Oral Vancomycin Allows PSC Patient to Live Out Her Dreams of Becoming an Animator

Right after Emily Kimes moved across the country to pursue her dream, she was diagnosed with PSC. Her mother, her biggest advocate, scoured the internet for information on PSC and came across the use of vancomycin.

Emily and her mother fought hard to find a doctor willing to prescribe the drug. Once they found someone who would, Emily’s life was never the same! Read her inspiring vancomycin below.

I transferred schools at the beginning of my sophomore year. I made the leap to move all the way across the country to New York City to study animation like I had always dreamed of and worked extremely hard for. 

Before I got there, I already had a gut feeling something was wrong with my body. At that point, I already hadn’t had my period for about 3 months, which I knew wasn’t normal for me. I took a blood test just days before hopping on a plane to JFK. 

Things took a rapid turn on my very first day of classes when I got a call from my doctor saying that something was very wrong. My test results were a sea of red alerts, with cholesterol, potassium, iron, total protein, and immunoglobulins through the roof, and my liver enzymes ten times higher than normal. I was told I needed to get an ultrasound immediately.

Thankfully, my mom was able to help me from all the way across the country, so for my entire first semester at my new school I was running around New York getting all sorts of tests and scans done. At one point, doctors hypothesized that I had malignant cancer, but after a liver biopsy, multiple MRIs, a PET-CT scan, a colonoscopy, and an endoscopy, I was finally diagnosed with small duct PSC. 

My mom, being my biggest advocate, found out about oral vancomycin. She fought tooth and nail to find a doctor who would allow me to have autonomy over my own body and see if vancomycin worked for me.

Finally, we found our hero, and he wrote a prescription for 1,000 mg per day of ANI brand oral vancomycin. After only five weeks, all my bloodwork came back normal. After six months, I had a FibroScan to check the health of my liver, and it went from “transitioning to cirrhosis” (per my liver biopsy’s results) to being completely undamaged and healthy. It’s been over four years and all of my blood tests continue to come back normal.

Without vancomycin, I would’ve had to drop out of school, give up on my dreams, and spend my early 20s in the hospital. Vancomycin gave me a second chance at life. I got to graduate from college, meet incredible friends, and I now have a job as an animator.