Heal and Stay Healed with Kelly B Haney
The Heal and Stayed Healed with Kelly B Haney podcast is for anyone who is sick and tired of being sick and tired, particularly those with autoimmune disease or other chronic illness. It's for those who are ready to truly heal, and more importantly, truly STAY healed.
Through my training as a Certified Nutrition Coach, but mostly through insight gained from my personal experience with overcoming severe Ulcerative Colitis, I want to equip you to get better, stay better, and to become healthier than ever.
I've been able to stay completely autoimmune flare-free for well over a decade, and I believe that if I can do it, then you can too! Our bodies want to heal. They know how to heal. We just have to give them the support that they need.
I'm honored to walk alongside you as you take the next step in your own healing journey. Let's heal and stay healed together.
Heal and Stay Healed with Kelly B Haney
My Autoimmune Story: From Barely Surviving to Truly Thriving
At age 19 I was diagnosed with the chronic autoimmune disease, Ulcerative Colitis. In this episode, I tell the tale of living for over a decade with an unpredictable disease before facing a severe, life-threatening, monster flare-up in 2010. After months of fighting a losing battle with severe inflammation throughout my entire colon, the situation had become dire, and I was introduced to the world of powerful immunosuppressant medications. These life-saving medications brought initial success but also fear of long-term side effects where "the cure could be worse than the disease," and I knew there had to be a better way. Hear my struggle, my fraught journey to remission, and my decision to do whatever it takes to keep this disease at bay without being forever tethered to medications - instead, choosing to begin a journey of seeking out true and lasting healing, naturally.
Healing and staying healed is a continuous journey, one that I invite you to join me on. I believe that if I can heal from a terrible illness that almost took my life and go on to be healthier than ever, even as I get older, then I truly believe this is possible for you too. Your support means the world to me as I strive to be a beacon of hope for others navigating the complexities of chronic illness.
Website: www.kellybhaney.com
Email: info@kellybhaney.com
Instagram: @kellybhaney
Facebook: Kelly B Haney Wellness
Welcome to the Heal and Stay Healed podcast, where we talk about healing and, more importantly, staying healed from chronic disease and other ailments and issues. We'll cover all the crazy things about health and life the good, the bad, the ugly and the hilarious. My name is Kelly and I'm a survivor and overcomer of severe autoimmune disease, and I can't wait to share with you what I've learned so that you can heal and stay healed too. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show. Welcome to the first official episode of the Heal and Stay Healed with Kelly B Haney podcast.
Speaker 1:In this first episode, I want to share my own story of healing and staying healed from the chronic autoimmune irritable bowel disease ulcerative colitis, because, as I emphasized in the introductory episode, I truly believe I am not the exception when it comes to conquering a health issue that you are supposed to have to deal with for the rest of your life. I believe we have all been given the power to truly heal, even if we're really, really sick. My story is obviously something that's very personal to me, but my purpose in sharing it is to give hope and to help others believe that healing is possible. If I can do it, then you can too. So, with all that in mind, today I'm going to share about my diagnosis back in 1999, about the early years of what it was like living with a chronic disease in my 20s and having to deal with flares along the way. Then I'll cover my life-changing monster flare the flare of all flares, as I like to call it. That happened back in 2010. And then I'll go through my long recovery and how and why I made the decision to pursue natural healing, which was a decision that led me to healing and now, having stayed healed for over 12 and a half years and counting. Just a quick heads up I'm not one to mince words when it comes to the reality of dealing with autoimmune disease, which, in my case, happened to be a disease that can be downright mortifying as it deals with parts of the body we still don't like to talk openly about. I'm going to get just a little graphic, because I believe it's really important for you to hear how serious my disease was and, therefore, how significant my healing was. So, to begin this story, let's set the stage and go back to the glorious 90s. The year is 1999. A new millennium will soon be upon us.
