequently to the bathroom, this didn’t worked. Instead of that, I started to swell more. My parents took me to the hospital. When the doctor saw me he said that this was something more serious, so he called a pediatric nephrologist. She made me a lot of tests with different machines, and she said I had nephrotic syndrome. This was a sickness that affected the immune system. With this sickness every time I had fever, flu, or other disease, my kidney would be damage. To prevent this to keep happening the doctor gave me heavy dose of steroids. This was the first part of the treatment because if the steroids didn’t work they were going to gave me something stronger. My mom and my dad were very worried because the side effects of the steroids were dangerous. Besides that I was taking the steroids, the doctors told me that I couldn’t eat anything with salt. After five days of being in the hospital I returned to my home. In my house I kept taking steroids approximately six months. After six months I had a relapse, I felt really bad. I started to swell again, and I had really bad headaches. I went to the hospital for the second time. When I was there the doctor said they had to make a kidney biopsy, because the steroids were no longer useful. My dad didn’t want to make the biopsy here, in Guatemala, so we decided to go United States to make the biopsy. When we arrived to the hospital, in USA, the doctor told us that they wouldn’t do the biopsy because they thought it wasn’t the correct thing to do. They told us that we had to double the steroids dose to control the relapse. We went back to Guatemala, the doctors didn’t agree to double the dose, but finally they did it. After two months of taking the steroids I had another relapse. It was very difficult to go to the school because I was very sick so I was an irregular student. In this point I had to return for a third time to the hospital, because the side effects of the steroid were bothering me a lot. The side effects of the steroids cause me to have bleeding ulcers in the stomach, and several headaches. The headaches were cause by a pseudo brain tumor. The doctors decided that they could not wait no longer to do the kidney biopsy, even if it was dangerous. In the biopsy, they introduced me something that was like a needle to take out a tiny piece of my kidney to analyze it. When they analyzed it they knew I should start to take a different medicine.
So I started to take a different medicine and I went out of the hospital. I entered in a remission period, so I was getting better.
Next year on January I went to school again, but I have to be very carefully because I could get sick again with any flu at school. By this time I was 5 years old. I kept my diet of no salt in my food and going to the doctor to make me test to see how I was doing.
My mom took me with a lot of doctors because she wanted me to take natural medicines, but she couldn’t found too much help.
When my sixth birthday was coming I caught a fever virus at school, and I got really sick. I had really high fevers in that time, around 40 degrees or more, and that made the nefrotic syndrome to activate.
One night I went really sick and I couldn’t sleep. Around 5 a.m. my mom said I was really bad. Then she saw that I had my feet and hands purple colored and I still had fever. My mom took me to the hospital immediately.
When we got there, we entered to the hospital as fast as we could. When the doctor saw me, she thought I was death. So she began to make many tests to see what was going on.
On the next day the doctors made me some tests because I was feeling a lot of pain in my stomach. In them they saw that I had problems in my intestine and it could be appendicitis. So they had to make a surgery to take out my appendix. When I went out of the surgery I got worse, because there were complications. My lungs started to fill with water. They had to connect me to a machine so I could breathe. The doctors put me to sleep. They connected me a feeding tube so I could eat. One week later it was my birthday.
The doctors told to my parents that they had done all the possible things they could but they could expect the worse even dead. My parents were devastated with this notice and they didn’t knew what to do, they told them this the day of my birthday.
On the same day, I was still sleeping; my mother went to pray to the church. She said to god that he should his will, but if he let me live she wanted me not to suffer and if not god could take me with him. When she came back to the hospital something happened I don’t know if it was a miracle or a coincidence, I think it was a miracle. When my mother was in my room with me suddenly all my machines turned off the power didn’t went off only my machines, this was something really weird. Since that day since that event, I started to get better it was the best birthday present I could ever had. One day I was dying and on the next day I stared to get better I think it is a Miracle. Two days after my birthday I started to go to the bathroom again, because I was not going very frequently. All my vital signs stared to get better too. So little by little I stared to get better. The doctors started to take out the machines. First they took me out the machine were I ate so I could ate normally. Then they took me away he machine for breathing so I could breathe normally. Finally after being 2 months or more in the hospital in intensive care, I went out of the hospital. In my house I kept drinking medicines and kept with my diet, approximately 6 months.
Now I eat normally, well I’m still allergic to soy, pork, chocolate and other things but imp happy because I’m still alive. I don’t think I could ever pay all the doctors what they did for me but I’m very grateful with them. I’m very grateful with my parents and all my family because they were always there for support. With the one that I’m especially grateful with is god he is the one who I own my life thanks to him I survived and I would never forget that, I hope someday I will find the reason why he let me live. Until then I’m grateful with him to let me live being a healthy and happy person all this years, until today.
