Chronic Illness Journey

I think one of the hardest parts of living with chronic illness is just how lonely it can sometimes feel. The longer I have been in the game of living with and managing/treating my own chronic health diagnosis, the more passionate I have become about sharing my own personal journey so that others who are going through something similar do not feel so alone.

Over the course of my adult life I have had experience with going to doctor after doctor, explaining the same things over and over again, and still feeling unseen and unheard in what I was experiencing. More often than not I was told, “Here’s a prescription to help you with your symptoms,” rather than actually digging more into the root cause of why I was feeling that way in the first place. The unfortunate reality in my case was that everyone was treating my symptoms with band aid solutions and no one was digging deeper into the why I was feeling that way.

Now, if you are anything like me, you like to have a full explanation. You like clear facts and you like to have someone lay it out in understandable terms. Going months or even years of searching for answers just to be let down again and again and again is incredibly defeating. Pair that with the fact that you are walking around with this invisible illness that no one else can see on the outside, so it just feels like you are carrying around this burden all on your own while also internally feeling like absolute garbage day in and day out. Speaking from personal experience, it sometimes just feels so incredibly debilitating and hopeless or at least it did until I got connected with the right people to help me on my healing journey.    

Roughly a decade ago I was first diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Hashimotos. At the time, my thyroid was still functioning independently, but the stress my body was putting on it had my antibody numbers through the roof. Even though I had been doctoring and trying various different things prior to this diagnosis and wanting answers, it didn’t make the news any easier to hear. The diagnosis itself felt more like a curse than an actual relief, and I think it felt that way because it wasn’t something you can just get rid of. This was something I was stuck with and that in itself was highly depressing. Along with my autoimmune disease, I also struggled on and off with GI related issues for over half of my life. I had been to numerous doctors, including a private GI specialist that once again just threw a prescription at me and I left still feeling stuck and hopeless.

Now at the time I was busy as an elementary teacher in a new district, planning my wedding, and building a house all at the same time. To say I was stressed to the max is the understatement of the year. On top of all of those things, I was now also trying to follow a very restrictive diet and health plan that was equally as stressful to try to stick to and keep up with while just trying to live a normal life.

Over the course of the next decade I continued to deal with various symptoms on and off, some worse than others. Ironically, I felt the best when I was pregnant with our first child. Postpartum was a completely different story. A lot of symptoms and things I had dealt with prior to pregnancy had come back so much worse than they had ever been before. On top of those health related symptoms, I was just having a difficult time postpartum. Our son had been born with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia and I just became a ball of anxiety constantly worrying and having intrusive thoughts about every little thing. To say I was a majorly overprotective helicopter parent at that time is the understatement of the century. I was trying to process my trauma and grief while also going through the major hormone shifts that happen postpartum; it was a rough time to say the least. Things were hard enough in those moments and continuing to deal with some of this issues that had seemingly escalated postpartum only made things worse. At the end of the spring of 2020 I made the choice to leave teaching to be home with my son and to continue to work on trying to find solutions to my mystery health issues.

I had spent so many years prior trying to seek answers and solutions for some of the chronic health issues I was dealing with and being let down time and time again. At this time in my life it felt like I was still just living in a fog, under a dark cloud. One day I happened to stumble across this video from the sweetest mama in Alabama that shared about a natural product line that targeted gut health and the symptoms that it could help with. In that moment I thought, “What have I got to lose?” because I was desperate. I just wanted my life back without all the symptoms that were impeding how I lived my life. I ordered that day and decided to try it out. The first month to two months my body seemed to almost be going through a crazy detox and a few months after that I did notice a major improvement in many of my symptoms. It wasn’t perfect, but it had given me a little bit of my life back. I honestly think it was meant to be because I feel so incredibly blessed to have been able to connect with such an amazing mother and friend and whether she knows it or not, she was a part of my healing journey in more ways than one. I stuck with that for a few years and it was my ride or die because I was terrified of going back to where I came from.

In December of 2020 we found out we were expecting baby number two. Overall throughout my pregnancy I felt fairly good, however my postpartum experience with my daughter was completely different. I ended up having a scheduled cesarean section and everything seemed to be going alright. A few days after her birth, we had learned that my father in law, who had been fighting stage four esophageal cancer, was transferred to hospice. I hadn’t felt good, but I also just chalked it up to recovering from major abdominal surgery with a toddler and an infant and the loss we were preparing for. I hadn’t said anything to my husband because he was about to lose his father and I was just trying to survive life at that point. I continued to push through until something told me to stop. We had gone to say our final goodbyes with the kids and returned home. I once again had everything go black and saw stars, was dealing with nausea and a whole laundry list of other things that were only escalating in nature. After I called the nurse line, my husband took me to the ER with our five day old baby where I very quickly became a complicated puzzle they just could not solve. With my heart rate only being in the thirties and me going in and out of it, they were trying to run every test, every scan, just trying to figure out what was going on. By morning they had determined that I was in fact not dying, but my body had unexpectedly gone into acute renal failure. I still to this day have no explanation as to why any of that happened, as the medical team couldn’t even really figure it out. To top it off, I also ended up developing postpartum thyroiditis after the birth of my daughter, which sent me on several months of hard work to try to get all of those symptoms under control and my thyroid properly managed. I seriously cannot make this stuff up. I guess we just like to keep things interesting with all of our medical anomalies.

