Simla’s Story :: Part I :: Onset & Denial

Author’s note: This is the first installment in a series of articles about how I have healed from several health conditions and come to live very well with my autoimmune conditions, which are in full remission as long as I respect my triggers. The specific autoimmune conditions I will be writing about are:  fibromyalgia; undifferentiated connective tissue disorder; and, immunotoxicity. The other health conditions I will refer to in this context are:  chronic fatigue syndrome; adrenal fatigue; asthma; chronic bronchitis; pneumonia; food and environmental allergies; chronic bronchitis; multiple chemical sensitivity; lyme disease (also referred to as lyme’s disease); medication-induced hepatitis and pancreatitis; IBS; digestive issues; leaky gut; dysbiosis; candida; heavy metal toxicity, and others. While it’s personally difficult to relive a lot of this through the act of writing, I hope to provide the information and inspiration I wish I had while I was going through this life-altering experience. I write from the perspectives of a patient, a busy professional, an entrepreneur, a wife, a daughter, and as a certified health coach and nutrition expert, which is what my experience has led me to become. I’d love to hear from you if this proves helpful to you – you can email me at hello(at)enjoydelicioushealth.com. You may also visit www.enjoydelicioushealth.com or www.delicioushealthblog.com to learn more. In health ~ Simla Somturk WIckless, MBA, CHC, NE.

Part I: Onset & Denial

Late June ~ mid-August 2006

Ow! My feet hurt. I shook my head at myself for having worn high heels for a 14-hour stint on Monday. I had led a client workshop on the east coast, on my feet almost all day. Silly me. Whatever. It was time for bed and I couldn’t be happier. Another long day awaited me the next day. The weird thing was, I couldn’t drape the light bed sheet over my left leg because it hurt to the touch. Thank goodness it was summer so I didn’t need it. Stupid heels. So much for looking good. Wasn’t worth it, I grumbled.

That Thursday night, I flew back home to San Francisco and rolled off the plane in a wheelchair. My left foot was useless with pain. Sharp, unrelenting jabs stemming from the sole of my foot and shooting up my left leg. Little did I know that Monday’s stint would be the last time I could wear heels for a long while. (The rest of that week, I had worn sneakers and led my workshops by sitting on a table, much to the chagrin of my manager.)

Ok, so it was an injury, right? I went to an urgent care clinic on Friday morning to get it checked out. I didn’t have any primary care doctors so I had no time to try and get an initial appointment with one. I had to be back on the plane on Monday, 6am sharp. My demanding work as a management consultant, managing a team of ten, left no room for injuries to get in the way.

At the clinic they examined and x-rayed my foot. Nothing. The recommendation was to get a stiff sole insert and rest my foot, and take some over-the-counter pain killers. I nixed the pain killers and the sole insert – I didn’t like relying on the pills and the insert hurt way too much. I could barely lace up my sneaker around my foot, it hurt so much. I limped home, annoyed. I’d just have to wait it out.

Come Monday, I still couldn’t walk, let alone drag my suitcase and carry a heavy laptop bag on my usual trek across the country. So I stayed and worked from home. It was a treat being home as I was used to traveling 4-5 days a week, as I had for the past 8 years – save for my two years during business school – except that the pain prevented me from enjoying this treat much.

Andy, my then-fiance, was perplexed too but neither one of us gave my foot pain much thought as my left ankle had been the weaker one for years and was prone to acting up now and then. It was easy to brush off even thought I’d never quite had pain like this. It was late June, almost two months to the day to our upcoming wedding. We had other things to worry about.

And so I continued working 14-16 hour days. I would be up by 5:30 a.m., pacific time, each morning to lead our daily team call at 6am since my team was in Chicago. I would have meetings until about 5 p.m. each day, then start on my own work, which would usually take me through 10 p.m. I would work most Saturdays and part of each Sunday, too. Not unusual for this project. Not unusual for me. The only difference was that I had to do my work from the kitchen table, sitting with my left foot propped up straight in front of me. I couldn’t sit or stand in any one position for too long. By this point, I had nerve pain (though no doctor had defined that for me and wouldn’t for quite some time), numbness, and tingling all along my left leg.

I was doing enough work for two people; work I didn’t particularly enjoy at the time but that I felt driven to over-deliver on, as usual. I was also planning a wedding all by myself. And I was doing everything perfectly.

I was barely sleeping at 5-7 hours a night, an improvement from business school. I skipped meals because I had no appetite and was too stressed out to eat. I was addicted to caffeine: quadruple venti lattes were in my vocabulary, although by this time I had it down to “just one cup” of coffee in the morning, without which I couldn’t function.

I was doing everything by myself, as always. Asking for help was for wussies.

Life was normal for this Type A overachieving perfectionist.

A few weeks weeks later, I was shuffling home from a short walk to the grocery store when a searing pain ripped through the sole of my other foot for the first time. The same pain seemed to stab at my heart as I knew it – whatever “it” was – was spreading. My carefully constructed, in-control life began showing cracks. I was terrified. Something was very broken and I couldn’t just pretend it wasn’t happening anymore. I sobbed all the way home.

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In Hindsight:  What I Have Learned

• This was my inflection point. This is when my autoimmune conditions broke through and began showing themselves; I just didn’t know it yet.

• As a health coach, I know now that chronic stress is a key trigger for autoimmune conditions. My old friend, chronic stress, had been eating away at my body’s reserves and resistance levels for years. I had been going nonstop since I was 12. I wasn’t eating enough and when I did eat, I wasn’t eating the right things, again depleting any reserves I had. At 104 pounds – my lowest as an adult – I couldn’t really afford to lose any more weight. My stress fueled my need for coffee and my coffee fueled my stress. It’s a vicious cycle and I was caught right in the middle of it.

• Just as I can recall the exact date when my pain first set in, most of my autoimmune clients can remember the exact moment when things “felt different.” They also report that they were living through an emotional trauma or extended period of chronic stress at that point in their lives. Most have parents and/or, to a lesser extent, grandparents with one or more autoimmune conditions, although they realize in the case of their grandparents that they were undiagnosed or misdiagnosed for most of their lives. My grandparents do not / did not have any autoimmune conditions, but my mom has Crohn’s Disease, which set in in her late 30s, and my dad has Fibromyalgia (set in in his early 30s). For most of my clients and for me, the timing of the onset of our conditions was in our late 20s or early 30s. I was a few days short of 32.

• I didn’t know how to listen to my body. Really – had I ever? I thought I did. I was super active, especially in the previous 4 years, in the best shape ever: dancing 10+ hours a week during grad school, hiking the hilly San Francisco Bay Area, going to the gym to lift weights and take pilates classes 3-4 times a week. My body fat percentage was around 19-20%. I ate well… or so I thought: low-fat, veggies, fruit, fancy restaurants on a consulting project. My body had been sending me signals for years but I never put two and two together to realize I was riding a roller-coaster that was about to derail:  increasing severity of asthma, chronic bronchitis, allergies, headaches, pneumonia, IBS since my early teens, otherwise symptom-less high fevers and fatigue that would disappear after one night. Hellooooo!?!

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To Be Continued the Week of 12/28/09:  Simla’s Story :: Part II :: Anger & Bewilderment

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