Every end has a beginning.
For me, it all began 4 years, 9 months, and 25 days ago when I had my first experience with an undiagnosable illness. Before then, I had been a reasonably normal person with a reasonably normal life. And then I caught a reasonably normal disease--mononeucleosis. Or maybe not. When a long series of mono tests came back negative despite the fact I was presenting all the symptoms, I was admited to the hospital for 3 days for more tests. When they all came back inconclusive, I was released from the hospital with the diagnosis of a "mono-like virus" (i.e. "it looks like you have mono but you don't") and the instructions to rest and drink lots of liquid until I felt better. In time (and with exorbitant amounts of Vitamin C--nature's miracle vitamin) I did feel better and naturally assumed that was the end of this fun life story to tell.
From then on, little by little everything started falling apart. It started in small, unobtrusive ways: weakened immune system, increased stress, bouts of depression, feeling extra tired, etc. As a perfectionistic honors student in a competitive program, these symptoms hardly appeared unusual. It wasn't until I started getting major infections every couple months, spontaneously bursting into tears from the stress, comtemplating suicide when I got depressed, and sleeping 10-12 hours and still being unable to get out of bed for more than a few hours before feeling ready to collapse again that I started really suspecting something might be wrong. By senior year, I was barely able to get up and go to class, I couldn't concentrate when I was there, and as soon as it was over I would rush home to take a nap. I found a man who put up with my crazy mood swings, helped inspire me to push through the fatigue, and had the understanding to drive me home (or let me sleep on his couch) when I was threatening to hurt myself, and the winter of my senior year we got engaged. I knew that anyone who could put up with so much was too good to lose. He, on the other hand, had no idea what he was getting himself into. :-)
Before we got married, I began seeing a doctor who identified that I had low adrenal function and was hypothyroid. The adrenal glands regulate the hormones in the body that support the immune system, help one cope with stress and process emotional responses (like depression, anger, or fear), produce energy both mental and physical, and regulate sleep patterns, among other things. When they become "over-worked" as a result of a stressful lifestyle or traumatic events (internal or external), a person can experience all the symptoms I had and more. I thought I had finally found the answer to all my problems! My doctor started me on some medication and rigorous vitamin supplements and my symptoms started to improve, long enough for me to survive wedding planning and a long honeymoon. I still can't help but wonder, if everything in life had gone smoothly after that would it have ended there? Would I have gone on to live the rest of my relatively normal life? Would that have been better? I may never know.
Instead, the first year or so of our marriage was filled with a jumble of car wrecks, unemployment, living with parents, moving every few months, bouncing from job to job, and all the while my health rapidly deteriorated. My doctor kept telling me I just needed to reduce my stress. . . and I kept trying to figure out how I was supposed to do that while having to work two jobs and live with my in-laws while my husband kept looking for work. I started having small seizures and blackouts when I became stressed or over-worked. There were many days when I could not get up out of bed for hours for lack of the physical strength. When I was offered a full time job in Colorado, my home state, as an innkeeper at a cozy bed and breakfast I thought that would be the perfect way to settle down into a comfortable, stress-free routine. And it was, for a while. But nothing in life is perfect and even the smallest stressors continued to grate on me. My stubborn determination drove me to keep pushing until I could push no longer and, on my way to work one day, I collapsed, hyperventilating, shaking uncontrollably, and completely unable to move. Needless to say I called in sick that day, and as a result of that one event, I lost my dream job. Homeless and jobless once more, we set out again into the world and I determined that I was going to take some time off, reduce my stress, and be done with my health problems once and for all.
Perhaps by that time I should have realized it wouldn't be that simple. To make a long story short, the following year just repeated the same cyle over and over again. I would take as much time off as I could to simply rest, relax, and recouperate; I would begin feeling a little better; we would run out of money; I would go back to work; and then I would eventually be forced to quit as my symptoms became severe again. I kept trying to blame my stress levels for my lack of recovery, but as the months passed (months of dutifully maintaining strict diets, medications, and other forms of treating my supposed illnesses) and every relapse became worse and worse, I began to suspect there might be more to my problem than we had guessed.
For the last 6 months I have set out to prove this. Step 1: take a REAL break. No work. Very few social activities. Very close attention to my bodies needs--sleeping whenever I am tired, eating whenever I am hungry, refraining from strenuous activity except when it makes me feel better instead of worse. Step 2: redouble my focus on nutrition, vitamin supplements, and whatever medicinal needs I have. I set out to learn everything I can about how the body works and what I can do to aid and speed my recovery based on what I know is wrong. Step 3: get a new doctor with more to contribute than "keep doing what you're doing and try to reduce more stress--that'll be $400." For the last 6 months I have done everything I am supposed to be doing and, though I have learned how to make life semi-tolerable and make good days happen a bit more often, the bad days keep getting worse and the good days are mediocre at best.
Conclusion: there is still more to learn. Fortunately I have found a doctor who is a big fan of running tests and already we are starting to get results, but there is still so much that is unknown. In the meantime, I still suffer from constant headaches, muscle pain, inability to concentrate, severe memory loss, uncontrollable weight gain, emotional instability, severe fatigue, lack of stamina, radical insomnia, and on the days when that is all I consider it a pretty good day. I cannot lie, there is nothing about this which is fun. This is not the life I expected. This is not the life I want. But it is the life that, for the time being, I have been given, so I will try to make the best of it. I am going to stop hiding from it or pretending it isn't so bad. I am going to stare it down and, Lord willing, I will win. There is a time for everything. Perhaps there must be time for this. The hope I cling to now is that there will be a time after this when all this will be nothing more than an unpleasant memory.
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
-2 Corinthians 4:16-18
