Kate Conner of Kansas has a gift, and she has shared her gift with all of us living with CVS. Kate has used her gift to create a Quilt of Hope for all to see, and for us to share with the rest of the world as we educate them about CVS. Continue reading →

My name in Megan Grabow, I live in Maple Grove, Minnesota. Today was a success, a reunion of 13 weeks remaining out of the hospital! Praise! 🙂

I have Type 1 Diabetes and a slight case of Gastro paresis, which contributes to a long process of being diagnosed with CVS. It has taken me 2-3 years to go through hell to be able to praise the life I have today! I was diagnosed with CVS in September at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Doctor V (Thangam Venkatesan) was clear that it was a definite case of CVS. I started on the treatment with Amitriptyline immediately. Over time of increasing amitriptyline, and doing back up treatments for accelerated nausea, I have slowly gotten my life back together. Continue reading →

My caregiver is my husband Chris Paglione. We met at work in November 2002 at our school. We are both hardworking teachers. Everything was so great at first. We fell in love almost immediately. November 2003 was when the Puke Monster hit hard. I always had a history of being sick or having the flu way too often. This time we knew it wasn’t the flu. For 8 months I was in and out of my local hospital, and I had my gallbladder taken out. Chris would carry me to the car and drive as fast as he could to the ER trying to keep me calm. He would do everything he could, including scare the daylights out of ER doctors who did not immediately help. After my doctors at the local hospital refused to help me, Chris took me to a teaching hospital in New York City. He stood by me, holding my hand and letting me cry on his shoulder every step of the way. There I spent another 8 months and had 3 intestinal surgeries. Chris would work all day, coach his basketball team, and then take the 1 and a half drive in traffic to the hospital where he would stay with me as long as his feet could carry him…on bad days, sometimes all night where he would sleep on a chair and then drive to work at 6 am. For my birthday, he bought me a puppy and secretly brought him to the hospital just to cheer me up. Thankfully no one questioned the strange barking coming from my hospital room. Continue reading →

Jeremy Wishner of Long Beach, California has been vomiting since he was 4-1/2 months of age. He was diagnosed with CVS when he was 4 years old after numerous medical interventions, tests, medication trials and physician visits up and down the state of California. Continue reading →