Medical talk:

Michelle's been battling a mixture of health issues all her life but she'd gotten so used to it all that she's developed a bit of a tolerance to the pain and symptoms.. she puts on a good game face. To make a very long story short, there's a combination of issues going on, including a flora-yeast overgrowth problem in her body likely due to antibiotics killing off the "good" bacteria as well as the bad when she was very ill as a child, and that's most of the "IBS" shit.. bloating, gas, cramps, cravings for sugar (yeast food) and general nutritional deficiencies again due to the yeast. The normal score range for internal yeast count on a given person is about 40-ish, and Michelle's first testing revealed a score upwards of 250. Crazy. After just a week and a half on medication to kill the yeasties, she's already seeing huge changes and a big time drop in symptoms. The other side of the issue is a problem with her nervous system and thyroid (sort of connected). This creates some ugly pain issues when nerves fire off for no good reason, can create severe rheumetoid-arthritis like symptoms, and in the case of both the thyroid and yeasties, they can combine to create a metabolism issue. Michelle has been working out 4-5 times a week and has been on a super low-fat diet for about 5 years and hasn't lost a pound.. which just doesn't jive. So, make a long story short, her appetite is already reduced from the yeastie reduction, and the ultra-low dose thyroid medication she's on (about 5% of a standard dose prescription) should be encouraging her body to resume natural production of certain hormones that have been depleted/exhausted from trying to compensate/fight the other battles.. resulting in chronic fatigue, etc..

Anyway. I know that was all a lot more information than you bargained for, and I've over simplified a lot of it.. but that's the gist of things. She's taking about a dozen different supplements, prescriptions and is going in for periodic IV transfusions that are a mix of immuno-support, nutrition boosters, nerve/thyroid health, pain management, so on and so forth. It's a big cocktail of this and that. But, the most important thing is that a doctor is not only listening to her/us and not telling us "It's all in your head".. but they've got a plan for fixing it that over the last two years shows a 95% success rate. That, combined with the nearly instant improvement we've seen so far, is reason for us to happily pay for the treatment. If it works, and her system is restored to normal in the next 6-8 months, then paying a few thousand dollars for that fix seems insignificant for a lifetime of health.