Speaker 1:I'm just your typical 19-year-old college sophomore living a typical late 90s teenage life. I'm cruising around town with friends in my tinted out Chevy Cavalier. We've got TLC, an in-sync, blasting on the souped up base heavy car stereo. I'm headed to the movie theater to see the newly released Varsity Blues or Cruel Intentions. Or perhaps I'm headed to Blockbuster to pick up one of those new super cool high-tech DVDs. Then it's off to the good old American shopping mall for a new pair of flare leg khakis. Then I'll hit up the food court for some frozen yogurt from TCBY. I am indeed partying like it's 1999. Life is good, the future's so bright. I gotta wear oval-shaped shades Until suddenly, out of nowhere, enter Bloody Diarrhea and my totally radical teenage life was turned upside down.
Speaker 1:Oh hell, I miss the 90s so much. But I digress. So I was always a healthy kid by the standards of the day. Prior to this, I was always on the petite and thin side, never really sick, except for the typical childhood illnesses, and I was a healthy teenager. And it's important for me to mention that I was also your average American teenager in the 90s when it came to my diet and lifestyle, which involved a ton of fast food, soda, sweets and ultra processed foods which were still a relatively new thing at the time, but we'll talk a whole lot more about what diet has to do with it in the future.
Speaker 1:So there I was, living a great life and then these crazy things started happening. I had noticed an increase in bowel movements for a couple weeks, but I didn't think too much of it. But then things really got started one night After dinner at Mickey D's, ironically with a majorly toxic gas attack occurring in my gut which in the days to come, was followed by blood in my stool, which became frequent bloody bowel movements, which turned into bloody diarrhea, which turned into incessant bloody diarrhea that would not stop. After about a week of this, my mom was like you need to go to the doctor. So I went to a primary care physician who told me I had hemorrhoids and to take Pepto-Bismol for the quote unrelated diarrhea. That would clear up on its own Er it. Now I had pretty much zero understanding of the medical world, but I totally remember thinking none of that seems right. But I was young and I didn't yet know the first thing about advocating for myself. So I went home and continued to decline for another week as my symptoms persisted, until finally my mom decided she didn't care what the doctor said and took me to the ER, where I vividly remember the horrified look on some poor nurse's face when I handed him my quote stool sample, which was quite bloody.
Speaker 1:From there I was quickly admitted to the hospital where I met my first gastroenterologist, had my first colonoscopy and was given the diagnosis of some crazy thing. I'd never heard of an autoimmune disease with a weird name ulcerative colitis. That was somehow also called an inflammatory bowel disease. My young brain was spinning and that night, when my mom left at the end of visiting hours, I was left to ponder the news that I had a chronic, aka incurable, disease that could change my life as I knew it forever. That was a hard pill to swallow because at 19, I felt like my life was just getting started. And now? What would this mean for my future and my ability to live a normal rest of my life? No one could answer those questions for me, so it was a pretty scary time.
Speaker 1:After the diagnosis, I was put on a cocktail of steroids, antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory medication, and I improved fairly quickly thanks to the drugs. I was able to go home and finish the course of antibiotics and slowly taper off of the steroids, but I was told to remain on the high-dose anti-inflammatory drug as a maintenance slash preventative drug, and so it wasn't long before I was in remission for my first flare. Because the drugs were keeping things in check, I was able to mostly go back to my regular life. I had been a full-time student in community college and I did have to drop a couple courses since I had missed several weeks of classes, but I wasn't feeling too disbundant about that. Of course, going back to my regular life meant going back to regular habits and diet, something I still had not thought anything about myself or received any education or instruction on from any of my doctors, with the exception of being told to eat bland, low-fiber foods when I'm having a flare. But that was the extent of the nutrition education I had received.
