Jason Macomber. In 2007, Jason was diagnosed with several auto immune diseases. He was diagnosed with erythema nodosum, an inflammatory condition of the fatty part of the skin. He was diagnosed with crohn’s disease and with sarcoidosis. He would regurgitate after eating almost anything. He had a sensation that he was being smothered most of the day, having considerable difficulty breathing. His lips would turn blue and he would cough all day every day. He had difficulty sleeping and spent most nights shivering and sweating, unable to sleep because of the pain and fever. Jason put it this way: “I never really fell asleep. It was more like I passed out from exhaustion, only to be awakened by sweats and chills. I rested on a bed of towels. I would pass out, wake up ten minutes later drenched in my own sweat and shaking uncontrollably from cold. I would then throw off a layer of towels [from my] bed and begin again.” His ankles, knees, hips, elbows, and wrists were so inflamed that he could barely move them. He had a large wound on his leg that would not heal. “My doctors told me it was a brown recluse spider bite. My doctors were silly people,” he recalls. In June of 2006, he weighed 270 pounds but by January of 2007 he weighed 125 pounds. Jason is 6’ 3”.
Jason became incredibly frustrated as his attending physicians continued to experiment upon him, unable to determine what was wrong. He explains:
My doctors all wanted to dope me up on pain medication and mutilate me. Each one of them was intent on cutting off some body part, or some organ. They all insisted that these were simple procedures. The consensus was that I would be dead in 5 or 6 years, but only if I let them butcher me along the way. If they didn’t get to chop me up and poison me I had only a year of living hell to enjoy, then death. One doctor told me I would be dead in five years then he winked and smiled at me. I truly and deeply wanted to punch him in the face. I was too weak to do so. I asked him, “Is there anything I can do?” He said, “no.” I asked him, “why is this happening?” He said, “you are unlucky.” So my doctor smirked at me, sentenced me to death, had his nurses come and gawk at the wound on my leg, and sent me home. He invited me back for intravenous steroids, intravenous antibiotics, intravenous nutrition, and of course many many surgeries.