Fast forward to my daughter almost being a year old, finally starting to sleep through the night, and my postpartum thyroiditis being more under control. Things had been really rough in that first six months to a year after losing my father in law. One day I finally got out, meeting up with a teacher friend of mine for coffee. During our chat, she invited me to a gym in town with group exercises classes and I decided to meet her to check it out. I got into exercising regularly in the early morning before my husband would leave for work and dialed in my nutrition a bit more, but even after six months of working out and doing all of the right things I still could not lose a single pound. It was incredibly defeating and frustrating to work so hard and see zero progress. I was not able to lose weight. I had a crazy amount of inflammation which caused a tremendous amount of discomfort and pain. My body felt like it was in a constant state of fight or flight and it was utterly exhausting to always be on high alert under a stress response. I had heightened anxiety and panic attacks often along with a loop of intrusive thoughts that never seemed to shut off. I had such intense brain fog, memory problems, and just a difficult time in general with executive functioning tasks that I began to seriously worry about my quality of life moving forward. I had unpredictable GI symptoms and continuous tummy problems regardless of different diets I tried to follow. I was on edge, irritable, and just so sick and tired of struggling ALONE and feeling like no one cared that I was suffering. I felt like a terrible mom, like I was failing my children on the daily because I was struggling to just get by. I was not able to be the mom to my children that I wanted to be and that in itself was like a dagger to the heart, day in and day out. With each day that passed, I seemed to find myself falling deeper and deeper into this black hole with no hope in sight since no one could seem to find answers.  

In early May of that year, I developed a stomachache one afternoon. After trying to sleep it off and desperately failing, I found myself awake trying to pass the time in the middle of the night by watching television. At some point the pain became more difficult to endure and breathe through, with at which point I got on doctor google and predetermined it must be my appendix. Not long after my self-diagnosis, I decided I couldn’t take the pain anymore and drove myself to the ER. As it turns out, I was right and I was taken back into surgery within an hour of arriving. Following my surgery, every single symptom or issue I had been dealing with prior to surgery suddenly became much worse. It felt like gasoline on a fire causing my prior issues to rage on and I was at my breaking point. I literally could not do it anymore. I pulled myself together enough to try to make it through a trip with my husband to Europe. The entire trip was very hard to enjoy in the way in which I would have liked to because I was struggling with so many health issues STILL! I survived on various over the counter medications just trying to get through the days and was counting down the time until we got back home. Chronic illness had made me a home body because it was easier to manage and deal with within the four walls of my own home rather than go out and about anywhere with the unpredictability of flare ups/symptoms. The day after we arrived home, I had an appointment with a naturopathic practitioner who was local to me. I knew others with mystery illnesses who had found success with certain private healthcare physicians and I WAS DESPERATE! At this point I did not care what the cost was. I was so desperate for anyone or anything that could provide me some relief or help me even just a little. I was so sick of band aid solutions, being pushed through our broken healthcare system, and continuously prescribed things that typical caused additional side effects without digging deeper to figure out what an active thirty year old woman would be so unwell.

My first office visit we dug deep into everything in my history and everything I had been experiencing and decided to go ahead with a gamut of tests all of which I paid out of pocket for because it was not covered by insurance. We did an immense amount of bloodwork, as well as various saliva and stool testing. All of which confirmed that I was in fact NOT crazy and there actually was a REASON for why I was feeling chronically ill and struggling through life. There were so many things wrong in my body when we got the results back that it was a bit overwhelming. Even though I was happy to finally have answers, I was also grieving the diagnosis and state of my health.

“Why me God,” I would often say.

It just felt like it was one more thing on top of everything else to have to battle with. Not knowing if I would ever make a full recovery from where I currently was, I chose to continue on this journey in the hopes that I would find healing. Day in and day out, I have been fighting for my health and the only person who has really seen the depths of my struggles with it has been my husband. Some days, especially early on, it felt like I was climbing Mount Everest with minimal oxygen. When you are chronically ill on the inside but look like any other average person on the outside, it truly feels like you are fighting an invisible illness, a battle alone, and it sucks.

