This post is part of my Health & Healing series. If you’re just joining in, you can catch up on Part 1 and Part 2.
By late 2023, I had more doctors than streaming subscriptions—and just about as many plot twists.
It started in October with a voice. Not just any voice—a Minnie Mouse voice. High-pitched, cartoonish, and completely out of nowhere. I sounded like a helium balloon in a choir loft. My first ENT chalked it up to allergies (as if that diagnosis doesn’t already have a monopoly on my chart). But when it didn’t go away, Holly—my GP and right-hand girl—got me in with a second ENT who took it seriously.
Surprise, surprise—he knew our boys’ ENT. The very same one who had done five surgeries on Small Fry and Big Mac. That connection felt like divine reassurance. I was in good hands.
A stroboscopy in November confirmed it: vocal nodules.
Then came November 8, 2023.
Sparky and I were just sitting on the bed, talking about nothing in particular, when my heart suddenly took off like it was late to a fire. I stood up, grabbed my phone, and calmly told him, “I’m calling 911.”
That shocked him more than the racing heart. After all my years working in healthcare, I don’t throw that phrase around. But I knew. Something was seriously wrong.
Harley, our sweet, non-formally-trained service pup, was already on high alert—pawing at me nonstop, trying to get me to lie down. He knew before I did.
The paramedics arrived and guessed—what else?—anxiety. Because every woman in her 30s must just be “stressed,” right?
Nope. Try 220+ beats per minute. I wasn’t panicking. I wasn’t spiraling. I was clear-eyed and ticking like a time bomb.
At the hospital, they assumed it was a heart attack. They admitted me, ran tests, and slapped me on a low-sodium cardiac diabetic diet… which was a joke, because I’m not diabetic and hadn’t been for a while. I was pre-diabetic before losing over 70 pounds, but I’d long since said goodbye to that label.
They discharged me with a referral to cardiology, but no one really had answers. Just shrugs and guesses—maybe a reaction to the steroids I’d been given for my throat. At the time, it was brushed off as a fluke. A strange blip. Nothing serious.
The cardiologist I saw in the hospital wasn’t a good fit, so I circled back to Holly—my GP and right-hand girl—who helped me get a second opinion with a cardiologist we both trusted more. That move would matter more than I realized, because while we didn’t have the full picture yet, it was the beginning of seeing the truth clearly.
Meanwhile, the scope I had in December—an EGD—revealed silent bile reflux, which helped explain some of the symptoms I’d been living with since my VSG. That discovery led to the decision to revise to an RNY. We submitted the paperwork in early January and—shocker—it was approved the same day. That never happens, but it did. It felt like a sign.
What most didn’t know was that my immune system had already started crumbling earlier that year. Back in summer 2023, I had landed in the hospital with a severe UTI that required IV antibiotics. That wasn’t normal for me—not then. But like a lot of things in this journey, I didn’t yet realize it was a piece of a much bigger puzzle.
I thought I was in the clear.
I was approved for surgery.
I was on the upswing.
And then…
The stone hit.
Simple Southern Mommy 