This Brutiful Life

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

Late October 2022 – January 6, 2023:
At the end of October 2022, after 8 months of treatment, I received a text message from the chiropractor. He said that he needed to cancel our appointments. His father passed away unexpectedly, and he was going to travel to Tennessee and didn’t know when he would be back.

I responded to the text and told him that we were very sorry to hear it, and that I would continue to do the at-home treatments and take the supplements he had me on until he was back in town and ready to resume treatment. We also would keep our outings/exposure opportunities the same until I had more direct support from him. We didn’t want me to become ill during the height of the fall/winter germ season (as he described it) without any treatment options. This meant that I would need to continue to connect with others via video calls instead of in-person gatherings. I was sad about that, but I knew it was the right thing to do until we knew more.

Since my husband’s father passed away suddenly when we were in our late twenties, we knew how stressful it is to have a parent pass away suddenly and unexpectedly. We figured that he would need at least 2-4 weeks to return from Tennessee and get caught up.

I decided that this pause in treatment would be a good time to get my eyes checked by my optometrist.  I had started having eye floaters over the summer, and my team of doctors had recommended an eye exam at some point. My optometrist did a complete eye exam and told me that the eye floaters were nothing to be concerned about at this time.

I also messaged the other doctor on my team (the functional doctor in our area) and asked her to order a series blood tests to check my iron levels. My levels were low again, so she ordered another round of 2 iron infusions. She also asked me if the chiropractor was back in town yet to resume our treatments. I told her no.

I texted the chiropractor a few times and told him that we were thinking of him, and he would sometimes respond. He also responded when I asked him a question about my at-home treatments. Other than that, we didn’t hear from him. We started to wonder if we misunderstood his original text message.

After Thanksgiving, I texted him to see if he saw us resuming treatment at some point, and he responded by saying that, yes, he saw us resuming treatment as soon as he got himself caught up. He said that he was going back to Tennessee a few more times in December, so my husband and I assumed that treatments with him wouldn’t resume until January.

We were still doing virtual appointments with our therapist once a week, and it was incredibly helpful to have her in our corner. We decided to also spend this pause in treatment taking an even deeper dive into healing our emotional trauma. Even though our relationship had a solid foundation from the very beginning, we were starting to see some cracks due to stress. Chronic illness takes a toll on all relationships, so we knew that it was important to not let our guard down. As I mentioned previously, I had noticed that my husband was withdrawing emotionally, and that was not like him. He had always been both physically and emotionally present up until this point in our lives, so I was confused and hurt.

Our therapist began helping us to better understand our attachment styles and coping mechanisms from each of our childhoods. My husband and I had both predominantly exhibited characteristics of a secure attachment style since meeting each other in college, but chronic illness and the trauma we had experienced together had pushed us both to our limits. My husband was being pushed to his absolute emotional limit, so he began to show signs of an avoidant attachment style. I was being pushed to my absolute emotional limit, and I didn’t understand why he was emotionally withdrawing, so I had returned to a very independent “I will deal with my emotions all by myself” approach. I started moving through my emotions privately instead of asking him for support when I needed it. Through a lot of hard work and dedication to the process, it was determined that my husband was terrified of losing me, and he started to emotionally withdraw to try to prevent as much pain as possible if I were to die.

Once we understood what was happening emotionally for the both of us, we were able to work together to right the ship. Until gaining that insight, I was hurt that he was emotionally withdrawing (for what felt like no reason) during the most difficult time of our lives, and he was terrified of losing me. I was his safe place, and I was no longer safe. I could die. It made complete sense. He was overwhelmed and scared, and he had yet to learn the tools needed to stay emotionally connected when faced with the possibility of losing his wife at such a young age.

It had been the most difficult time in our relationship so far, but I kept telling our therapist that I felt like it was going to make us even stronger once we got to the other side of it. I also told her that I felt like my health situation was about to get even more difficult, but I didn’t know yet what exactly I meant by that. I was sensing that we needed this time of healing as a couple in order to prepare for the next more difficult phase on this journey. [Spoiler Alert: I was right on both. The next phase of the health journey was more difficult. And, right now, during the most uncertain time on this journey, and in our lives so far, we are the strongest we have ever been as a couple. Hell, yeah!] Our therapist never seemed to be really worried about us as a couple. She would point out that we would sit close together and hold hands during our therapy sessions, respectfully listen to each other’s perspectives, and do the work to be the best individuals for ourselves and each other. The foundation was still there. We were still best friends. We were just best friends who had been through some tough shit that most couples our age don’t experience.

We didn’t hear back from the chiropractor in December 2022, but since he told us many times to trust him and that he was different than our previous doctors and wouldn’t abandon us, we tried to keep trusting him.

In the meantime, I had still been following the holistic health practitioner who reviewed my test results back in February 2022. She had begun a podcast, and one of her guests was a chiropractor in our area who used a functional medicine approach. He specialized in mold toxicity, Lyme Disease and co-infections, and parasites. I listened to that podcast episode, and then I sent the link to my husband. We agreed that the information presented was intriguing and that we should keep it in mind.

On January 5, 2023, I texted my current chiropractor again to see if he could give me an estimated timeframe on when we would be resuming treatment. He did not respond, so I asked the other doctor on my team if she had heard from him. She hadn’t.

The next day, January 6, 2023, I asked her if she could seek out more information, and she offered to contact him. Later in the day, I received a text reply from the chiropractor telling me that he was not able to help me right now. His text was unclear, but we knew that we didn’t have any more time to waste, and my body had already been showing signs of regression. So, we made the assumption that he meant that he was not going to be resuming treatment with me ever again. I asked the other doctor if she was still willing to be part of my medical team, and she didn’t respond for over a week. And, her eventual response was also unclear.

My husband was out on a run when I got the text from the chiropractor late in the day on January 6th. He stopped mid-run at an intersection, because he was feeling a wave of energy and emotion. He had a feeling that I had gotten a text reply, so he ran straight home. He walked in the door, and I said, “I got a reply.” He said, “I had a feeling.”

After their repeated requests for us to remain open to the process, to be committed to the process, and to trust that they were different than my previous doctors and would not abandon us when the situation was difficult, this development was a huge emotional gut punch. We understand that life can change for someone in an instant, but the way this situation was handled by this team of doctors was disappointing and hurtful. We knew that my nervous system needed to trust them in order for my body to physically heal, so we had made the choice early on to trust them completely even though we had been emotionally traumatized by the medical community over the years. Since we did trust them, we were heartbroken by this development. In that moment, I was also embarrassed and felt like a fool for trusting them. [Side note: I am no longer embarrassed or feel like a fool. I know that it takes strength and courage to stay open, start again, and continue to trust doctors when the easiest emotional response would be to close myself off. I am a badass!]

[This is where the 2023 Blog Posts begin. Start with Hello! published on January 6, 2023.]

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