Chronic Illness: Experience, School Struggles and Difficulty

A different post from my ordinary beauty posts, but I felt seeing as in the Northern Hemisphere everyone is going back to school it was the right time to write this post.

I'll start this out by stating simply, I have fibromyalgia and honestly it is often hell. It affects every part of my life and even though I now have it mostly under control I still have some very bad days.

Although my journey started a lot earlier, in 2013 when I was in year 12 was when my symptoms became more obvious, and often left me unable to do anything. I'm not going to go overly in to this but at this time I was incorrectly diagnosed with lupus, which meant I was incorrectly medicated for a condition I didn't have. Between not getting treatment, and medication reactions I was often unable to get out of bed and go to school. Thankfully my high school was very accommodating and I did actually pass high school (which honestly shocks me most days).

I think the stress of year 12 was what made it flare up so bad, and become very obvious it was out of the "norm".

Since 2014 I have been a university student, and I have had zero time off which in December 2015 culminated in me being the sickest I had been. I couldn't walk, I could barely stay awake for an hour and I was in so much pain all I wished for was to die so that it could be over.

In February of this year my mum decided to go out of the normal doctors and took me to a Naturopath. Honestly I didn't believe that a naturopath could help, but decided to go anyway. It honestly shocked me, but so far the naturopath has actually helped the most. I had to do a major diet overhaul which has definitely helped, I have mostly cut out gluten (after realising I was actually gluten intolerant) and all refined sugars. I still do eat these things on cheat days though, because it can be really hard to keep to almost a paleo diet every day. I am also on a regime of herbal antibiotics and other medications which has really helped. I do still take my other medications for fibromyalgia and between the two, most days I am able to function pretty well.

This semester of university has been one of the hardest for me even though I am healthier as I have moved away from my family for the first time. Unfortunately stress is a major contributing factor to making me feel very sick, and obviously moving out of home is a very stressful experience. I'm hoping next semester is easier as I will be settled in to living away from home, living in the city and hopefully I can get my money issues sorted out as well as not having money is hard to deal with.

I'm not certain if this post will really help anyone, but it was also just something I wanted to get off my chest and let you more into my life which obviously isn't all beauty.

-Bec

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