In and around 2010 I seemed to have hit rock bottom with energy levels and a complete inability to handle stress … I had a strong feeling that something just wasn’t right. Arguably though, my downward spiral started long before that, in 1992 in fact.
Just six months after my husband and I were married, he was in a serious motor vehicle accident while at work which left him with a mild brain injury, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. In the weeks and months that followed we were faced with the agonizing reality of medical appointments, doubts of whether he would ever fully recover, personally battling with insurance on a case that no lawyer would touch, and trying to adjust to married life on top of it all. At just 21 years of age, and never having been out on my own, I had a lot of growing up to do … and fast!
Chronic stress became the mainstay in my life and we were pretty much tapped out in every way. I never really learned to deal with the stress of the situation, and I certainly never took the time to grieve the loss of the life we’d planned together. Depression, exhaustion and frustration were part of everyday life, both at home and at the various jobs I held from that point forward.
I frequently complained to my doctor of exhaustion and fatigue, and insisted that I thought something was wrong with my Thyroid, my concerns were poo-poohed and I was told it was just stress … stress of being newly married, and then the stress of my husband’s accident.
In the fall of 2009 I was running my own photography business and found myself with a case of shingles. This would be the slippery slope that lead to my health completely unraveling.
In December of the same year, despite having shown very few symptoms, I was put on a rush list for major abdominal surgery after an ultrasound and an MRI revealed a mass that they could not even confirm where it ended and where it began.
Early in January of 2010 a football-sized Dermoid Cyst weighing in at 8lbs was removed along with one of my ovaries, and all was thought to be right in the world. At least I finally knew why losing weight seemed to be impossible … I’d had an uninvited guest growing inside me since I was conceived. It was all a little more than freaky, but at that time I was excited by the possibility that perhaps this cyst was what had been sapping me of my “get-up-and-go”, even though the surgeon didn’t feel this was likely to be the case.
A couple of months after my surgery, energy levels were no better. Another basic TSH Thyroid test revealed that there was in-fact finally a definite problem showing up … my Thyroid was under-performing consistently, so I was put on a very low dose of Thyroid stimulating hormone. Things improved a little, but nothing like I’d hoped. I decided perhaps it was best to take the stress of being self-employed out of the equation, and I returned reluctantly to office life.
Fast forward a couple of years to 2013 and I was back to feeling like something really wasn’t right. I was exhausted ALL the time, and despite supplementing and choking back disgusting tinctures I couldn’t kick the debilitating symptoms. I was back to dragging myself through each day, only to eat, work, go to bed and do it all again the next day.
Thanks to an episode of the Dr. Oz show that my mother stumbled across, I was presented with the idea that my symptoms lined up closely with Gluten Intolerance. By this point I was willing to try anything and I dove headlong into the Gluten Free diet which quickly helped me to start feeling a little better. While I wasn’t back to my old, pre-married energy levels, I started feeling pretty good, but there was just one more thing that I needed to do – eliminate my current major stressor – work!
With the support of my husband it was time for me to go out on my own once again, this time to something with a more stable and consistent income, and life was good! This time around I really appreciated the freedom of being self-employed and having more time to spend doing things that I enjoyed and helping friends and family … I was feeling more fulfilled.
Unfortunately, my state of well-being wouldn’t last, and as 2016 wore on I started feeling less than optimal once again.
At first I didn’t think much of it, but as summer turned to fall, things got worse and I started researching things like “gluten cross-reactivity” and “candida overgrowth”. It certainly made sense that both of these things could be a factor for me, so I cut out dairy and started on a Candida Diet that I was convinced would put me back on the path to health.
Sadly this was far from the case, and despite enjoying all the fantastically healthy foods I was eating, like quinoa, lentils, a variety of legumes and grains, lots of eggs, fresh veggies, nuts and more, my health took a major nose-dive and I was desperately researching what next steps to take.
I found myself grasping at straws and started working on The Metabolism Plan diet, thinking that I needed to find my own bio-individual diet, since the Candida Diet was obviously not my friend. I found myself adding more foods to my diet that I hadn’t typically eaten, and I later learned that these diets were full of inflammatory foods that were battering my gut and sending my immune system into complete chaos.
The term “from the frying pan to the fire” was never so appropriate. I watched the pounds fall off my body literally over-night, muscles were deteriorating and I was starting to look like a corpse. I lost almost all of my sense of taste, my tongue was coated in a strange white film, my nails were showing signs of a void at the nail bed (in the months that followed, all of my fingernails and toenails fell off) and my hair was falling out at an alarming rate – I had no idea what was wrong.
I decided it was time for a Doctor’s visit and I pushed for as many tests as possible. I also sought out a Functional Medicine Practitioner who helped me establish for the first time in almost 25 years that not only did I have an under-performing Thyroid, but I had Autoimmune Thyroid Disease – Hashimoto’s.
Despite having some direction from my Functional Medicine Practitioner, it was too late, I’d gone from bad to worse and things took an even more severe turn with abdominal pain, gastric distress and ER visits. Doctor’s appointments became weekly occurrences and an emergency endoscopy and colonoscopy were in order. To add insult to injury, I was under Doctor’s orders to cancel our travel plans – a huge blow as we were less than a month away
