Melissa Gonzalez always had another call to take, a meeting to attend or trip booked in her calendar.
The strategist from New Jersey was attending a weekend retreat in the fall of 2022 when she noticed an unshakeable sluggishness and that she wasn’t quite feeling like herself.
While at the retreat, she met with a holistic nutritionist who suggested a few diet swaps like cutting out dairy and lowering fat intake. She also urged Gonzalez to see her doctor for a series of blood tests to look for infections or chronic conditions.
But for months, the order for blood work sat on Gonzalez’s desk as she continuously promised herself she’d make the time.
The mother-of-one, now 48, told Daily Mail: ‘For whatever reason, it didn’t make my top priorities.’
As 2023 wore on, Gonzalez became more and more rundown, moving through her days ‘like molasses.’ Her stomach also became increasingly bloated, and she would go upwards of a week without having a bowel movement.
The year drew to a close and Gonzalez promised herself she would start a health challenge on January 10, 2024, with her family and friends to improve her gut health.
But when January 10 came, she was on a business trip across the country in Seattle, waking up in the middle night with excruciating abdominal pain: ‘It was like I was in full-blown labor.’
Melissa Gonzalez (pictured here), a 48-year-old strategist in New Jersey, ignored symptoms of an intestinal blockage for about a year before being rushed to the hospital
Gonzalez was rushed to the hospital, with her husband and eight-year-old daughter nearly 3,000 miles away, and into emergency surgery, where doctors found her intestines had twisted 360 degrees into a knot.
About a year after the symptoms started, she was diagnosed with cecal volvulus, a rare type of obstruction that occurs when the cecum, a pouch between the small bowel and colon, detaches from the abdominal wall and twists itself, forming a blockage.
The condition can be difficult to diagnosis since its symptoms, including fatigue, trouble passing gas and bloating, mimic more benign, common conditions like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Gonzalez said: ‘The sluggishness was the biggest thing. I’m a super energetic person. My calm is most people’s normal.
‘I just wasn’t myself. It was starting to take so much for me to feel that energetic self.’
The condition can go undetected for months or years until blood flow to the colon gradually gets cut off, causing tissues to die and tears to form in the bowel wall. If the condition progresses, the estimated mortality rate is about 40 percent.
Cecal volvulus only affects about three to seven per 1million people each year.
Along with the fatigue and bloating, Gonzalez also noticed her Raynaud’s disease, which causes extremities to become white or blue as a response to cold or stress, was flaring up.
She said: ‘I’ve had Raynaud’s my whole life, but in that one year, I’ve never had to layer up so much. I could barely go outside in the winter because I was turning blue all the time, like my hands, my feet, my lips. It was painful.’
Bowel obstructions can cause widespread inflammatory reactions, which could trigger Raynaud’s symptoms. The obstruction may have also constricted blood vessels elsewhere in Gonzalez’s body, causing a flare-up.
By the time Gonzalez got to the hospital, doctors told her if they waited any longer to operate, the obstruction would have burst and led to septic shock, the most severe stage of sepsis, the body’s overreaction to an infection that causes the immune system to attack healthy organs and tissues.
Gonzalez, pictured here on a New York City ad for Nasdaq, told the Daily Mail that seeing a doctor for her symptoms was not a priority with her busy job and lifestyle
Doctors were able to remove the blockage, but they also had to take a portion out of her colon and reconnect the remaining portion to the rest of her digestive system for it to function properly. Suddenly, always active Gonzalez had to work her way back up to walking across the room and eating most foods.
She said: ‘My body basically had to learn how to rework.’
Doctors are unsure what exactly may have caused Gonzalez’s cecal volvulus, but they suspect for her it was simply a case of bad luck.
‘We think it’s a one-off, thankfully,’ she said.
In some cases, obstructions like cecal volvulus have been tied to low cabin pressure in airplanes. As the plane goes up in the air, the lower pressure inside the cabin can cause gas to get trapped in the GI tract.
Experts writing in the Internet Journal of Family Practice estimate air travel may cause gas to expand up to 30 percent.
While Gonzalez’s doctors did not say travel may have caused her obstruction, she was flying frequently at the time, which may have raised her risk.
Infections, pelvic tumors, violent fits of coughing and pregnancy have also been shown to increase the risk. Gonzalez had none of the former three risk factors but does have one daughter.
Gonzalez was hospitalized for a week after surgery and stayed in Seattle for another two weeks, as doctors wanted to lower her risk of developing blood clots on the plane, which can occur when sitting still for hours at a time.
Gonzalez is pictured in the hospital after undergoing emergency surgery for cecal volvulus, a rare type of intestinal blockage
Gonzalez is pictured in the hospital with her daughter. She spent a week in the hospital and about three months recovering from the operation
Once home three weeks after surgery, Gonzalez’s diet consisted of ‘the blandest things you could eat,’ including white bread and pasta, rice and potatoes.
Dairy, cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and kale, fried foods and even applesauce are more difficult to digest due to high fiber and fat content, and Gonzalez needed low-fiber, low-fat foods to avoid straining her digestive system.
Even now, she avoids cruciferous vegetables due to fiber and buttery foods high in fat. ‘I miss a salad, but I can’t do it,’ she said.
‘It was really trial and error for a few months of what my body could break down, or it would set me totally back if I ate the wrong thing. I would be in terrible pain, cramping up and just kind of keeled over on the sofa until it would pass,’ she added.
She also dropped to below 100lbs since she could only eat small amounts of food at a time and is still working to regain the weight she lost. Additionally, she had to relearn how to walk due to the intense pain and the incision in her abdomen.
Gonzalez will now have to undergo yearly stool tests to look for excess fat in her gut, a sign that the body isn’t properly absorbing nutrients, and enzymes that may signal inflammation in the digestive tract.
Gonzalez is pictured after being cleared to fly again after surgery to repair her cecal volvulus. She has since written a book about her experience and those of other women who suffered similar health issues
Since recovering from cecal volvulus, Gonzalez has taken her experience and written the newly published book The Purpose Pivot: How Dynamic Leaders Put Vulnerability and Intuition into Action, which came out on September 30.
In the book, she interviewed other women who had suffered similar health setbacks about their experiences.
She told this website women in the book had a common thread: they were ‘hearing’ the signs of an issue in their bodies but not actually listening to it.
Gonzalez said: ‘There’s a difference between hearing your body and listening to it, a very big difference. It seems very obvious, but the fact of the matter is, most of us hear it because our body will tell us, and we don’t listen.’
‘Well-being cannot be a side project.’
The Purpose Pivot: How Dynamic Leaders Put Vulnerability and Intuition into Action, published by Wiley, is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target and others.
Source link
