This Brutiful Life

[Note: This post may be updated in the future if more information is available.]

In college, I started to have more frequent upper respiratory infections. I also became more sensitive to medications. At this time, cigarette smoke was also still around in restaurants and bars, and I became more sensitive to cigarette smoke even though I wasn’t a smoker. I would get raging headaches from being in the same building.

My senior year of college, I started having pain in my intestines and uterus. My menstrual bleeding became even heavier. I also started getting cyclic migraines. My doctors were confused, because my symptoms didn’t seem to completely match anything. A women’s reproductive inflammatory disease was discussed, but the doctors believed that the pain was likely caused by something else.

I just kept moving along . . . engagement to my wonderful husband, student teaching, job applications, wedding.

My first year of teaching was unremarkable in terms of physical illness. However, a student threatened to kill me when speaking to another teacher, so it was emotionally stressful for sure.

My second year of teaching, I switched schools and was really excited for my new job. Almost immediately (and throughout the next 2 years), I had a variety of physical ailments: constant sinus infections, urinary tract infections, allergies, intestinal pain, paresthesia, vaginal yeast infections, a white coating on my tongue, etc. I was told that it was because I was a new teacher, and my immune system was not yet up for the challenge of being with that many germs all day. This explanation did not make any sense to me since I didn’t have any physical symptoms my first year teaching in a different school building. My doctors prescribed antibiotics over and over again, and I knew the antibiotics were just covering up the actual root cause(s) and also causing other problems due to overuse, so I would ask questions. Shouldn’t my immune system be able to fight off germs better than this? If antibiotics are only helping in the short-term, then what is the next step? Shouldn’t be we looking for the reason this is happening in order to prevent this from continuing to happen?

At the end of my first year in this new building, I found a large amount of mold on the bottom of some of the wood furniture in my main classroom. I also found out that the air ventilation system was not working correctly for the entire school year. Luckily, I was changing classrooms the following year, so I wasn’t overly concerned.

The second year at this building (my third year teaching overall), I was still having the same symptoms. I was referred to many specialists, tested for many illnesses, and nothing was detected. By this point, I was exhausted. When the doctors only had a few minutes to spend with me, I became a number. I knew that their explanations did not make sense, but when I tried to dig deeper, they started to get annoyed. And, when they couldn’t figure it out, some of them implied that it was all in my head, and that I just needed to reduce stress. At the end of the second year at this school, I decided to resign in order to try to get healthy and “reduce stress” as the doctors recommended. I didn’t feel like stress was the problem, but I was exhausted and willing to try anything. Also, even though doctors weren’t concerned about the mold exposure, I knew I needed to leave that building just in case that was contributing to the problem. I became a part-time substitute teacher to bring in as much income as possible.

I have since learned from personal experience, and also from our therapist who specializes in chronic illness and trauma, that many doctors blame the patient when they can’t figure out what is going on. However, at that time, as a person in my early to mid-twenties, I wasn’t sure how to respond. I was very confused.

Just another day of . . . This Brutiful Life: The Brutal & Beautiful Moments of My Life.