Medical issues are very much a part of Williams syndrome, and Michelle has been incredibly blessed not to have the heart and blood vessel problems that have been so characteristic of the syndrome.
She is now 37 years old, and medical issues have been popping up in her life right and left, so I shall address them.
When Michelle moved home on January 8, 2021, she seemed to be having allergy symptoms. I didn’t really worry about it. I figured she was experiencing some type of seasonal allergy. I tried a variety of over-the-counter (and prescription) medications. The Flonase didn’t work and everything else we tried caused a severe allergic reaction. So I figured she would just have to deal with it until the season was over and it went away.
As time marched by, I was too busy with major medical issues to worry about her sneezing. (Those particular medical difficulties are in her book, Another Day, Another Challenge, 3rd Edition.)
By the time I realized that her “seasonal allergy” simply wasn’t going away, we were through the summer. I was beginning to suspect she had developed an allergy to the cats. I asked her if she had this problem at her apartment. She had a cat at her apartment, and when she moved in with us, she brought Princess with her.
Michelle said, “No, Mom. I didn’t deal with this at my apartment.”
We talked to her doctor about getting her into allergy testing, but when Michelle learned that she’d be pricked by needles, she backed out, so I cancelled her appointment for it. But as time went on, her allergies seemed to get worse, and I was fairly certain at this point that it was an animal allergy. Michelle was now ready to do anything for relief (except get rid of her cats) so I messaged her doctor to write her a referral to an allergist.
This time, we had a 3-month wait to get her into allergy testing. During that lengthy wait, Michelle decided she wanted to volunteer at the local animal shelter. She went through the training and started volunteering right away. The first day, she was there for four hours.
When she got home, she complained that she was having trouble breathing. The following week, she called me after only an hour, asking me to pick her up because she could hardly breathe. She didn’t go back for weeks. Now we were certain it was an animal allergy.
When her appointment finally arrived, I took her for allergy testing, and we discovered that Michelle was hyper sensitive to glucose – one of the substances they use in the testing process. That meant, they couldn’t test her because every test would automatically come back positive. So they sent her to get a blood test. We’re still waiting for the results of that test.
But one thing I’m certain it will show – an allergy to animal dander. While waiting for the allergy testing results, Michelle wanted to try volunteering one more time.
Since she’s prone to anxiety and easily panicked, I wondered if the last time she volunteered, she felt panicked by some of the circumstances she dealt with while at the animal shelter, so I took her one last time, knowing full-well that she would not be dealing with anything anxiety-provoking on that day.
I planned to pick her up in one hour unless she called sooner. Michelle called 30 minutes later for me to come get her. She was having a lot of trouble breathing. I was only down the street at Walmart.
Before I got to the car, Sarah, the animal shelter staff member with Michelle, called me to say that Michelle could hardly breathe, and what should she do? I could hear Michelle in the background wheezing so badly, it sounded like she was having an asthma attack. I told Sarah to call 911.
Michelle was transported to the hospital. A paramedic noted that she had hives, a classic allergy symptom. Because Michelle is allergic to so many different kinds of medicine, I wouldn’t let the hospital staff put her on an anti-allergy medication to counteract the effects of her allergic reaction. If she had an allergic reaction to a medication on top of all this, I didn’t know what it would do to her.
The paramedics had put her on oxygen in the ambulance, so she was already breathing better by the time I got to the hospital. And the doctor gave her Benedryl to ease the allergy symptoms. They kept her for about 90 minutes for observation to ensure she was recovering, and they released her. As far as her allergy-testing goes, we’ll get the results in another week.