the autoimmune professor

If I can give any advice when it comes to your health, it is this… LISTEN TO YOUR BODY! You know how your body should feel. If something is not right, do not allow someone to tell you that everything is ok. Keep looking and researching for answers. Again, LISTEN TO YOUR BODY!

This is the one thing that I wish I would have done myself; it may not have taken so long to figure out what was wrong with me.

I have been sick for most of my life. It is funny that I know what I know now, because I cannot tell you how many times I would say I don’t feel good today and my mom would always say “you are always sick.” But no matter how many times I went to the doctor, there was nothing that was ever found. I can even remember as far back as my early childhood, I always had stomachaches. Sometimes they were so severe that I would have to go to the nurse’s office to take this horrible green medicine that the doctor gave me. I remember talk about a possible ulcer (who in the world has an ulcer at the age of 8?), there was also talk about anxiety (to the point I went to see a child psychiatrist). In addition, I was the child who had strep throat every year no matter what (at 42, I still get strep throat almost every year), I had chicken pox, mono, colds all the time, cold sores once or twice a month, and bronchitis. But, again, we just assumed I was a sickly child. It didn’t get any better as I got older, I still got sick constantly, then it was continuous allergies, then I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder. At that point, I just chalked everything up to the anxiety. I started medication and while things did improve, it definitely didn’t improve enough for me to think that this was the only thing wrong with me. However, the doctors could not find anything else, so I guessed it was everything that was wrong with me.

About ten years later while my anxiety did go away for the most part, I still felt off. This was around the time Covid-19 started, so I just kept thinking that I had covid every few days. It all started with stomach and digestive issues. I don’t know about you, but I am a baby when it comes to stomach issues. I can manage any other type of pain or ailment, but a stomach ache leaves me completely paralyzed and not wanting to leave my bed. Needless to say, lockdown and quarantine came at a great time since I wasn’t allowed to really leave my house anyway. I lived off of TGI Fridays potato skins and noodles with butter. They were both pretty bland and so I felt that they were easier to digest and that they would not make my stomach hurt any more than it already did. Sometimes I would incorporate other foods, but during this time carbs were my friend. Anything that was related to the bread or pasta family was going to go in my mouth. Little did I know, I was making myself so much worse.

This went on for about a year and a half until I actually got Covid in August of 2021. I was one of the unfortunate ones that got Delta on top of already being fully vaccinated. I was the first case of breakthrough Covid in my county and gave it to my also vaccinated husband (who ended up being the second case). While most people came down with symptoms that fell in the upper respiratory category, my symptoms were completely stomach related. For three weeks, I felt like I was dying. The stomach cramps, the digestive issues, and everything related to that made me feel like I really was not going to make it. I lost 20 lbs. and almost ended up in the hospital from lack of food and water. I attempted to still take in water so that I would not dehydrate myself along with the other digestive symptoms that cause dehydration; however, any and everything made my stomach feel as if the alien from the movie was going to claw its way out. The worst part – it never got better. I was officially over covid, testing negative, but my stomach never got better. I learned to live with it and what I could and couldn’t eat to manage the pain, but even though I was able to manage the pain, I was not able to stop the digestive symptoms and issues.

Finally, Christmas break came around and I was off school and work. At this time, I had started reading the book Believe Me by Yolanda Hadid. I am a huge Real Housewives of Beverly Hills fan and so I had watched her journey with chronic Lyme disease and was really excited to dive farther into it. I will tell you, reading this book changed my life! While I was reading the book, I noticed that I was highlighting passages, taking notes, and muttering to myself, this is my life. I was never as bad as Yolanda as she was bedridden for a very long time, but I noticed that I had a lot of the same symptoms and that I was going through some of the same things. I am from Chicago/Northwest Indiana, so ticks are very prevalent in our area so I started to think, could I possibly have Lyme and no one thought to test for it? I called my general practitioner and since I had a yearly physical coming up, he decided that if I didn’t mind paying for the tests, he would test me for whatever I wanted. I told him that something was just wrong, I didn’t know what it was, but I was not normal, I was sick and I knew it.