Hi I’m Shelly Householder,I’m 47 and last year I unintentionally started to lose weight and I was losing it pretty quickly I brought this up at any and every doctors appt I went to no matter what kind of Dr or reason for the visit and no one gave me much input. I was dropping sizes faster than I could buy clothes to fit. At the end of August I went to the emergency room after not being able to go to the bathroom for 2 weeks straight thinking I was severely backed up and got absolutely nowhere a couple days after I had to rush to my dads bedside in Arkansas and was there until the end of October when he passed away and during that time I realized that I wasn’t constipated but that my intestines had actually stopped working and I had to put it on the back burner to be there for my family and so to keep my body going I took milk of magnesia a couple times daily to break things down to the point I could go and when I returned back home in Washington I immediately went back to the ER for help and wasn’t taken seriously I started also having severe stomach and abdomen pain and for the next 5 months I had gone to my PCP explaining my intestines had shut down and desperately needed a GI and that my pain was severe and my weight loss was out of control to which I was told no one could see me, that everyone was backed up 6 mo to a year and I ask about even out of the area and was told nope and she said “I don’t know what to tell you” and the gaslighting started..several months later I get into a GI and am gaslighted by him listened to nothing and literally walked in telling me I had IBS and just needed meds and I explained and cried begged for help with no results. Fast forward to the next GI and explained my intestines stopped months ago and no one would listen and above even my bowels shutting down the pain was unbearable and I didn’t know how much longer my body could handle it. Did one test and once the results came in I was sent to colorectal where without any further testing decided to remove nearly my entire large intestine on March 21 fast forward I m trying to get the last GI to help me figure out what’s going on with my upper GI and why I’m malnourished and not absorbing nutrients and I have muscle wasting my weight still dropping extremely fast. I cannot get any drs to acknowledge my cries or my weight loss it’s like I’m screaming in silence. My last hospital stay they marked my weight at 149.9 and I haven’t weighed that much since last year and they are being untruthful in my chart saying I refuse to get on the scale and now the gaslighting has gotten so bad my last appointment I again voiced my concerns about malnourishment and she said “ I don’t know why you keep saying that, when you came into the office on March 6 your weight was 130 and today (April 7) your weight is 130 so you haven’t lost any weight to which I looked on my k chart at their own records of what they listed as my weight on March 6 and it was 139 not 130 and on that day of my appointment my weight was 129 THAT is 10 more lbs down that month! Not 0! That’s a big difference. Also a big lie.So I’m being gaslighted and dismissed ,but why?and now they are even trying to convince me there is nothing wrong and lying to validate it.will not acknowledge or test for anything and my health is severe. 190 lbs down to now 119 I have no muscle left and literally skin over bones. It’s unbelievable to me and how fast it’s happening. I’m sorry this was so long I just wanted to get an understanding of what I’ve been going through so here’s where I’m at now.. I couldn’t sit here any longer beating my head against walls and begging for help into deaf ears any longer so even though I’m on state insurance I decided to make one last ditch to save my own life and me and my partner took what savings we had and I contacted several good hospitals trying to be seen without a referral and pay out of pocket and the only place I was able to see a specialist without referral was a Dr out of cedar Sinai in California so I took every penny we had and my daughter had to take off her job to take care of me and we went to California and have been there for the last month trying to get answers and I have depleted those funds and still need more answers.I cannot just give up, the pain doesn’t stop and I can’t either if I ever want to get better and insurance doesn’t want to approve or pay for much of anything so if I’m going to get answers in hopes of treatment, I have to pay for that. If anyone is able to help me continue to try and figure this out I can’t tell you how much it is needed and appreciated. Tests and imaging are so expensive. If you aren’t able to donate please please share this. What they are doing isn’t right legally or morally I’m literally wasting away and my body just doesn’t have time to wait months anymore for appointments and referrals that are denied by insurance. Thank you for taking the time to read my story.