Well, the first part of it, at least...
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Just a few months ago, I was in that desperate position where nothing I'd tried could help me feel better, no doctor could tell me what was wrong with me, and no amount of medication could help me without damn near sending me into a coma of miserable side effects.
I had had enough. Enough of being tired, enough of being sick, enough of feeling like the floor was falling out from under me. Literally, actually. I remember standing at my podium once with about 27 people giving me the "what the hell are you talking about" look. And I was probably giving them the same look, because I didn't have a clue what I was talking about. I felt like I was on an elevator... you know how you get off the elevator and it still feels like the floor is moving? So here I am holding onto the podium like it's going to keep me from falling over, and I'm trying to figure out what the hell I had just said and what I had meant to say and what I was supposed to stay next and wondering why there is no naptime in high school. Because I need a nap. And by nap I mean hibernating for a few winters and then maybe considering rejoining society somewhere around 2019. Maybe.
It had started the year before, at first just with these debilitating headaches that made me want to consult my friend, Google, and ask if you could actually die from pain. I'm pretty sure at some point I was hoping it was possible.
Ever seen the movie Shutter Island? When the doctor is explaining what a migraine feels like he says "Imagine someone sawed open your head, filled it with razors, and shook it as hard as they could." If you've ever had a migraine, you know how accurate that statement is.
So eventually that pain starting spreading all over my body until I was hospitalized for a few days and sent home with no diagnosis and no end in sight. "Take these pills and get some sleep. Sleep deprivation does strange things to the body." Ok, Doc.
But that didn't work. I was hurting. I wasn't sleeping. I felt like I had aged about forty years. And I looked like it, too.
Those bags under my eyes could talk, and they said "I NEED TO REST"
And then one day I was like hmmm, I need to get my dryer fixed. It's shrinking all of my pants!!!
And whatever bug broke my dryer also lived in my scale because that thing was broken too. It said I had gained a good twenty pounds in about 3 months. (Okay fine. It was probably closer to 30)
And then my camera broke and all of a sudden when it snapped a picture, it made my face look so puffy and bloated I could barely find my eyes...
Okay fine, it wasn't just my camera. It was every camera on the planet. So I did the sensible thing. I stopped getting on the scale and avoided cameras like the frickin plague. Avoid the problem and it goes away, right? So I avoided the problem for a while, took my 12,000,000 milligrams of ibuprofen, tried to start working out, pulled muscles and sprained ankles about once a month because my body couldn't take it, occasionally just gave up altogether, and then eventually decided to stop ignoring the problem.
That's Phase One: Stop ignoring the problem.
Mission: stop ignoring the problem started this July in the middle of a doctor's office in Houston when I told him I couldn't go anymore. I was done. But I wasn't done. I was just starting. Here's what I learned in Phase One....
Apparently the bug that broke my dryer, scale, and camera wasn't living in my appliances. He was living in my body, and it would take three months to get him out. THREE MONTHS?!
Yep. Three months. And a lot of discipline. And a lot of medicine. And some hard work.
The three month regimen to fix what was going on in my body consisted of
1) An intense and wildly strict eating plan
2) Dietary Supplements
3) Hormone Treatments (yes sometimes people actually need them long before middle age)
So my summer looked something like this
It was hard. Wait, no that was an understatement. It straight up sucked. But it got the bug out of my body (and my scale and my dryer and my camera).
And now all of those pants that "got shrunk in the dryer" are way too big for me, and I look at the scale and see 28 pounds worth of progress. And I still have those damn bags under my eyes, but they are slowly going away.
My body still hurts sometimes, but it has gotten a hell of a lot better. And when I look in the mirror, I can tell when I am on track, and I can tell when I need to get stricter with my regiment. But most days, I'm okay with what I see and I'm proud, because I worked so hard to get there.
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