A (as brief as possible) Timeline of my Journey

An Anxious Kid

When I was really young I was very very painfully shy. I stressed about absolutely everything and lost sleep worrying about having to go places.  If we were somewhere I didn’t know people then I was absolutely silent.  There were times I was so scared to go somewhere I’d end up being sick worrying about it.  I recognize now that this was anxiety but at the time, no one would have known that.

I was also always very self-conscious because while my younger sister was very thin and had straight hair I was always chubby and had curly frizzy hair.  (The grass is always greener!)  While my parents tried to feed us healthfully, what the vast majority of the western world considered a “healthy diet” for most of my life, has been not exactly great.  My mom worked and went to night school and we ate a lot of frozen packaged meals and boiled vegetables and I hated water.

Mental Health and Eating Disorders

By the time I was 13 I was a wreck.  I was starving myself to lose weight or making myself sick, I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t sleep, I was anxious about everything and it finally got to the point where I just isolated myself from my friends and did everything I could to stay in my room.  I went to doctors and we tried medication and nothing was helping; eventually I was pulled out of school.  I finished Grade 10 via my teachers sending homework home and me doing the minimum I had to.  I didn’t go out to see anyone but sometimes would just leave on a walk for hours without saying anything at all while my parents panicked.  I cut myself a few times and considered taking my life with pills.  My mom had me into a psychiatrist and we went regularly, this meant she had to take extended lunches from work to accommodate the appointments that, by the time you factored in the commute there and back, waiting (often for hours) and the appointment, sometimes took an entire afternoon; while she also had a pretty demanding full-time job.
The psychiatrist tried a couple medications, one seemed to help but it also gave me tremors so I was given an anti-parkinson drug with it, and then I still wasn’t sleeping so I was given something for that too, for panic attacks I took something else only when needed (which was often every single day.)

A New Diagnosis

After a couple years of trying to find a balance it came to light that I was hallucinating and probably had been for a while.  I couldn’t differentiate between the hallucination and reality so who’s to say when it started.  At this point my psychiatrist diagnosed me with schizophrenia and at the same time sent me for a second opinion.  The second opinion was with a couple doctors and my parents and I.  They asked me lots of questions and I answered them and did some more brain scans and in the end they agreed that I had schizophrenia.
By 16 years old I was told that I probably would never live on my own or be able to work full-time; basically stripping me of any real hope at all.

Discovering Stigma

The antipsychotic medication I was given once diagnosed with schizophrenia did help me though.  It started to give me more ability to function and I started trying to return to the world a bit. A year after starting it I made some new friends and started to want to be a part of social groups in a real way.  It was at that point that I discovered stigma.  I started feeling like I wasn’t normal because no one else had to take 5 different medications just to function – and me telling people I had schizophrenia pretty much just freaked them out.  So I stopped telling people…and then both because I wanted to be normal, and also because I knew that those medications made me carry 10 or 15 extra stubborn pounds, I started weaning off my medication (unbeknownst to my parents or doctors.)

What followed was of course an emotional roller coaster that I would not recommend to anyone BUT without all the medications the hallucinations did not return.  The doctors were very reluctant to just change my diagnosis but eventually it was clear that I was not schizophrenic, so my diagnosis was changed to a “depressive psychosis”.  Basically, all of the medication changing the levels of chemicals and hormones in my brain had gotten them so out of whack that it resulted in me seeing and hearing things that weren’t there.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I had needed some sort of medication, and have needed it periodically throughout my life since then, I do not in any way shun medical science now because of this.  It was obviously a very unfortunate situation but what was the alternative? I wasn’t functioning without medication; I was hurting myself, I couldn’t be left alone, I wanted to die…I was not living a life.  They had to try it and no one could know what that outcome would be. Maybe I could be bitter and think someone dropped the ball but I choose not to for my own sanity.

New Problems

As we started to piece a life for me together (we as in my parents too because they were in it with me the whole time) it was clear that “normal” was not going to happen for me.  I didn’t do well trying to go back to high school.  I was still anxious and had panic attacks.  I still didn’t sleep well at all.  And I didn’t relate to a lot of people my age.  I felt like an outsider so at 18 I decided to get my diploma through distance education instead and took a full-time job that I could commute with my mom to.  I never did finish high school though.  I’ve thought several times about going to get my GED (even bought the study book a year or two ago!) but it’s never been enough of a priority over a zillion other things I’ve wanted to do.

18 was also when I started having reproductive issues.  Extremely painful periods.  Absent periods and then excessively heavy ones that lasted two weeks. Irrational mood swings.  Acne. They started removing polyps and I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).  I developed fibroids and precancerous cells on my cervix. When I was interested in sex it was often painful.  I still battled with my weight constantly.  One doctor told me to not take the pill because if I ever wanted to have children it might limit my window of opportunity to get pregnant (I now know that is a terrible idea).  I had laparoscopic surgery, laser surgery, ovarian drilling, drainage tubes.  Nothing helped.  Every couple months I’d be hit with agony and be bed ridden, throwing up and barely wanting to move for anywhere from 2 – 10 days…all they could seem to offer me was painkillers that made me sick and more uncomfortable procedures that had their own set of complications.  So I’d wait it out and then I’d be ok again (though a hormonal mess) and do my best to carry on until the next time.  It made it pretty hard to hold a job, or know what kind of job I should even do that I could manage with this situation.

