Surrender is hard.
I’m learning to surrender more everyday. Some days it is easier than others. Most days, surrender is still difficult.
I am learning surrender is necessary for me to move towards the life I desire. The life I am meant to lead.
Surrender is taking me down a very unexpected road. For weeks now I have been praying, asking God to help me surrender. I wanted to surrender my need for perfection. My wanted to surrender my control over every detail and the need to know how I was going to get to where I am wanting to go. Surrender the overwhelm I had started to feel. I prayed for help in surrendering all of this and more to Him because I knew I could not let go on my own.
God answered. Not in the way I wanted or expected, but He answered.
For almost three years now, I have been in a battle against myself. Having an autoimmune disease means your body attacks itself (organs, tissue, joints, etc.) because your immune system sees something within you as a threat. Your immune system thinks it is helping you by destroying this “foreign invader” when in actuality you are attacking YOU. The plus there, I suppose, is that it means no matter what, I win. Silver linings people!
Two years ago, when I was properly diagnosed with Psoriatic Arthrits (PsA) I knew I did not want to be on the medications my Rheumatologist was wanting to put me on. I took home the literature, did a ton of research and decided there was no way I was taking that stuff. I did more research and learned about dietary and lifestyle changes I could make to heal myself and prevent further complications from PsA. I was determined to heal myself in the most natural and holistic way possible. (As a side note, I’d like to point out that I just typed Rheumatologist correctly and didn’t have to look it up. Thanks disease for teaching me a new word!)
I worked with a health coach, changed my diet and it changed my life! I got truly healthy for probably the first time in my adult life. I met with a nutritionist and learned about good supplements and herbs to take to continue healing my body naturally. I completed elimination diets and went Paleo and then AIP. I reincorporated the foods I had eschewed. I followed protocols. I did mindset work. I started reading books about nutrition. I read books for motivation and personal growth. For the first time ever I started listening to amazing podcasts in the same nutritional and or motivational/personal development generas. I felt great! I was learning. I was living a normal life again, albeit with a few differences than my life before PsA. But the differences were good. They were putting my on track for the new life I saw for myself.
While working with my health coach, a yearning was placed on my heart to help other women in similar situations as my own.
I knew I was meant to be a health coach too. I wasn’t sure how I would do this or when, but I knew one day I would serve others with autoimmune disease and help light a path for them to find heath and wellness in a holistic way.
Over the course of the last two years I have gotten healthier in so many ways. I have also continued to experience flares. A couple big ones and a few more minor ones.
Towards the end of last year, I began noticing that I was losing a lot of hair. For the ladies here who have had kids, it was like that dreaded postpartum period that hit 4ish months after delivery. At first I noticed extra hair in my brush. Then I noticed a lot coming out in the shower after I washed my hair. Throughout the day I would feel the unmistakable tickle of loose hair on my arm. It was happening every day. I felt like I was shedding. In reality, I was. For months I brushed it off. It’s just your hormones, I would tell myself. They’ll bounce back and everything will go back to normal. But it didn’t. My hair was thinning and on some days, coming out in clumps.
I’ve always had really fine, straight hair and I don’t have a ton of hair to start with. As the days passed and I saw how thin and lifeless my hair had become I wished I could go back to the days of where my only complaint was that it was fine and didn’t hold a curl well. I’m almost embarrassed that it was the vanity of losing my hair which prompted me to seek further help.
I sought the help from a Functional Medicine Doctor. I found one who practiced locally and she is great. She ran test that found out I had candida, a yeast infection of the intestinal system that reeks havoc. She tested me for mold toxicity, which came back positive for three types of mold borne toxins running free and ruining my system. My blood work showed I was headed towards Hypothyroidism and many of my other hormones were low. Individually, any of these things could be causing the flares and hair loss. Having multiple issues to contend with guaranteed problems. I was glad that I was beginning to get answers.
And then there is this. The very same day I had my first appointment with my Functional Medicine Doctor I started to flare that night. No testing of any sort was done during that appointment, just an evaluation of my medical history and deep dive into thing that may have lead to my autoimmune condition. The irony was not lost on me. I had already been managing a flare in my right foot (the second flare there so far) and now I was experiencing the first flare in my left.
As the results of my stool test (yup), blood labs and mold test, I was placed on numerous supplements and vitamins to balance my hormones and heal my gut. I was placed on additional supplements and medication to kill the mold and candida. And I did notice a difference. Within a few days, I had a lot more energy, the fatigue I had grown accustom to was gone and I felt more myself again.
But as time wore on, I was still loosing my hair and I knew not everything was being addressed. More recently, new things started popping up to. My hip would ache for weeks at a time and then go away. One of my finger joints got slightly swollen and achy for no reason. In my gut I knew it was related to my PsA.
