“The doctor had to pave the way, she had to walk the road of sickness and not be able to work for ten years and she had to fund all her research.”
A couple of weeks after coming to POTS Care, Chelby shared her progress with her Church family. There is a beautiful song at the end.
Dr. Driscoll figured out how to fit all of the pieces together and say “Oh, well that makes sense.” And everything that she figured out was backed by science, so it wasn’t one of these “Oh, just on a whim, I’m gonna take some of this magnesium, and throw some B12 and say ‘here’s your little concoction’. Here, go your own way, do your own thing and you will get better over time.” It wasn’t that way. She funded the research. She researched this for fifteen years. She was disabled ten of those years and she was homebound just like I have been. Anyway, medical science has now acknowledged in the past, I believe five years, her theory which is known as The Driscoll Theory and she has been able to put it into play for people just like me that had been struggling and going places, people not knowing what was wrong. So, I knew that this is where my answer lie. I knew that is where it was. I was just was not quite prepared for the answers that I got when I got there. I had had some suspicions because my father had had vascular disease and I assumed this is probably a vascular issue or something kind of hanky there. I had never seen a vascular specialist, so how we are going to know?
Long story short, I did get a diagnosis. But what was so funny about it is before going on my trip, the doctor herself had to call my telephone and do a thirty-minute consult with me to glean information from me. Ask me about symptoms, ask me about my history, ask me about medical history, personal history, job history, those types of things. And at the end of our conversation, I said, “Let me just give you a little bit more insight, if I may please” and she said “Most certainly”, very timed. When she first got on the phone she said: “I have been just about to ‘Pop’ to be able to speak with you on the phone because everybody here has told me that you are so nice and that she got the best accent in the world”. Mind you, they are in Texas. So, we had a laugh about that, but when we were about to hang up, I said: “Let me just give you some insight, ok”. I said, “I do not mean this in a braggadocious way, God knows, I don’t”. I said, “But if you will, I want you to go to YouTube and I want you to type in Chelby Lynn, Chelby with a C, Chelby Lynn, and you can watch some of my videos there. I used to sing regularly. Now, I have trouble standing in one spot without moving my feet, my arms, my legs, something to keep the blood flowing and the oxygen going to my brain. It is difficult to sing”. I said, “But that is just to give you some insight of where I feel like I am headed to again, where I am supposed to be, where I come from, and where I am headed back to and take off from there”. And she said, “Oh, I certainly will”. So I think she thought, well you know this chick, she probably has got some kind of little bo-diddy something or other she wants me to see and I will give her an old pat on the back and say, “Oh, that was so cute!”
But y’all when I got there it was the funniest thing because the little girl that I had originally, I said little girl because she is a tiny little lady. The little lady that I had originally made the appointment with, met me and greeted me and she said “We are so happy you are here” and I said, “Thank you, I am so happy to be here”. I was wondering why everybody was wide-eyed and bushy-tailed and smiling and so she says “I am going to take you back to Dr. Driscoll now” and I said, “Okay.” And I’m going…why are we excited, what’s wrong, am I supposed to be, why is my heart racing now. “Oh, you are making me nervous little girl!” So we go back and as soon as I walk in, the lady, Dr. Driscoll stands up and she gives me the warmest hug and she says “We have never had anyone famous come through here before. (Laughter) We are so excited that a famous person is here!” and I said, “Y’all got that turned around, I am happy to be here so that you all can help me”.
As we were sitting there talking, I let her know, I said “Listen”, and a lot of people in this church do not realize this. I will go ahead and just put it out there because it is the truth and maybe somebody can glean something from it. I got sick several years ago so I have not worked in the past four years. This past year, my husband was without a job for eight months straight so we had no income. I was on home health care. I have a port in my chest where I was receiving fluids at home and this is what I tell the doctor, I am telling the doctor this. I said, “ I’m not a rich person, I’m not a famous person. I am on Medicaid and it runs out at the end of the year. Then, my husband now is employed, I will be on his insurance,” I said. “But until then I have got a little bit of time, that if I am going to get some things done, I will need to cram them in and I need to get them done”. I said, “It wasn’t anything but the kindness of people’s heart, that God laid on people’s heart for me to get there”. She kinda looked at me. I said, “I am going to tell you I got here”.
I said, “There was a precious family that called me”. I have put out a ‘Go Fund Me’ account on Facebook, ok, and I needed at least to make the journey and it is comfortable pay for treatment, do everything I needed to do to get there and get back — I needed around $12,000-$18,000. That would give me a cushion, to buy my medications and everything that I needed, ok. And I think the ‘Go Fund Me’ got just under $2,000. Now you are talking about a woman that is supposedly famous, that everybody loves and they follow on Facebook and they say, “Sing me a song next week when you are sitting in the back row, playing your piano at your house, sing this song for me, I just love you, just love you.” But they could not give $3, $5 or $4 and I never did understand that and I may not ever understand that. Most importantly, those people prayed for me and when they prayed, God heard and this is how God chose to meet the need for me.
