I was a 28-year-old mom loving life.   It was 2009. My husband, Matt, and I had four kids in five years. Tyler was 5, Audrey 3, Connor 1 1/2 and Karis 8 months. I loved the challenge of it. I loved having them close together and I thought we would have another. Every day, my life was alive and living in the fast lane, ready, set go.  I loved being a mom more than anything in the world.

The surgeon reassured me it would be a simple surgery. I was thankful because I didn’t have time to slow down.  I was homeschooling the two older children and the two youngest were in diapers.

Immediately after my gum grafts, I had a series of unexplained migraines followed by severe abdominal pain and debilitating fatigue that shut my body down for days.  We made several trips to the ER and a “tour” of doctor’s visits. We began rounds of tests including MRI’s, CT scans, endoscopy’s, colonoscopy’s, HIDA scans, blood tests, stool tests and more. Everything came back normal. Each specialist put me on rounds of medication to try to control the symptoms but there was no improvement.