About Me and This Blog: Hi y’all!! I’m Carrie or Chronically Carrie on this website 🙂 I’m super excited to start my first blog! I’m creating this blog to talk about my chronic illness. I have a very rare congenital biliary disease that has recently caused quite a few complications. These complications have led to many surgeries and hospitalizations. I had the Whipple procedure in November of 2013 due to the disease invading my pancreas (it’s not cancer because it doesn’t metastasize, it instead is caused by a structural issue in the bile ducts that causes more damage to the biliary tree over time i.e. the liver, pancreas etc). This was a very scary procedure and was complicated by the fact that I already had a pretty big surgery that changed my anatomy and made it more challenging for surgeons to perform this procedure. I’m currently undergoing a surgical procedure once a month where my bile ducts exiting my liver are gradually stretched by the use of a stent. A big tube connected to the stent is then threaded through my liver and exits out a little below my ribcage. This tube is extremely long because it’s threaded through my liver and intestines and then hangs about an extra 10 inches out of my body. I used to have two tubes, the other one exited out of my ribcage between two of my ribs, luckily that side of my liver saw significant progress and it was recently removed. I also suffer from chronic pancreatitis, which along with my tube is currently my biggest challenge. I have some other medical problems as well. I’m hoping that this blog will help me connect to other people who are dealing with chronic conditions and I hope it just helps me connect with lots of cool people in general. I genuinely enjoy writing, so I’m hoping to write about many other additional topics such as college or school in general, current events, books, music, movies/TV/ theatre, fashion and style, pop culture in general, and much, much more. I love to spend time with family, read, surf the web, watch an endless amount of TV and Netflix, shop, write, craft, volunteer, act, sing, listen to music, and much more! Thanks for visiting my blog!
chronically carrie 