Researching connective tissue diseases.

Hi,

My name is Lexi and I am starting this fundraiser for an upcoming non-profit called Nova Combian Research Institute. I have been sick my entire life… I have had doctors dismiss my symptoms and tell me that I am not in pain when I felt like I was dying on the inside. I have been accused of faking, especially as a child; I lost the majority of my childhood to doctors misdiagnosing me and mistreating me and I will never get those years back. Unfortunately, the mistreatment continued into adulthood. Doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me so they just piled diagnosis after diagnosis on top of one another. It got to the point where I was aspirating on everything so I could not eat or drink, my stomach became paralyzed, and I was placed on hospice and at the age of 23 was sent home to die.

It was my fifth month on hospice and nobody knew how I made it until then. Really just drinking ensure, which the doctors told me would eventually give me aspiration pneumonia. That was my life as a 23 year old... Sitting in bed drinking ensure waiting to get aspiration pneumonia and die. And then I heard of Dr. Isabelle Brock. An expert in connective tissue diseases and their co-morbidities. My family organized a huge fundraiser and I flew out to see Dr. Brock in Sri Lanka. Starting on the first day, she diagnosed me with many conditions that are “common” with connective tissue diseases that my doctors at home had missed. I can now eat, drink, walk, talk, and have a quality of life. All of these these things were beyond challenging and basically impossible before Dr. Brock came into my life.

The thing is… I am only one person and Dr. Brock is only one person. We need to fundraise as much as possible to spread awareness and education so that multiple physicians know what to look out for and research can be done. I have received many Ayurvedic treatments while under Dr. Brock’s care and they have un-paralyzed my stomach while no western medicine could… We need to fundraise so that we can fund research into why some of these Ayurvedic treatments work for patients like me. This is just a small example of what Nova Combian will do.