It was someone else’s tragedy that helped me get to my victory. A precious family that I know lost a loved one, and they called me and he said, “We want you to sing at daddy’s funeral,” and I said, “Okay, I will do it.” I was reluctant to do it because I said what if I got up there and I try to sing and I pass out, then I will cause a scene on this precious man’s family when I am here at this funeral. I do not know what to do, but the Lord said “Go” and I said, “Oh, Okay, I will do it, I will be glad to do it, I would be honored to do it”. They later called me back, “Well, can you do this song too?” and I said, “Sure I will” and then I made a joke, I said, “The ambulance has to drive me and on a stretcher, hide me behind the plants so nobody can see me. And if you see me lying down, I am going to sing for your family. I will do it because I knew in my spirit that I needed to.”
And let me just tell you something, in the middle of my singing, there was a man attending this funeral that leaned over to his wife and he said: “I feel led to give her $9000”. That’s exactly how much it was for treatment. The treatment itself was I think $8800. Okay, that was for the treatment, that was for my three days there, the three-month follow-up and whatever else I needed in between, that was for very informative testing, noninvasive testing, while I was there. They went deep into the eye. I am telling this doctor about this and tears well up in her eyes and l look over the little one called the little lady named Daisy and she (boop) and she was worshipping the Lord and thankful that God had made a way for me to get there. And then I had people that mailed me checks. I have had people to hand me money or send some money through mamma, “Please give this to Chelby”. I have had people catch me on the way out the door saying here I want to sow this into you. I spent the weekend with my friend Karen down in Brunswick and ran into another lady friend of ours, that just happened to be there, and she looked at me and she said “Here” she handed me some money, rolled up and stuck in my hand and she said, “Buy yourself a meal while you are in Texas” and I did. I bought myself some pumpkin ravioli and it was so good. I enjoyed that immensely. But just knowing that that testimonial may seem small about how God got me there and paid my way. Ok. I did not get rich off of this. The doctor certainly, really, is not getting rich off of this. She had to pave the way, she had to walk the road of sickness and not be able to work for ten years and she had to fund all her research. A lot of her money was tied up, but I told her, I said “Honey, If I had the money, I would give you $10,000 a day if you can help me.”
So the diagnosis…The prognosis is good. The diagnosis does not sound so great, it sounds a little scary, but there are lesions on my brain. They are not multiple sclerosis lesions. But nonetheless, they should not be there at the age of 43 years old. Am I 43? Yeah. Momma is only 29, so I cannot be 43! So, there are some lesions on the brain. The brain stem has a small impingement, which means something is pressing into it on one side and the back side of it is almost like a Chiari malformation. Y’all can Google that later. It is not Chiari malformation. It is very similar. Basically what happens is I have excess cerebrospinal fluid in my body; cannot drain properly. It goes around the brain, goes around the head, goes back down, around the brain stem through the spinal cord back up and around again, just keeps making that cycle. Well, my cycle becomes interrupted at some point because the brain will slide back and clog up the hole where that fluid cannot get to where it needs to get. So when you all see me short-circuit sometime and you go “What in the world is wrong with her? She got a demon?” No, I am just clogged up at the moment and I will be back with you momentarily. And to find out that there is a vascular disorder that I do have was kind of disheartening for me, but I am on medications that will help with this, and help heal the veins and arteries and help dry up the fluid.
Believe or not, as big a girl as I am, I have malnutrition. I am not nourished, I have a lot of deficiencies we have got to bring back up and all that can happen. It would take time and I believe that God is going to take care of it. But just to have the answers, to have the understanding to get a clear picture, to see the pictures of the brain, to see the pictures of my eyes and to see the arteries and the veins there. It is almost like they are swapped out. The arteries were supposed to be fewer than the veins, but the veins are almost as big as the arteries so you cannot tell which one is malfunctioning. So, therefore, I have blood clots and I also free bleed. So, you hear people have said, “Oh I suffer from blood clots so I take a blood thinner”. Well, I cannot take a blood thinner because, guess what, I also bleed out. I also hemorrhage so there is a balance there. I needed a tooth pulled and the doctor looked at me and said, “Don’t you dare have any surgery until we get your clotting factors straight”. I do not know when that will be.
I want this port taken out of my chest, praise God, I no longer need this port. That is a huge, huge thing for me because anything foreign in my body tends to cause inflammation and a type of POTS and you heard me talk about POTS before, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. The type of POTS that I have is an inflammatory POTS. I also had damage to my gastric tract that has not functioned properly in probably eight years. It has been eight years. I had taken a medication, ciprofloxacin, and it has done a number on my gastric system, so it has to try to heal from that. A lot of people have gotten very ill, and praise God it could have been worse, I could have been bed bound the rest of my life with brain injuries and all that from that particular medication. Thank God it was only my guts and I got enough gut to carry me over.
I know I’ve probably rumbled I am sorry if I had, but I wanted you all to know the details, the ins, and outs of how God strategically placed people in my life to meet my need and he looked beyond my faults and he solved my need and met them; because my thoughts were, here I was a person that has been bedridden and housebound on home healthcare for so long. But…
Amazing Grace shall always be my song of praise
For it was grace that brought my liberty
I do not know just why He came to love me so
He looked beyond my faults and saw my need
And I shall forever lift my eyes to Calvary
To view the cross where Jesus died for me
How marvelous the grace that caught my falling soul
He looked beyond my faults and saw my need
I shall forever lift mine eyes to Calvary
To view the cross where Jesus died for me
How marvelous the grace that caught my falling soul
He looked beyond my faults and saw my needs
He looked beyond my faults and saw my needs