Speaker 1:But, as I said, since the medication was doing its job, I naively thought okay, maybe this chronic disease thing won't be so bad and really won't mess with my life too much. Then in the months that followed, as is expected with a chronic autoimmune disease, a little flare would pop up here and there and I would call the doctor who would prescribe me what back then was the standard protocol of steroids and antibiotics, along with the anti-inflammatories that I was already regularly taking at a pretty high dose. Almost a year after my diagnosis, I was feeling pretty good and I switched from community college to a university and I moved away from home for the first time, and it wasn't long before I started having a significant flare, and that's when I woke up to the understanding that this disease really did have the ability to kind of ruin the concept of a normal life. What I've come to know since then is that life changes, even positive changes like going away to school, can be a disease-triggering thing for people with autoimmune issues. Upending my routine and the comfort of home, even for a good reason, had been enough to trigger the flare. I ended up having to leave school after only one semester and I moved back home to familiar territory. So I started working full-time and I found a regular routine and I was able to get back into remission again, thankfully Continuing on the maintenance anti-inflammatories. I did pretty well for a couple years, and then I was confident enough to try stopping the anti-inflammatories which, by the way, even with health insurance, were crazy expensive and, wouldn't you know it, a flare began. So this was the experience that awakened me to the understanding that seemingly I would have to always be dependent on medications for this disease. Even then I didn't love that idea, but I did what I had to do and I went back on the anti-inflammatories and the usual additional medications and I got back to remission. Also, by this time I had gotten to a point that will be familiar to anyone with autoimmune disease. Even when you're in remission, the threat of a flare is always there, looming in the back of your mind, and it becomes a real fear, and that fear can really steal a lot of the joy of life.
Speaker 1:Not long after that, I got married in my almost mid-twenties yes, I know that was really young to get married, but I did. And with another big life change, unsurprisingly, came yet another flare. This time the steroids only partially helped and this flare lingered on and on and became the most troublesome and concerning one that I'd had since my original disease onset. I didn't have to be hospitalized, but it was very disruptive to my day-to-day life. Besides bleeding with bowel movements, another common ulcerative colitis symptom is bowel urgency, which is that I gotta go, and I gotta go right now.
Speaker 1:Feeling, and in this flare, the extreme importance of always knowing where the closest available bathroom was became ingrained in me. I remember every morning trying to leave for work and having to rush back home to the bathroom and then trying to leave again and praying that I would make it into work and then likely again having to rush into the bathroom as soon as I got to work. Then I remember coming home after work feeling exhausted, with no energy and being a bit depressed about it all. Not what you want in your 20s and especially not what you want as a newlywed. So after dealing with this flare for quite a while, I followed the advice of my gastroenterologist at the time and I leveled up by starting on an oral immunosuppressant drug. Immunosuppressants are exactly what they sound like they suppress the immune system. They are a bigger, badder form of medication used to treat autoimmune diseases and some cancers as well. They have a lot of seriously scary side effects. But I trusted my doctor and I didn't think too much about that, and it quickly put me back into complete remission.
Speaker 1:About a year later I decided I wanted to consider pregnancy and I knew that I couldn't do that while on this big bad drug. So I decided to wean myself off of the immunosuppressant and I stopped taking birth control, and then I immediately got pregnant. Thankfully, I had learned a little bit about nutrition by this point and, in addition to being a little more mindful about what I was eating, I had switched to eating a bunch of organic foods. My diet was still far from perfect, but it wasn't terrible and I really believed that helped me to have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby, who is now a teenager. I was very grateful to have made it through pregnancy without a flare. That was a huge win.
Speaker 1:Little did I know what was coming, however, because what I was about to learn was that, when it comes to ulcerative colitis, I hadn't seen nothing yet. I was about to learn what the full potential of this brutal disease could be. All of the life disruptions, annoyances, frustrations and embarrassments of all of my prior mild to moderate flares would absolutely pale in comparison to what I was about to go through, which was an extremely severe flare of ulcerative colitis. An interesting side note before I get into all that Just a few months after giving birth, I had my regular colonoscopy done. After my initial flare, my gastroenterologist wanted me to come in every three to five years or so just to check things out in there. So I had that done not very long before everything started, and that colonoscopy was close to perfect. It showed a little bit of old colitis from past flares, but no active disease. Things were looking really good. How quickly that would all change.
