Black Raven Inn: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 6) by Rebecca Patrick-Howard Read Free Book Online Page A

together and bought her a Christmas present the year before.
    “It’s not great news,” Dr. Culver warned her.
    “Ruh roh,” Taryn grimaced. “Did it grow?”
    “Yes,” her doctor admitted. “You started out at 3.8 and now we’re up to 4.2.”
    For those with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, the aortic aneurysm was the development nobody wanted to hear. It was the one thing that took the painful, awful connective tissue disorder that made Taryn’s tissues and organs frail and fragile become something potentially terminal. Although the condition wasn’t life threatening in and of itself, it came with a multitude of complications that caused chronic, often debilitating pain, and plagued her with symptoms that attacked each and every one of her systems.
    There was no cure for EDS, but the various symptoms could be addressed and treated individually, even if the “treatment” was just a temporary fix.
    When you threw in the complication of an aneurysm, however, the game changed. She’d hoped to avoid one, but there it was. And it was growing.
    “Are you having any new symptoms?” her doctor asked.
    Taryn shrugged. “I can feel the pulsating in my stomach more often. It hurts to eat too, but it always has so I wouldn’t say that’s new , necessarily.”
    “You’re down ten pounds from last month.”
    “That might also be from the vomiting. I’ve been doing that a lot more.”
    “I can give you something to help that. Anything triggering the vomiting?”
    “Nah,” Taryn replied. “It’s usually a little worse at night and right after big meals. I’ve been trying to eat smaller ones throughout the day.”
    “What about the tummy pain?”
    “Mostly with eating. It’s taken me out of the game a few times and I’ve had to lie down and keep still for a few hours, but nothing specific seems to trigger it. It just happens.”
    “You know that if you get that ripping, tearing feeling that doesn’t feel like your ‘normal’ pain you need to go straight to the hospital,” Dr. Culver warned her. “It probably won’t be anything serious, but we don’t want to risk it. We’re at that stage now where we have to start worrying about ruptures and dissections.”
    “Is there anything we can do?”
    “I’ve sent a referral to the cardiologist and gastroenterologist so you should be hearing from them soon. Your last echo was abnormal and showed some mitral stenosis and general hypokenesis. We need to keep an eye on those things. We’ll continue to monitor your blood pressure and try to keep your stress levels down, too. We might need to start talking surgery soon. It’s risky for you with the EDS and it doesn’t always work but it’s something we don’t want to rule out just yet. How’s your pain level?”
    So Taryn spent the next fifteen minutes talking about her options, describing her latest symptoms, and scheduling more tests.
    Over the past year and a half. her health had taken a dramatic turn and she was still having trouble dealing with the new developments. As though seeing the past through her camera and communicating with the dead wasn’t a big enough disruption, she now had these confounding medical issues to worry about.
    And, as much as she wanted to ignore them, she couldn’t. They were progressing and she was getting worse, like it or not.
    With each passing month the pain grew more difficult to manage, even with strong pain medication. It was becoming harder to walk, eating was no longer as fun as it had once been, and her energy levels were at an all-time low. She dutifully consumed her vitamins and supplements, was religious about taking her medications on time, ate a healthy diet (something that pained her since she did love her junk food), went through the physical therapy they sent her to, and did everything her EDS specialist recommended. She was a model patient.
    And yet she continued to worsen.
    Since there was no cure for Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, however, she was basically putting a