This Brutiful Life

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

For a few years starting in my mid-twenties, we operated as (mostly) normal. I was still following my strict food sensitivity diet and taking supplements, but that wasn’t terrible by any means. The food and supplements were expensive, but that was the price we were willing to pay for better health.

I loved my new teaching job at my alma mater as a high school Gifted Education Specialist, and I loved my life as a whole. I continued to go to therapy when I needed to work through any emotional stressors that came up, but nothing really monumental happened. I was still a little hurt from the backlash and lack of support for seeing a Naturopath (this was when alternative medicine was more controversial than it is even today), so I wanted to make sure that I worked through those feelings. Also, my family member who was dealing with a mental health challenge was continuing to show signs of distress at varying times, so it was important for me to make sure I was taking care of myself and my mental health. Because mental health challenges are prevalent on one side of my family, I was diligent about asking if there was a mental health medication that would benefit me, and each time, I was told no by mental health professionals. None of them believed that mental health medication was the answer in my specific situation.

During this time, I didn’t feel my best physically, but I was surviving. If I caught a pathogen from a student, it would take me a little longer to get well, but I didn’t think much of it. I continued to see the Naturopath for check-ups, and we were glad that eliminating certain foods was helping to lower the inflammation in my body.

At some point, though, I realized that my body was still struggling physically. It was almost like eliminating the foods helped stall the root cause, but eventually, things started popping up again. I would come down with acute illnesses more than most, they would last longer, and everything got confusing again. I knew that my intestines should have been healing by this time, and I shouldn’t have had to stay on this strict of a diet for this long, so I started asking questions again. To my Naturopath’s credit, we did the best and most detailed testing there was at the time (not covered by insurance, of course), and a few things became evident, but nothing that couldn’t be tackled with a little effort.

In our late twenties, my husband’s father passed away suddenly and unexpectedly of undetermined natural causes. My husband is the only child (from his father), and his parents are divorced, so we had to plan the funeral, clean his house, move and sell his belongings, sell his house, and take care of other end-of-life tasks on our own. We had help from some of my family members (thank you), but the majority of the tasks and stress fell on us. We figured it out as a team, but it was definitely not something we saw coming in our late twenties. [Side note: Do your loved ones a favor. Please plan for your later years in life and for your death. It is very stressful for loved ones to handle these items when planning has not been completed prior.]

Throughout the next few years, we continued to notice that my health was declining in small ways instead of remaining steady like we thought it had been for a few years. We retested for more food sensitivities, environmental sensitivities, intestinal candida overgrowth, and other more common ailments, and a few items would show up. We would treat each item as it became known. We would do everything that was asked of us, but our lives became increasingly restricted in what we could do. We now needed to jump through 10 hoops each day for me to stay relatively healthy instead of 5 hoops each day. This was the beginning of removing things one-by-one (as suggested by doctors) until, one day, we woke up and noticed that our life was a shell of what it used to be. Don’t eat this food. Take this supplement at this time. Eat this food, but make sure not to eat it every day. Don’t cross-contaminate your food. Only drink water out of this expensive filtered system. Exercise this exact amount and in this specific way. Meditate. Reduce stress. Don’t use these personal hygiene products. Use only these types of household cleaners. It all did help me feel slightly better, so I was grateful at the time. However, I was also confused.

For our 10 year wedding anniversary, we wanted to try to go away together. We found a really nice resort in a tropical location that could meet my dietary restrictions. My husband called the resort on numerous occasions and planned my meals for me ahead of arriving at our destination. We had a good time . . . until we didn’t. 🤣 It turns out that the resort we chose had a giant bug problem and sprayed toxic chemicals throughout the entire resort all day and night. I had either food poisoning, sun poisoning, or toxin overload while we were there. Conventional doctors were baffled by my symptoms, as usual, but I kept seeking answers.

According to some of my recent doctors, all of my efforts during these years to stay curious and seek answers saved my life. My willingness to do whatever was asked of me by my doctors (in terms of diet restriction and environmental safeguards) and being diligent about my mental health kept my illness bucket from overflowing at an even faster rate.

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