I started eliminating certain foods again. Then, in the last two weeks, my flares blew up. I notice some pain in my left foot joint and a day later my eye flared with uveitis. I immediately began my uveitis treatment, which is steroid eye drops. The inflammation went down, but never fully subsided as had always worked before. It just lingered. Some days the inflammation slightly worsened and others it looks again as if it were dissipating. It never went completely away though. This prompted me to see a Holistic Doctor.
She was able to confirm the candida was still present, that my hormones were flat lined, I had intolerance to gluten (which I eliminated in April 2018), dairy (mostly eliminated in April 2018, with a few exceptions) and sugar (no elimination of it. I have a huge sweet tooth!), my gut health was a wreck, I was dealing with heavy metal and chemical toxins and I had parasites…. ewwwww.
The Functional Medicine and Holistic routes are the slow game.
There is a lot of testing to see what is going on and then you apply the results of those tests to a healing protocol. I knew I would not be healed immediately and I was okay with that. My goal is and has always been to find and treat the root cause of my illness, not band-aid the symptoms. I seek real and whole health.
The day after meeting with my Holistic Doctor, my eye got worse. I came home from work after noticing the tiniest of haze to my vision. When I looked in the mirror I saw a small, but unmistakable cloudy spot on the lower part of my left iris. Oh shit. I. Was. Terrified. This was something new. I knew my situation had progressed and was more serious.
October 2, 2019. Inflammation in left eye.
Top image: October 4, 2019: Inflammation in left eye- lingering after treatment.
Bottom image: August 29, 2017: Inflammation in right eye. Responded to treatment. Several months prior to PsA diagnosis.
Uveitis cells attaching to my cornea and causing a cloudy spot to form on my eye.
The amazing women at my eye specialist’s office were able to squeeze me in for an appointment for the following day.
I tried to remain calm and joked around with the medical technicians and even the doctor, but I was falling apart inside. He told me that it was my uveitis not the cataracts or worse that Dr. Google had purported. Basically, because of so much inflammation in my eye, the cells were attaching to my cornea. Uveitis, if not treated, can cause changes in eye sight and potentially cause blindness. This was serious. I knew I needed to get the inflammation under control, and fast.
I’ve only been on my new eye treatment for a day and a half, but I have seen vast improvement. I’m doing two new eye drops and I’m back on Prednisone. Prednisone is a medication that helped me a lot in the past. I’m on a much increase dosage now. Prednisone isn’t a medication I can stay on long term. The side effects are concerning and I know it will cause additional issues with my gut health, but I need to do something different from what I have been doing to see a change and get well. Getting this inflammation gone from my eye is priority one because there could be irreversible consequences if I don’t.
I am not sure where the coming week or months will lead. I need to inform my Rheumatologist of what is happening. I’m fairly certain of what her recommendation will be; starting methotrexate and Humira. I need to get with my Functional Medicine and Holistic doctors to see if I can continue with the supplements they have each prescribed. My goal was always to stay off of the, what I call, harsh and scary medication. I am facing a reality where I may need to add them to my treatment plan.
While I have been extremely sad, frustrated and fearful of everything transpiring I also know this is my body’s very loud and very clear way of telling my something is wrong. Based on the testing I’ve done through the functional and holistic spectrums, I know where problems lie. I mean, with so much depleting my body no wonder I am experiencing the issues I’m presenting with! With answers I can begin to focus on these areas and slowly heal myself from within. I would not have had these answers had I not gone to these doctors. These tests would never have been performed by my primary care doctor or specialists.
In the last couple of weeks, I saw my vision of becoming a health coach sliding away. How on earth can I help people like I want to when I’m still sick? How can I help women achieve wellness in a natural and holistic way through dietary and lifestyle changes when I haven’t been able to do it myself without the assistance of medications? And what if I do need to incorporate the scary medications into my healing process? How? Why? What? The questions running around my all to cluttered brain are endless. So I am choosing to surrender. I have to accept that this is part of my journey.
I recently heard from a friend that surrender does not mean you gave up.
Surrender is not failing.
Surrender is having faith in something bigger than myself. Surrender is believing I am being led to exactly where I am meant to be.
Surrender is stopping the fight raging within me. The fight to prove myself; to be perfect; to do things the “right” way. I am learning there is not a “right way” there is only the way I choose and what is right for me.
The definition of surrender is to cease resistance to an enemy or opponent. I am no longer willing to make myself the enemy. My body is screaming for me to pay attention. I have been listening, but resistant to any other way outside of how I thought I needed to heal. I choose to no longer fight myself. I choose to receive. I choose me over the war.
I am not giving up. In a way I am more determined than ever. I am opening my mind to other possibilities which before I refused to even consider. Options I forcefully resisted. In exploring the what ifs I automatically negated before, I surrender.
I surrender to myself.
