My Health Story

 Where to start?  Like most people with autoimmune disease or mental illness, looking back, my story began a long time ago, not just when my symptoms finally began controlling my life.  I'll try to distill this into something that isn't too windy and complicated!

I first began experiencing horrible anxiety the summer before my youngest child began kindergarten.  Out of nowhere I started having panic attacks and felt crushing anxiety in my chest almost constantly.  It was very scary and I didn't know or understand why it was happening.  Maybe I was feeling the pressure to get a job again, since I was going to have the time to do that, and our family really needed more income to stay afloat.  I never really liked having a job and working for other people.  I really preferred to stay home and do what I enjoyed.  So, maybe that's what triggered it.  At any rate, I tried to get help from my doctor, and they just wanted to put me on a medication.  I didn't want that, because I knew that anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication could become addictive and that they might not work anyway.  So I was on my own, maybe to start therapy of some kind.  Of course, I didn't do that either.  I decided to use diet to help me, because if diet could heal my sisters autoimmune disease, surely it could heal my anxiety?

I jumped into the Autoimmune Protocol, and very slowly over time I began to improve.  Although I will have to say I never followed it 100%.  I didn't do my research and I certainly could have done better.  But that doesn't matter now.  I was slowly improving and felt like I was getting my life back.  I stayed on this diet more or less until October 2017, when a food I ate triggered a horrendous migraine and subsequent panic attack from hell.  This was the start of my rock bottom.

Over then next few weeks I struggled to just survive the days.  I had near constant anxiety and jitteryness, had digestive issues to the extreme, was having a horrible time sleeping, struggled to eat and even interact with my own kids.  I felt like my world was crashing down around me.  I was sure I was dying somehow.  I lived like this for about 10 days and made an appointment with a naturopath to help me, because I knew a conventional doctor wouldn't listen to me and would just try to get me to take medication.  I could see that if I continued without getting help I could very well end up in a psych ward.  Maybe this sounds like an exaggeration, but I could clearly understand at that point how someone might actually voluntarily commit themselves, in an act of desperation to help themselves get their life back.  I felt so horrible, like my brain was rebelling against me.  It was the hardest time to get through.  When I was able to see this naturopath(who by the way, was the ONLY naturopath in my insurance network, and no, she was not conveniently located), she could easily see that I for some reason was stuck in fight or flight mode, and believed it was triggered by that food I ate, and that I needed to target my digestion and my vagus nerve to help calm things down.  In that appointment I felt validated and heard, and I knew she was the right person for me to see.

She sent me to get some blood work, and wanted to see me only one week later, since I was, in her words, "not doing very well, and there was some urgency to feeling better".  I was so happy!  I felt I was finally on the path to getting well.  Someone was going to help me get to the root of my issues, and not keep dismissing me as simply, "anxious".

At my next appointment she told me that my liver was not functioning properly, and could be why I was suffering. She also suspected some gut dysbiosis, and encouraged me to get tested for SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.  In the meantime she recommended some liver support supplements, which would also help with anxiety over the long-term.  She also suggested some short term things to try to help with my anxiety so I could sleep.  I did end up trying one, but it just gave me a four hour panic attack, so I never tried anything like that again.  I just don't do well with things that I can feel an actual physical change in my body after taking it, which is also why I just can't try cannabis.  Many people I know use cannabis to help them chill out and be calm, and it really helps with their anxiety, and the feeling of being high does not bother them.  But, it really bothers me, I just have a panic attack and think I'm dying!

Doesn't your bathroom counter look like this?  Covered in supplements and vitamins?

I got tested for SIBO through my gastroenterologist, and it came back positive.  So the next steps were to begin treatment for that, and to change up my diet to support the treatment.  After I began herbal treatment for SIBO(with my ND, not with my GI), I started having bloody mucus in my stools, and BMs that were only blood and mucus. (Cue record scratch).  I had to stop the SIBO treatment to see my GI, and the only option at that point was to get a colonoscopy to see what was going on.  Unfortunately I had to wait over a month to do this procedure, and had to live in misery while I waited.  No more SIBO treatment for now, but I could at least still focus on a healing diet, and do the AIP right this time.

Moar veggies!

In March 2018 I finally had my colonoscopy, and got my diagnosis of a form of ulcerative colitis called ulcerative proctitus.  This is colitis that is only in the rectum.  I was immediately prescribed a medication to treat it, which contains a whole other story about the high costs of healthcare.  The medication began helping immediately, and I haven't had any bleeding since starting it.  I took it for two months and am taking a break to see how my body does without it.  I may start it again if I need to, and with this medication that is totally okay.

At last I could begin treatment for the SIBO again, which I started in May 2018.  I waited that long after my UC diagnosis because I was beginning a new medication and I wanted to settle into it and be sure it was stable and working in my body before changing anything else.  I am still currently treating the SIBO, and have begun re-intros to my diet so I can start having a more varied diet and have an easier time with eating out and at events with family and friends.

So that's my health journey so far, and it is far from over.