An Oophorectomy (and a lot of drinking)

When I was 24 I started having major cramps that I assumed were more of the same.  Not so bad I couldn’t function but enough that I was wincing or doubled over periodically.  They came and went for a week until one night, in the car with a guy I was dating at the time on the way home from a family function, I suddenly knew I had to go to the hospital.  That visit ended with me on bedrest with a percocet prescription for the next few weeks waiting for answers.  This time I had to take the percocet because the pain was unbearable without it but I couldn’t eat while taking it, I just couldn’t make myself swallow.  As a result, I lost 25 lbs in 3 weeks.  Finally I got an MRI and an appointment with a doctor, and had emergency surgery to remove my ovary and fallopian tube.  A cyst had grown so large that it had wrapped around the fallopian tube and had killed the tissue.  This doctor was flabbergasted that I was diagnosed with PCOS but was not on birth control.
This was a very low point.  I went through a rough breakup while waiting for surgery. I was stuck on bedrest and I came out of surgery at 115 lbs – the least I’d weighed since I was probably 10 years old – including when I was making myself sick.  I was ecstatic about my new body and tried for a time to stay at that weight – unfortunately as soon as I was up and about again I began to medicate my sorrows over the breakup, my new c-section scar, the fact that it was very clear I was unlikely able to have children and that I really had no clue what to do with my life with alcohol and spent the majority of the next year partying like I never had before.

Trying Everything

The doctor who did my surgery was my doctor after that for years.  He tried everything.  We did medications that “reset” my system (put me temporarily into menopause), different birth control, and more procedures, but it was always the same…2-3 months apart I would have another rupture or need have cells lasered or or or…Eventually he was able to diagnose me with adenomyosis which is when the tissue that normally lines the uterus grows into the muscular wall of the uterus. This maybe wouldn’t be so bad if the tissue didn’t still try to do exactly what it normally does — thickening, breaking down and bleeding — which often results in an enlarged uterus and painful, heavy periods. It also means it’s pretty unlikely that you would be able to remain pregnant as the egg needs the uterus lining.  So I was now with one dysfunctional ovary and a uterus that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to.

The Devil You Know

When I was 29, finally going to college and planning my wedding, the doctor finally said that maybe we should just do a hysterectomy (something I’d begged for FOR YEARS).  But I realized that in that moment that at least I KNEW what to expect from this situation, menopause could have its own set of challenges I DIDN’T know how to manage…and who wants to spend their first year of marriage in menopause when they’re less than 30?!  So I said the time wasn’t right and we could talk about it down the road again.

We did another (stronger) round of the menopause medication which made me gain 25 lbs in a month.  After that I wasn’t able to lose any weight at all for years.  No matter what program I tried it was like I was stuck and while the medication did help the cysts for a year, once it “wore off” things returned to normal.  Quarterly or more I was on the couch in agony feeling like any progress I’d made was slipping away.

Everything I Thought I Knew About Nutrition Was Wrong

In my early 30’s I finally had a job I loved.  I was the Executive Assistant at an addiction and mental health facility.  I got to provide a therapy dog.  I got to use my organizational skills to support a really worthwhile cause.  I actually felt like I almost had my life together…except that I was still plagued by the cysts and felt like my employer was losing sympathy for me because I missed so much time.  I made up most of the time I missed working like crazy when I was back and I was on my cell phone doing what I could constantly when I was off.  But people tend to lose interest if you aren’t where they need you to be when they need you to be there, no matter what the reason.  I felt fed up and like I’d tried everything.  And it dawned on me that I just followed basic nutrition advice but maybe there is something else I could be doing.  I delved into the world of nutrition and saw a naturopath and after a month of preparing and planning did an elimination diet and moved to a predominantly plant based diet.

After feeling rotten for the first week, the second week I started to feel great for the first time possibly ever. And when I say great I mean seriously great!  I lost 20 lbs in 10 weeks barely trying.  I started exercising because I wanted to.  People noted that I had a glow and seemed so energetic.

At the end of that period we were going on a family trip to Jamaica for 2 weeks.  Something that had been planned for years.  I went.  I had fun, I didn’t restrict because I knew it would be a recipe for disaster. I didn’t feel too terrible coming back…but I never FULLY got back on the wagon with my goals.  I had a brutal commute and a demanding job but I was probably 60% better than I had ever been before and it paid off! That year I had half the number of cyst issues than I had in previous years and I trained for and ran my first half-marathon.

Trouble in Paradise

Of course no journey is without its setbacks and while training for the half marathon I got injured.  I ran the race injured and afterwards what I hoped would be a short break to recover took more than a year.  Never having been athletic I had no idea about the mental impact of injury in sport and I took this pretty hard…I finally started trying to do the thing you’re supposed to do and end up with an injury that sidelines me for more than a year?!  COME ON!!!!

That year I also started struggling at the job I’d once loved – the commute, a changing culture, feeling undervalued, all had me more anxious than I had been in years and my eating took a bad turn.  Then about 7 months after the race my specialists had some ideas for doing some tests that might explain my odd collection of issues and why they were just SO PERSISTENT.  In the end I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, and even though it didn’t change anything, I spiraled.  I started drinking too much and putting much less effort into eating until by the end of that year, I barely recognized myself.

One very bad day at work I opened an email from Groupon.  At the top was a deal for a gym right near my house that did bootcamp classes.  One of my sisters had gone a couple years before and loved it.  In an impulse moment I sent a message to my husband asking if he would do it with me and signed us both up.

A Whole New World

In an effort to not make this post any longer than necessary I will reserve the specifics of how joining this community changed my life for other posts. For now, suffice it to say that it was the key to pull everything else together and is now the gym that I work out of.