National MALS Awareness Day
It's been a while since I've written on here - I've been really busy! But I figured that since today is National MALS Awareness Day, that I would do a brief post. As many of you know, over the past three years I have faced two really overpowering and consuming conditions known as positional Superior Mesenteric Artery Syndrome (SMAS) and neurogenic Median Arcuate Ligament Syndrome (MALS). Yes - they are as awful and intense as they sound. They took away my ability to eat and drink. It was so bad that I couldn't even keep down a sip of water. They made me become severely malnourished and weak and I fainted a lot. My feeding tube became my lifeline, my only source of nutrition. And the pain that accompanied all of that was horrible. I ended up having to have THREE major abdominal surgeries to get rid of these compression syndromes. It definitely wasn't fun. And the recoveries that came with each surgery were so long and frustrating. My last surgery was in March 2020,