Speaker 1:It started 13 months after I gave birth. I had stopped nursing a few months prior, triggering a normal post-breastfeeding shift in hormones. What I've learned since then is that for women with autoimmune disease, any shift in hormones, such as stopping breastfeeding, can trigger a flare, and so the mother of all flares began. It started with my usual symptoms blood in the stool, bloody diarrhea, turned to living in the bathroom with straight blood coming out. Only this quickly got to a level I had never reached before.
Speaker 1:The regular medications did nothing, and I soon got to the point where I had to be hospitalized. I was actually hospitalized three times in the winter of 2010. Each time I would arrive in terrible shape and would be pumped full of IV steroids which would get me somewhat stable, but then I'd be released prematurely and sent home on oral steroids which were not working and I'd start crashing again. Then I'd go back to the ER, then be readmitted soon after. As the days went by, things were getting scary. I'll share just a few highlights or maybe low lights from my hospital stays. During one of them, I was actually put in the cardiac intensive care unit because I was so dehydrated that my heart rate was frighteningly high and so I had to wear a heart monitor. And I remember laying there in bed soon after being admitted to the cardiac ICU and of course I had to get up quickly to go into the bathroom and a nurse came running in to check on me Because apparently on the monitors out by the nurses station alarms were going off when my heart rate had shot up as I got up to dash into the bathroom.
Speaker 1:Embarrassing, during one of my times in the ER, they wanted to give me a CT scan to get a better look at everything that was happening in my gut, and I was so sick at this point that I could not swallow the contrast solution required to do the CT scan. There was just no way that was going to happen. So the ER nurse, who happened to be someone I had gone to high school with, had to put an NG tube down my throat to pour the contrast solution into my stomach, and then the nurse had been directed to keep the tube in my throat for hours afterwards until I basically begged to have it taken out. It was the most uncomfortable thing I've ever experienced, I have to say. I have given birth. I actually had a C-section, and that NG tube experience was worse.
Speaker 1:Another time I was admitted the hospital was full. There were no beds on the general floor. This was during the H1N1 virus, so there were a lot of people admitted for that. So they stuck me in the pediatric unit, which at that point I was thin enough to kind of look like a prepubescent kid anyway. So it kind of made sense. But one ha ha moment from my stay in the pediatric unit that I remember my mom was visiting me and we were walking up and down the hallway just so I could move a little bit and someone had brought in a couple therapy dogs, these lovely golden retrievers, and they were going around visiting all of the children and they brought the dogs over to me, since it looked like I was just another pediatric patient there with my mom and I was like, oh, I'm actually 29 years old. So in my embarrassment I declined any interaction. And then immediately afterwards I remember deeply regretting not petting those sweet doggos, and during another stay I had a very feisty yet spry elderly woman as a roommate and one night she tried to escape in the middle of the night but was caught by a nurse. So that whole scene was actually a small moment of amusement for me during a very dark time.
Speaker 1:At one point I was weighed and the scale said 84 pounds. My regular weight at this point was about 110 pounds, which was pretty thin to begin with, but, as you can imagine, 84 pounds. I was basically skin and bones and I'm pretty sure my weight got even lower after that. So if I had to guess, it would have ended up somewhere in the high, maybe even mid-70s. So I was wasting away and I couldn't even bear to look at myself in the mirror. It was just horrifying.
