15/10/2017
Sometimes life just has a way of screaming at you and shaking you by the shoulders...my body had been trying to talk to me. I should have slowed down, but I couldn't. I had adopted this hectic pace: late nights spent on calligraphy projects, workshop development, web site overhauls, styled shoots, bridal projects, corporate events...I was fueled by something deeper than my passion and dreams- I didn't know it then, but I do now. My thyroid was being destroyed by Hashimoto's and that newfound manic energy was really a disease process.
The ride came to a screeching halt just 10 days after this project last December, when my body would decide to just completely stop working. At all. I became more or less bedridden, mothering my infant daughter to the best of my ability from the couch. I would nod off during routine activities and felt narcoleptic. Five cups of coffee couldn't touch the fatigue I was experiencing. Yet at night I would lie awake for hours on end with my heart pounding rapidly against my chest. My bones ached so deeply that I would cry myself to sleep for months on end. My brain stopped working and I couldn't grocery shop without crying from the overwhelm. Lifting my little girl out of her high chair became next to impossible. I got lost driving familiar streets. My words would come out jumbled, if at all. My once thick hair was falling out in clumps. Walking across the parking lot would leave me breathless. Forget about folding laundry. I though I was a goner.
I find it ironic that these were the last fancy words I would write for close to 8 months. My thriving business would be put on hold, calligraphy workshops would be cancelled and my dreams would be put on hold, while I would become an armchair physician busily researching and writing sloppy medical notes in my business planner. There were no lunches to be had. I needed to get answers and fast so that I could take care of my little girl. One year later, I'm happy to have made progress but I know now that my life will never be exactly as it once was. It's been a process of mourning and acceptance, gratitude for life's beauty and the drive to fight for my health like never before.