Over a Year Later

They say consistency is key right? Well I guess not for me since it has been a year since I posted an update.

A year later, honestly not much has changed. I fought with so many doctors, specialists, and my body for the last year. I ended up seeing all the doctors I possibly could to deal with each problem to no avail.

The GI specialist and the rheumatologist I ended up seeing brought more disappointment than answers. I feel like I have run a medical marathon. I’ve had overall 12 vials of blood drawn, an MRI, 1 colonoscopy, 2 upper endoscopies, an unreal number of (thankfully) negative pregnancy tests, and a lot of emotional damages from all of this. Still, the stomach pain and nausea will not subside. Over the last year and a half, the only thing I have figured out is: your body will let you know when things have come to a head.

I started this journey in January of 2019. I had just graduated high school a semester early and was ready to take on “real life”. I moved out of my parents house and in with my long-term boyfriend into our first apartment. Then I started working full time for my family’s store and all was well. One day my left hip started hurting. I thought I had picked up a box that was too heavy or pivoted wrong. The pain became more and more excruciating as time went on. I went and saw chiropractors, acupuncturists, and massage therapists. Nothing alleviated my pain. I continued to feel this hip pain for a few months and then the vomiting started. Every single morning. I thought I was pregnant. I really did. But test after test proved my intuitions right- that something much more was wrong. My body wasn’t changing. I felt overall the same other than the vomiting and hip pain. So what was going on?

I had to fight and trudge my way through the healthcare system that we have. I had to advocate for myself over and over and over again. No one listens. No one cares what you have to say when you are a young woman with intestinal issues. No matter what I said, they kept throwing pregnancy in my face as an answer. When I negated that, medication after medication that was making me feel worse. Finally when my boobs started leaking as a side effect of one of the medications, I fought them and wouldn’t settle for any more meds. That’s finally when I got the Upper Endoscopy. Diagnosis. Solution. That should have been it right? I wish.

I’ve done everything right. I talked to a nutritionist, she reassured me I was doing everything right. And yet my stomach tells me it is still somehow all wrong. I’ve thrown out everything, replaced my cookware, sanitized, bleached, all of the tips I’ve read about I have done. I don’t even know where to go next. Everything comes back the same. “You have Celiac Disease, but you already know that.” How do you go to other doctors with such clear results and ask for them to magically make it come up as something else?

The last doctors visit I had was in late November of 2020. It was a follow up with my personal doctor. She asked me if her medical student could join the appointment. I always say yes cause I love to help people learn and maybe very fresh eyes could help me. 20 minutes later, I’m being told I have fibromyalgia. 20 minutes to decide that after over a year of absolutely nothing pointing that direction? I don’t normally discredit anything a medical professional says to me because I’m not the one with the doctorate or experience. But in this moment I had to keep myself from laughing at my doctor. I felt it in my entire heart and soul, that intuition again. No. Nope. Nuh-uh. This isn’t it. This isn’t what it is. Not because I didn’t want it to be. I want answers more than anything else in this world. I could just tell it was a hail mary pass to no one in the end-zone. They didn’t know. That is what that “diagnosis” said to me. They didn’t know what else to do for me other than a huge shot in the dark. All they did know is that they wanted me to start taking an antidepressant that is shown to help combat fibromyalgia symptoms. I just knew deep down through all of my pain, none of what they were telling me seemed right. Now this could be a stretch of my own mind, but to me it felt like the start of the journey all over again. It felt like I was just the young girl who was “pregnant” and it couldn’t be anything else. Now it felt like I was the young girl who was depressed and overstating my pain for attention. So I told them no. I would maybe consider their answer and let them know. I hope they know now, over 7 months later that my answer is still the same.

So with that out of the way, let’s get to the hip pain.

Emotional trauma is an absolute beast. It will tear you apart from the inside out. Remember what I said about your body letting you know when something isn’t right? Well here’s how I know. January 2019 was supposed to be a sign to slow down, take a minute to see what I was holding onto as I moved into the next stage of life. One day in therapy I just broke. I was pissed at all of this pain and torture coming from my own body. I needed anything to help me. That is when I was introduced to EMDR. The acronym for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. I had a lot of trauma I needed to reprocess. I may be young, but I’ve dealt with a lot. I know we say that a lot, but truly I mean it. I had family emotional trauma, sexual assault trauma, and a lot more that we definitely don’t need to get into today. So in EMDR therapy, I unlocked a lot of my demons and with that unlocking, came pain relief. My hip pain was a lockbox of emotional trauma and PTSD I didn’t know I was holding still. I didn’t believe it at first. There’s no way that therapy could end a year long pain…right? Oh but it can and it did. After 6 weeks of EMDR, my hip pain was virtually nonexistent. Some days even now I feel like I imagined the whole year it hurt so bad.

So that’s been my year. A year of slow moving things. Luckily at least one of my two problems were solved. I can deal with the nausea and feeling like shit everyday on its own, but with the hip pain on top of it? No thank you. So I will just keep trudging along hoping that more and more answers will come no matter how long they take.

As long as I still have tomorrow, there’s something that keeps me going.