Speaker 1:I was given a colonoscopy in the hospital and now, just a few months after having the colonoscopy done, with the great report. This report was that my entire colon was severely inflamed and it was so bad that the doctor physically couldn't get the scope past a certain point because there was so much inflammation. So after the colonoscopy, the doctors were really aware that this was serious, but the medications that were supposed to be getting a handle on things continued to just not work Around. This time, a surgeon started coming by on a daily basis, making small talk and gradually bringing up the idea of removing my whole colon. Now this was one of those blessing in disguise moments that I was actually too sick to safely undergo the surgery that would have removed my whole colon. At the weight that I was at and the level of malnutrition my poor beat-up body had gotten to, it would have been a real risk because I may not have been able to survive the surgery. So quick spoiler alert I still have my colon, but I was literally wasting away and my family was preparing for the possibility that I might die, with the meds not working and surgery not being a good option.
Speaker 1:The doctors then decided to start me on a powerful intravenous immunosuppressant drug, and I'm honestly not sure why they had waited so long to start me on this drug, but I think it was because they thought the massive doses of steroids that I was on would work as they were supposed to and as they had in the past. And one thing about immunosuppressants is that they usually take a while to start working. So the steroids are what is supposed to actually calm down the flares in the meantime, and then, if the steroids fail, they turn to surgery. But since surgery wasn't a good option for me and they were running out of ideas, they decided to start the immunosuppressant drug at that point and just hope for the best. Now, by then I had done my own research on immunosuppressant drugs, and so I knew how serious the side effects and potential ramifications of purposefully shutting down your immune system are.
Speaker 1:But I had no other choice. I had a 14 month old baby girl who I had hardly been able to see for weeks. I needed to live, I needed to somehow get out of that hospital, I needed to get home and I needed to get my life back. So that night they started the infusion, and it was a surprise to all that the drug actually started working quickly, I think in tandem with the high doses of steroids. My body just started responding and there finally started to be some sort of an effect on the inflammation, and after about another week it got me to a state where I was able to go home without immediately crashing again.
Speaker 1:But I was still in really terrible shape for a long time. For the next six weeks or so, I was mostly confined to bed at home and I had to rely 100% on my husband and my mom to care for me. I was home, but I still wasn't able to be much of a mom to my baby girl, and that was the worst part of the entire thing. Anything I went through physically didn't compare to not being able to be there to care for my baby. That was worse than everything combined, and that's really saying something, because, as open as I am about my experience, there are some things that this disease did to me during that period of time that I'm honestly not sure I'll ever want to share. They were so awful and just so embarrassing.
Speaker 1:But again, what broke my heart was not being able to take care of my child, especially since I had no idea if I'd ever be able to fully recover. And even if I did, I had no idea how long that would take, and then how long would it be before something like this happened again. After all, it was a chronic disease. So what it was like during those days and nights at home was that after a while the days would actually be okay I could go a few hours in between bathroom trips and therefore wouldn't be losing as much blood. But then in the evenings. Things would get worse again every night and I would repeatedly have to get up and dash into the bathroom all night long. And it's interesting in talking to other people with ulcerative colitis since then. This is actually a common thing during a bad flare, with things getting much worse at night. It's something of a nocturnal phenomenon which is just torturous.
Speaker 1:When I was actually able to fall asleep for a little bit, I remember many times waking up completely drenched in steroid night sweats as my body was desperately trying to deep detox the highly toxic load it had been bombarded with by the medications along with everything else. I was still chronically dehydrated, as I remember, even just taking too big of a sip of water would send me rushing back to the bathroom. These were the absolute hardest nights of my life. It just felt like this was never going to end, and that was it. This was my life. But I also remember feeling deeply connected spiritually during those long, terrible, lonely nights, because it's like nothing brings you to your knees or makes you more aware of your mortality and your need for a higher power than complete and total helplessness and desperation. And that's the place that I was in.
Speaker 1:As the weeks went by that spring, I continued on all the medications and things slowly started to get a little better. I had a little less overall bleeding, my stool began to be a little more formed and less frequent. I was able to eat more and drink more. Thank God, I could make it through the day without wanting to collapse in exhaustion. I could sleep for long periods of time during the night, which was awesome, and, best of all, I could start to take care of my daughter again. Now I was still sick, but I was able to function again and this felt like a massive gift In the back of my mind, though I knew I was still on unstable ground.
