The Spirit Told Me What the Doctors Couldn't

By Jody L. Williams

After a fifteen year battle against an elusive enemy, Jody Williams was finally able to put a name to the disease that had been ravaging his body for so long. The Spirit Told Me What the Doctors Couldn't is the inspiring story of Williams' battle against Cushing's disease and his miraculous journey to recovery.

Cushing's is a deadly disease that afflicts its target with many of the common side effects associated with obesityâ high blood pressure, diabetes, heart problems, and many other varying symptoms. These symptoms can all be treated separately without ever identifying the disease that hides itself deep within the endocrine system. Unfortunately, for many individuals the disease is never uncovered, leading to fatality as they never receive the necessary treatment.

If you or someone you know is suffering with any of these symptoms and seeking answers in the battle, be encouragedâ there is hope!

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9780997051841

Book preview

Publishing.

Prelude

This is my story about a silent killer. A disease so often misdiagnosed and mistreated that the average time from the first symptom to diagnosis can take over five years. In my case, it took doctors more than fifteen years and me nearly dying before someone finally listened to my body’s cry for help. Classified as a rare disease with a diagnosis in only one in fifty thousand people a year, worldwide, I believe this disease is much more common, yet, still undetected. This silent killer is so badly misdiagnosed that even after people die, their cause of death is only listed as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart failure, heart attack, stroke or many other common illness. The underlying cause of all of these maladies is hidden, silent and unknown by many doctors. The name of this monster is Cushing’s disease.

Now that you’ve met my silent killer, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jody Williams and I am married to the most amazing woman, Lisa. Lisa and I made it through this ordeal together and I am so grateful for her. Although I am frustrated about how long it took for my condition to be diagnosed, I do not intend to place blame on any of my past doctors. Many of them were good doctors and have even become friends. They just simply made mistakes and didn’t dig deep enough. I believe my diagnosis could have been discovered sooner if doctors had only listened to me and asked more probing questions.

I’m sure they experience a lot of patients that are overweight and claim to be watching what they eat, or smokers who claim they are trying to quit smoking or alcoholics who report they have stopped drinking, yet the evidence points to the contrary. I hope to raise awareness, to not only doctors, but patients as well. Unless there is good evidence to discount patient’s complaints, doctors should make attempts to look past the normal, quick answers. If a patient is insistent that they are not behaving in a manner that would cause the destructive consequences to their health, then by all means, run more tests, look for something different, do a little research and look for the true cause of the problem.

To those of you dealing with health issues, I urge you to be your own advocate. There is nothing wrong; it is all in your head or, you just need to try harder are not simple answers you should accept from your doctor. If you are truly leading a healthy lifestyle but are still not seeing the results, then by all means, I encourage you to seek another opinion. Sometimes our bodies just don’t work right; in fact, sometimes they can work against us. The hormones and chemical reactions in our bodies are so complicated that the side effects from something not working right can be extremely difficult to track back to the source of the problem. But it can be done. It requires doctors who are truly intrigued by the problem and will stop at nothing until they figure out what is going on. A doctor should study test results and ask, Why is this happening? What is causing his or her body to behave this way? The doctor needs to find answers; you put your trust in them.

Psalm 23

A psalm of David.

¹ The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

² He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

³ he refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths

for his name’s sake.

⁴ Even though I walk

through the darkest valley,[a]

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

⁵ You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

⁶ Surely your goodness and love will follow me

all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

In the Beginning

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ¹² Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. —Jeremiah 29:11-13

My story officially begins in 1997, although my wife and I recently discovered it may have been a year earlier. We were looking back at photos from our wedding in 1996, and we noticed that I was showing signs even then. Prior to that time, I had always been fairly athletic and maintained my weight around 175-180. I enjoyed lifting weights and was in good shape. But then my life began to change.

I was a graduate student at Virginia Tech in 1997, earning my Master of Business Administration Degree (MBA) with a concentration in finance when I first noticed something was off. Prior to starting my MBA studies, I had been working in the banking industry as a commercial banker when my company, Signet Bank, was purchased by First Union. As a result of the merger, most of the loan officers of Signet Bank in the rural areas of Virginia were laid off. I took my severance package, put that toward tuition and my wife and I moved to Christiansburg, Virginia. We settled into a routine of me taking classes during the day and studying at night while she taught first and second grade for Montgomery County Schools.

I had always been physically active, mountain biking and hiking, and I enjoyed officiating youth sports for baseball, basketball and football. However, without any warning, something dramatic changed in my body. It happened all of a sudden, not a slow gradual change that goes undetected. I started gaining weight really fast, a pound or two a day. I had not changed anything in my diet. I was still walking all over campus and officiating sports, but nothing could slow the weight gain. My clothes stopped fitting, I started having trouble walking and had to stop officiating basketball because I could no longer run up and down the court. I had headaches, muscle aches, and problems sleeping, plus I developed stretch marks on my stomach. After six months, I had gained ninety pounds and now weighed 265 pounds.

My wife complained that I started to snore. At first, it was only annoying, but as the weight continued to pile on, the snoring became louder and louder. It reached a point that she could no longer sleep in the same room as me. In fact, she would leave the room after I fell asleep, close the door to our bedroom and go to the opposite side of the house to try to sleep, but she could still hear me snoring.

Concerned about my unexplained weight gain and the snoring issue, I visited one of the campus doctors. I told him about the rapid, unexplained weight gain, my trouble walking, my inability to continue officiating and other symptoms. His diagnosis was that I had just hit the age when the body stops working as efficiently