My testing showed that my hormone levels were all out of whack and either basement low or off the charts high which explained a lot of how I was feeling. In addition, my gut was very unhealthy and overrun with candida and my thyroid antibodies were the worst they had ever been in the history of my Hashimotos disease. Because of the state of things and all of the symptoms I was describing to my provider, we decided to do one more test for Lyme disease just to rule it out. Only we did not end up ruling it out because it came back very positive. Hearing that I had actually had numerous Lyme infections over the course of my life and knowing the grim reality of the damage that prolonged Lyme can do overtime without treatment, this diagnosed illness at the time felt like a death sentence. With many of the things I began dealing with dating back to my high school days that also can correlate with someone having Lyme disease, it sent my brain spinning trying to figure out just how long I had been living with this in my body. The only real bummer to that is I will most likely never know when or for how long, which has been something I have since learned to accept.

Since that day in the summer of 2023, I have spent a lot of money and done a lot of things to try to restore order in my body and try to heal from my Lyme disease. This road has not been easy in the least, but I am in a way better place with things now than I was nine months ago. My hormone levels have since been restored to be within the range they should be in, my gut microbiome is at a very healthy state, my thyroid numbers are the best they have been in years, and I am no longer just surviving on excessive amounts of caffeine to get through the hours my children are awake.

Just before I actually had a diagnosis, I had once again been at a point of being so miserable and struggling so much that I was willing to try just about anything to try to find some relief from the daily symptoms and struggles that I was dealing with. I had watched numerous people on the internet share about this viral supplement that was having a ton of success and clinical studies to back its success up too. I had really connected with a gal on her faith story and some of the things she had dealt with in motherhood, so I decide to roll with it. There was a 90 day money back guarantee. What did I have to lose?

I am so thankful I FINALLY decided to take the plunge and try it because it ended up being a game changer for me personally in some of my hardest of days as I tried to restore order internally inside my body that had felt like it quite literally had been leveled by a tornado of destruction, with the tornado being my Hashimotos and prolonged unfound Lyme disease. The biggest change I noticed for me starting out was that these supplements helped me better regulate my nervous system which had been completely destroyed by my illnesses. It took the edge off of the feelings of being in a constant state of stress as well as being overstimulated and allowed my body a chance to find a rhythm again, a chance to actually start healing from the inside out. I was able to think clearly again and didn’t feel like I was completely losing my mind. The brain fog, memory problems, and inability to focus quickly faded and I started to finally find myself again. As the panic attacks and heightened anxiety slowly became less and less, I finally felt free in my own body. For the first time in what felt like forever, I was able to take control of my life and utilize natural supplementation to actually heal my body from the inside out and slowly address the damage that had been done over time. One of the big wins for me was I finally was able to drop roughly twenty pounds without changing anything else in my routine, something that was previously impossible for me to do, even with diet and exercise. As weeks rolled into months and I stayed consistent with my treatment and supplement protocol, I only continued to see more positive changes in myself. At one point I remember telling myself that for the very first time in well over a decade, maybe even longer, I feel like I finally found the bubbly, fun loving, energetic person who I used to be. I finally felt like myself, at a much younger age, before health issues and before traumatic life events changed me. All I know is that it is sure good to have her back again. 

I no longer felt like I was failing as a wife, mother, and just in life in general. The executive function part of my brain saw immense improvement, my memory issues became night and day different for the better, and the domino effect of other neurological issues I had previously dealt with drastically improved with my consistency in treatments and supplementation. So even though my most recent Lyme test results did not come back as I had hoped it would, I am still very thankfully that I am continuing to make progress in the right direction. That doesn’t mean that every day is easy because it most definitely isn’t. I have since moved through some of the stages of grief related to my health and am focused on my healing and quality of life. In the challenging moments or the times when I am dealing with more flare ups, I try to remind myself that it could always be worse than it is.

Throughout the process I have been blessed to have my husband by my side. He has not only been incredibly supportive, but he is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure I get the treatment or supplements I need to continue to make improvements. He always comes to the table with a “We will figure this out regardless” mentality which is comforting. With many things being out of my own personal control, I try to focus on the things that I can control. I can control my diet. I can choose to stick relatively close to an anti-inflammatory diet. It might not always be the most fun, but it makes a BIG difference. I can control my activity levels. Just moving your body and sweating for thirty minutes to an hour can have a huge impact on your body. Not only are you aiding in getting rid of toxins, but you are also gaining a ton of other health benefits both physically and mentally. I can control my consistency. By remaining consistent with my supplement regiment and utilizing key quality supplements to support my body in various ways, I am able to more effectively manage the inflammation in my body, minimize my symptoms, and ultimately just feel better overall. There is a cost to it as insurance does cover a majority of supplements. I try to look at it as an investment in my health and a higher quality of life.

So for now, I will leave my chronic illness journey at that and share more of an update at a later time about the progress of my treatment. If you are someone who has dealt with similar issues, are also experiencing a chronic health diagnosis, or unexplained health issues, please know you are not alone. This life is definitely not for the weak, but it could also be so much worse too. In addition, if you have any questions at all about the content in this post, can relate in any way, or have great resources to share that have worked for you, I would love to hear from you!

Thanks for hanging out and taking the time to read! I appreciate you supporting my passion of writing and hope you enjoyed a little piece my story.

To be continued...