Speaker 1:I was still getting the immunosuppressant infusions, even though they really scared me, and I hated everything about the infusion experience itself as well, especially the fact that I had to return to the hospital to get them as an outpatient. But I think it's understandable that walking through the doors of that building was like walking right back into my trauma-filled nightmare come true. Also, during the infusions, despite being given a preemptive vene drill each time, I would feel an uncomfortable physical reaction, and I started to notice during each infusion that mild allergic reaction was increasing, and that was concerning, but it was not concerning enough to stop the infusions. But then the infusions seemed to be working less and less. I had remained stable, but I certainly was not in remission and I had hit a plateau. And this is the trick with these immunosuppressant drugs Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they work for a while and then they stop working, and then it's a game of trying different ones, different doses, different frequencies. But despite increasing the dose and the frequency, I couldn't break through that plateau. While I wasn't getting noticeably worse, I wasn't making progress either, and I couldn't reduce the amount of steroids I was taking.
Speaker 1:The infusions took such a mental toll on me and I was so frustrated that they weren't getting me where I needed to be that at the end of that summer in 2010, I told my doctor that I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't take another infusion experience. So he said, okay, let's try this other immunosuppressant, and this one was an injectable instead of an infusion. So I thought well, that still sounds absolutely horrible, but it does sound a whole lot better than having to go into the hospital and get the infusions. So I went into the doctor's office for the first injection so that they could show me how to inject it into my abdomen myself. And it was interesting because that funny little allergic reaction feeling that I'd been having with the infusions was tenfold. About an hour after I injected the drug, I started to feel like I couldn't breathe. And so where did I end up anyway? Back in the hospital. I had to go back to the ER to make sure I wasn't having an anaphylactic reaction to the injected drug. Now, this was another one of those blessings in disguise moments, even though it didn't seem like that at first. But that was the welcomed end to my infusion and injection days.
Speaker 1:I will say that for a couple months after that injection I was doing pretty well, probably because the drug was working pretty well, but clearly I wasn't going to take a chance on injecting myself with more of it. So when my doctor said, okay, let's try another immunosuppressant, I said no. I just said no, no more. And he politely told me that I was crazy. But I just couldn't do any more injecting, infusing any of that of these big bad drugs which were effective. But I knew, having read over that list of short-term and especially long-term side effects again and again, that they came at a cost and I just had a feeling call it a gut feeling that if I stayed on these drugs, they would indeed end up costing me. And I was now only 30 years old and I did not want to be taking these drugs indefinitely or for the rest of my life and risk putting myself in a situation where the cure is worse than the disease.
Speaker 1:But my body, unfortunately, was not yet ready to line up with my heart and my mind at this point, and when the injected drug wore off, my symptoms came back, and they came back with a vengeance. I was just broken at this point. I had been dealing with this flare for over eight months, and so I just ignored all of the symptoms as they started raging again. I just kept praying, begging for a miracle. I desperately kept trying to live my life as normal as possible with my family, because the thought of having to go back into the hospital again seriously made me wonder if death would be preferable. So, as crazy as it sounds, I just kept ignoring things until I couldn't ignore them anymore. I was so sick again, I was crashing hard and finally, one morning, soon after that Thanksgiving, I tried to get a shower and I passed out Because my body was so weak and frail that I couldn't take the strain of the water hitting my skin. So after that I knew I had to go back to the hospital because I had to live for my little girl. So over nine months after my flare had begun, I went back to the ER, of course, was immediately hospitalized again for the fourth time that year I had to endure additional traumatic experiences there, in addition to the fact that, because I'd let things go for so long, it had gotten so bad that I needed two emergency blood transfusions right away.
