My Story

Why me? 

My story is long and has many paths. During my illness journey, trying to make sense of how I got “here” would make for some very long nights. Now, I can see the path to chronic illness as clear as day. Looking back, I would say the first symptoms I noticed began in high school with debilitating PMS and periods, acne, and varying states of fatigue. Yet I was told all of this was normal and prescribed birth control medication to help with symptoms. I was very active in sports, thin as a rail, and was a bottomless pit when it came to eating. 

My senior year I contracted Epstein Barr Virus, the virus responsible for what we call “mono”, and it was so severe for me that I remember being told I might not graduate. My spleen was swollen, my skin and the whites of my eyes were jaundice, and I remember not leaving the couch for almost a month. It took me many more months to get my energy back. Moving on through the college years, with stressful jobs, relationships, and college style nutrition, I was “sick” a lot. I also had another several month-long illness with viral pneumonia.

After college, stress in jobs and in life continued, but I began to adapt to a healthy diet and would spend a lot of time working in my yard and walking. Even though I was feeling good, the deficit I was in was not going to be able to carry me through the hardest job I had yet. Pregnancy is one of the most physically demanding time periods for a woman’s body. Several critical events happened during my pregnancy as a result of advice from my medical team that had profoundly detrimental effects on myself and my son. I will save my son’s story for another time. Postpartum was many years with a sickly infant and more job and relationship stress.

After a few years I began to gain some traction on my health. I was eating healthy, exercising, I was doing all the things, but I was still working in an environment with a lot of mold and toxic chemical exposure.  Then the bottom fell out. I had years of “sinus infections”, hormonal issues, varying states of fatigue, hair falling out, weight gain, many unexplained rashes and reactions that led to ER visits. I had every symptom of an underactive thyroid, but blood test results always came back normal. The doctors’ answers were always antibiotics, antihistamines, and steroid packs. Then I started to have adverse reactions to every medication I was given, I was told to try another form and given a steroid pack to stop the reaction. These interventions did not help me, in fact, they made me much worse. Desperate for answers, I saw every doctor and specialist in the area I could. One of the last appointments I attended, I left with my hands full of various nasal sprays and antihistamines to rotate morning and night. Frustrated beyond belief, I said to myself “I refuse to believe that as a human being on this earth I require all of this medication just to survive.” I walked to a trash can near the exit and threw it all away.

I began to educate myself and in 2015 completed my Integrative Nutritional Health Coach Certification through IIN. Clean food, clean products and clean water were my mission, but the damage was done. My gut was a mess, and my immune system was beaten down from years of antibiotics and steroids. I spent the next several years battling diagnoses like autoimmunity, Lupus, Fibromyalgia, Hyper and Hypothyroid, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, chronic reactive Epstein Barr virus, and MCAS just to name a few. At one point I was only able to eat a handful of foods without some sort of reaction. They were long painful years, physically and mentally, I was always sick, my brain fog was severe, and I spent a lot of my time in bed. 

For almost 20 years I have spent my time educating myself in pursuit of my own healing and now I empower others in that same pursuit. 

I have gone from chronic illness survivor to thriver!