My mom likes to tell a fun story when we are giggling as a family about how coordinationly challenged I am.
As a little girl, I struggled gripping scissors, pencils, cutting straight lines, in general, my fine motor skills sucked (and still do!) My skills were poor enough that a preschool teacher suggested I be evaluated by an occupational therapist.
The part we all laugh about is what the occupational therapist told my mom.
“Well your daughter does have some notable fine motor deficits, and normally I would recommend therapy, but she’s so smart she figures out a way to complete the task anyhow, so she will be fine without therapy in the long run.”
So that’s where they left it. And they were 100% correct. I went to school, excelled academically, but suffered a bit socially due to my lack of interest in playing sports or physical games that required coordination.
But I was okay with that, there was always someone who shared my interests in books, conversation, writing, and history, and when there wasn’t someone who fit my profile, I had a lovely copy of Harry Potter or Jane Eyre to keep me company. The only grades I ever received that were a C or close to a C were handwriting and pottery 😂. I’m still okay with my lack of fine motor skills, and simply chalk it up to our talents, as we age, are what we value and give our efforts to better.
But that is not the point of the story.
While reflecting on my physical/mental health journey over the last decade, I realized this story has been a constant repeating theme in my life.
“There is something wrong with you, but you are strong enough/intelligent enough/savvy enough you will find a way to deal with it, you don’t need our help.”
I was too functional to warrant serious help. So functional, no one could see the daily struggle I undertook to remember to do very basic things, like doing dishes, paying bills, my job, parenting. The only ones that saw me struggle were my husband and parents, and most others chalked it up to having “my plate full.”
But what no one could see is that I was sick. From my head to my toes sick.
I wasn’t so sick, I couldn’t get out of bed, but damn was it hard.
I wasn’t so sick I couldn’t function, but damn was it hard.
I wasn’t so sick I couldn’t work, but I did use every one of my sick days and then some. Even at 18 years old.
Lupus, in retrospect, started robbing me of functionality around 8 years old and I have only been able to stop it at 34 years old, after a lot of hard work, loss, and searching for answers.
As an eight-year-old in the 90’s I was diagnosed with thyroid dysfunction and alopecia. It took 13 years and the advance of science for us to finally put together that I had systemic lupus, a total body auto-immune inflammation disorder. However the doctor said it wasn’t bad, and I should keep an eye on things. So I did.
I wasn’t well, but I wasn’t sick. I was frequently tired, I took all of the sick days I could at my cushy government job, but I plowed ahead, and earned a bachelors degree in history and education while working two jobs. I burnt the candle at both ends and figured that was why I had a hard time focusing, getting out of bed, and taking care of myself the way I knew I should. Junior year, during an extra stressful time personally and academically, I lost a lot of hair, and kept having weird allergic reactions to random things, like alcohol (thankfully no longer a problem!) But during college random things happened to me health wise, and
Then I met a boy at the end of college, fell in love, married, and got pregnant only a couple of years after the lupus revelation. Well, let me tell you there is nothing that causes more inflammation than first year teacher stress, rapidly gaining weight from eating whatever the baby craved, and freaking hormones. But like the doctor said I will know if it becomes more of a problem, and I should go back and see him.
When the primary sign of your inflammation is hair loss you’ve had most of your life and poor but functional mental health you get told its postpartum depression and stress, handed some Prozac, and sent on your way. No one felt that poor mental function was a concern unless I wanted to hurt myself or others and its likely due to a lack of sleep due to you know, babies! And hair loss, well its just cosmetic. You don’t need hair to live… Very true, but still frustrating and hard to deal with.
The Prozac helped but my brain was still not acting like it used to act. I couldn’t hold more than one thing in my mind at a time, and often not for long. Each baby, and the less I cared about what I put into my body, the worse my mental health became, the more forgetful I became, the more distractable, impulsive, irritable, disinterested in life around me. Each day I made it through felt like a sigh of relief. I was in a bad place, but because I wasn’t threatening myself or others, no one saw the problem or addressed my problem, including me.
I did have one break in this cycle of depression and brain fog after our third child when I undertook a Paleo/clean food diet. I lost 40 lbs, and felt better than I had in a very long time.
This didn’t last because I saw this improvement as a prime time to go back to work and have another baby. Why? Because I still wasn’t wise enough to connect my physical health with my mental health.
The next part of this journey is about how to quickly reach rock bottom, because every good story has one of those. Take post-partum depression, mix in two year old diagnosed with diabetes and three year old diagnosed with autism, coupled with a MAJOR medical mistake, and a full time teaching job, you get one VERY bad year. Stay tuned!