Speaker 1:But in this fourth hospital stay of 2010, this time things were different. The steroids that had done practically nothing for me in prior hospitalizations now started working almost immediately, and as the steroids kicked in, I stopped fighting it and I started taking another immunosuppressant Ironically the same oral one that I had been on briefly before pregnancy. That was supposed to be a less powerful one, and I quickly started to improve. I was still in the hospital for another week or so, I remember I was still in the hospital for my daughter's second birthday, which was really sad for me, especially after missing so much of her life that year. But a couple days later I was released and sent home. Everything about this fourth hospital stay had been such a different experience, and after I was released, my husband picked me up and as we were driving home, I remember being filled with a sense of hope and a wonderful feeling of peace that I had not felt in a long, long time. So I was home for real this time, and the drugs got me where I needed to be and within just a couple months I had a lot of my life back for real this time, and I was able to taper down off the steroids.
Speaker 1:Finally, but I was to remain on the immunosuppressant, of which I could never shake the feeling of knowing that it came at a cost, and I remember my doctor saying again and again you've got to stay on these and, to put it mildly, I grew less and less comfortable with that idea by the day. But given my history and my doctor's insistence, I felt pretty stuck in that situation. Yet, sure enough, less than a year later, there were indeed some scary side effects as a result of the immunosuppressant. I had some tests done that showed that not having an immune system was definitely affecting me in a bad way. For as much as the immunosuppressant had helped me, it was also causing some serious damage and if I had continued to take it, it was pretty clear that the cure would have indeed become worse than the disease.
Speaker 1:So that gut feeling that I had had, with all of my fears and hesitations all along, all the concerns I had about taking these drugs, turned out to not be unfounded and my doctor agreed that I needed to take the risk and try coming off of them. This was yet another one of these blessing in disguise moments, because I can't think of any other possible scenario where I would be able to come off of the immunosuppressants with my doctor's blessing. Up until that point, I had only ever envisioned if I ever was brave enough to try coming off of them, it would be at my own risk and completely against medical advice, because in any other situation liability would prompt any doctor to say no, no, no, no, no, you've got to stay on these forever. And I remember, during this conversation where my doctor agreed that I needed to come off of them entirely. I remember him kind of looking at me in a certain way and I could feel him thinking well, now it's only a matter of time and this poor young woman is going to be back in a real tough spot.
Speaker 1:But my attitude from that moment on was that I was going to get off these drugs and I was going to stay in remission. Now I want to say these drugs saved my life. I will forever be grateful for them. But so, help me, I was not going to let them own me and at this point I certainly was not going to be too afraid to let them go, even though any rational person would look at my situation and what had happened the last time I stopped the immunosuppressants and would say to me you should be terrified, but I wasn't afraid at all. What I was was determined. I decided I'm going to come off this drug and I'm not going to get sick again. That's not going to work for me. Having to go back on a drug where the cure could definitely be worse than the disease. That's not an option for me.
Speaker 1:So that was the day that my health journey began, because that was the day that I said to myself I will do whatever it takes, whatever it takes, to stay off of these drugs and not ever, ever, ever find myself helpless against this disease again. With my whole being, I was determined to do whatever I could do not to let that happen. I went from feeling like a victim to feeling like a warrior, and that mindset shift made all the difference. So I knew that that meant that it was going to be all up to me to figure some stuff out, and I knew that it wasn't just going to be that mindset and attitude shift. It had to be action, serious action on my part, and I was all in. So step one of this new journey was the mindset shift from victim to warrior.
Speaker 1:Step two was educating myself. I went home and I started to read everything I could get my hands on about healing natural healing through diet, nutrition and lifestyle and this was late 2011. There really wasn't a whole lot out there at the time on these topics, which is wild because this was less than 15 years ago, but the internet was very different. Then I was able to find some information, but it's not like now, where it's just a bombardment and an overabundance of information and a lot of it is conflicting and confusing. But what was out there specific to natural approaches for autoimmune disease?
