My Journey Through Collapse, Clarity, and the Real Path to Healing
Part 1: How It Started
I was getting ready to go to Turkey to fix my teeth. That was the plan. I had a cough — the one that had haunted me for three years, never letting up, never explained. I pushed through it. I pushed through everything, but every step started to feel like it was draining the life out of me. My will is strong — that was never the problem. Something was stealing my energy, and it was getting harder to pretend it wasn’t.
Eventually, I started canceling events. Then entire parts of my life.
I went to the doctor — something I avoid unless it is pressing. They ordered blood tests. I thought they’d be new, but they were the same ones they’d ordered a year ago. Only this time, I learned something horrifying: the results from last year were already bad — but no one had ever told me. I didn’t even know they were available through an online portal no one mentioned. The system wasn’t just failing. It was hiding.
The updated labs confirmed what had been silently growing inside me: Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, completely unregulated, diabetes, Kidney dysfunction, Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and a brand new strain of influenza though that did not show up on any test.
It took me calling them — not the other way around — to find this out. When the doctor did, instead of treating what was directly in front of him, was shrug it off stating “Probably just allergies.” He gave me allergy cough medicine — despite knowing I have an intense sensitivity to medication. The syrup made me feel like I had turned into the Exorcist — violently ill and by now my voice was gone. I also started to have phlegm that was turning colors. I was given cough suppressant pills for allergies, they blew up my face, distorted my vision, and worsened the ear damage caused by 12 days of unrelenting coughing. Still: I was dismissed and ghosted. That was in mid December.
I knew the clinic was getting a new endocrinologist who would be available in January. So I waited. In the meantime, I changed my entire diet: homemade chicken soup, bone broth, berries, and gluten-free crackers — because sometimes you just need a crunch to remind you you’re still here.
The morning of the endocrinologist appointment, I hadn’t slept at all. Something felt off. I drank bone broth, hoping to stabilize. Still off. I got dressed anyway, threw cherries in my pocket to eat on the way and walked the two blocks to the office.
By the time I checked in, my shoulders and lower back felt like they were curling into a C. Painful, compressed, wrong. I explained everything that was happening to me, but right before she was going to check my throat, it started: hot, sweaty, clammy. dizzy. I made it to the sink, splashed water on my face — and then came the vomiting. They gave me a blue bag. I threw up again. They took my blood pressure. It had spiked through the roof where it had been completely normal. They were stating I had to go to the hospital. I flatly refused. I was already sick. Going into a hospital during flu season was not safety in my condition.
I went to the bathroom, threw up again. Came back. They took my blood pressure again. It was normal. Threw up again. Then they left me alone. They were supposed to return for another blood pressure reading. No one came. After 45 minutes alone in a clinic room, I left, because all I wanted was my bed. I could have died in that office and no one would have known, or cared.
All the doctor wanted was to prescribe insulin. Not to check for insulin resistance, or root cause, or anything that would explain why my body was breaking down. No one asked questions. No one investigated. No one saw me. They didn’t even call to see if I was ok or made it home. That’s when it hit me: I wasn’t just sick. I was being shown the lie.
Tomorrow what I knew and didn’t know