Speaker 1:I found, and I consumed it and thus began my passion, slash, obsession for learning how we are meant to eat and how we are meant to live, how food can truly make us or break us, especially when we have not so great genetics working against us, and how we each have far more control over our own health than we know. Hippocrates said it a long time ago let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food. And wow, did I realize real fast the truth behind that? I had the ultimate motivation to do whatever it took, and so, since late 2011, I have been firmly committed to learning and applying what I've learned to my life in order to heal and then to stay healed. There was a lot of trial and error. It sure wasn't easy, especially in the beginning, but I stayed committed, and then months and then years went by and I remained in full remission, medication free, and I have stayed completely free of any flare of the disease that had plagued me for over a decade before almost finishing me off. And as long as I stay on this path, I have every reason to keep hoping and believing that that will continue to be the case.
Speaker 1:To heal and to stay healed naturally requires a lot. This is a fact that I'm never going to try to hide or gloss over. It, of course, involves our diets and the things that we choose to put into our bodies, but it requires a lot more than that. What it requires is us returning to the beautiful natural ways by which we are meant to live, things that we of a society have long abandoned in the name of progress and convenience. What I have learned is that true healing, in addition to proper nutrition and nourishment, requires things like rest, movement, trust and fun. Yes, it definitely requires having fun. It requires tending to our emotional health just as much, or even more, than our physical health. It requires a search for meaning and an endless desire for personal growth. It requires simplifying our lives and living in what may seem and sound like a highly countercultural way. It requires a lot, but what I have found is that this different kind of life that I have learned to live threat of disease, or no threat of disease. I wouldn't want to live any other kind of life, any other kind of way. This new way of living has brought my physical health back to me, yes, but all the more has it brought me contentment, gratitude, purpose and peace. The journey has not been all sunshine and roses, and my life is still far from perfect, of course, but I count myself so incredibly fortunate to have the great privilege of still being here to walk this path of learning and growing, and I will never take for granted each and every new day that I wake up healthy. And I still get a little emotional saying that.
Speaker 1:Throughout this story, I've noted the numerous blessings and disguise that I was given along the way, but perhaps the biggest blessing and disguise of all started back at 19 when I was diagnosed, continued throughout my 20s through all the flares and the trials and the ups and downs, continued through my flare of all flares in 2010,. Then through my long recovery that led me to the path of natural healing. Perhaps my entire autoimmune disease experience is the biggest blessing and disguise of all, as now, many years later, I can see it clearly. I had to go through all of it. I had to go through every horrible moment of this disease, especially everything that happened in 2010. I had to go through it all in order to be able to experience the miracle of healing and then the miracle of staying healed and in order to be able to walk a path that led me to a better way to live. And, most importantly, I had to go through all of it in order to do what I'm doing now, to be in a position where I can say I am walking, talking, living proof that healing is possible, living a disease-free life and in many cases, doing that medication-free can also be possible, no matter how sick you are. I am living proof and that, for so many reasons, is truly one of my greatest blessings.
Speaker 1:I've learned a whole lot in the years since my last flare-up, and one thing I've come to know is that if I can heal from a terrible illness that almost took my life and go on to be healthier than ever, even as I get older, then I truly believe this is possible for you too. Now. We can never guarantee that we won't be affected by an illness or a disease, but what we can do is everything that is in our power to prevent that from happening, and by seeking natural healing and health, I can assure you we have been given a whole lot of power. Our bodies want to heal. They know how to heal. We just have to give them the support that they need.
Speaker 1:In the next episode, I'm going to start diving in a little more to what this lifestyle of healing and staying healed looks like. Thank you for listening today. I hope you've gotten something out of my story. I hope that you've been encouraged by it and if there's someone you know who may be encouraged by it as well, please share it. And if you would be so kind, I'd be very appreciative if you could support my ability to produce this podcast by subscribing, reviewing, downloading and sharing it. And if it doesn't feel like it right now, there is hope. I am honored to walk alongside of you as we heal and stay healed together.