1desperateladysaved's Blog

I say that I am back from Nowhere. Actually I existed right here. I stayed mostly in a house. Everyday I woke up in the morning and felt as exhausted as when I lay down the night before. Throughout the day I dragged my feet and used my cloudy mind to think of ways to make life seem easy again. I placed my refrigerator on cement blocks. I could reach the lower shelves that way. I couldn't squat down like my friends did, because I needed to breath!

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Nowhere overtook me during a bout with mono when I did fulltime college class schedule. Usually one is very run down to catch mono. I had enjoyed my classes, planned my schedule by the half hour, and hoped that I could get straight A's. Then I got sick and slept up to 20 hours a day, but remained tired. After a few weeks I returned to college. A few days later I succumbed to pleurisy. The doctors seemed incredulous and called it the Old-Lady's-Disease. One who is 19 isn't supposed to get it. I dropped out of college that quarter and tried to gain strength for the next.

It is hard to say how I managed to get to college that next quarter. I couldn't always walk between classes and make it in time. I noticed bloating and that I sometimes looked pregnant. Sometimes I ate lunch with one set of friends, and still felt famished. I would get another lunch and sit with a new group of friends. I kept my foggy fatigue trying without end to cast it off. Sitting and reading seemed difficult, but somehow my grades didn't suffer. I took a break from school and began a fulltime nursing assistant job hoping the constant movement would wake me up. On the weekend I sat in bed with my legs up for the sake of my aching feet.

Life went on like this. I married and had 5 beautiful children. Some days I felt that all I could do was to tell the children how they ought to do things. I became critical. I used to be the babysitter that liked to play with the children. Now, I lacked any energy for all but neccessities.

The summer of 2007 came upon me. My children worked in the garden while I couldn't seem to get much done. They would weed an English yard as I sat trying not to let them see my tears. We took a trip and I hated my life. I saw a sign by a house, I read "Hope for Sale." I thought I needed some of that. I went home and yelled at my husband. "There is NOTHING LEFT, NOTHING LEFT". I meant that physically, mentally, and spiritually I had reached an endpoint. My life really dragged, Finally, my husband said to see a chiropractor that helped me in the past.

The nutrients that I received were life savers. I had felt like crashing each time I stood up. The crashing feeling actually was my blood pressure plunging as I stood up. The supplements easily broke down and I felt the difference they made in my life. Somehow we missed that I had celiac, so I continued eating gluten until 2012. At that point I felt foggy fatigue again in spite of taking the supplements. I complained that every tissue in my body feels irritated. A light dawned on my chiropractor's face, "Are you still eating gluten?" she said. OF coarse, I am, I said.. We didn't say more. She had asked once before. I went home and looked up gluten.

That would explain a few things, I thought to myself. My iron count stayed borderline low while I took iron supplements. The bloating, the foggy mind, and the extreme fatigue. I knew I had those, because they had gone away a couple of times. We also desired more children, but they stopped coming 16 years ago with no explanations

How does a person go through 30 years of their life like this? My symptoms were difficult to track. I looked bloated, but after marriage, I thought I might be pregnant or putting on weight. My husband thought my symptoms were all in my head. He thought I obsessed about health and perhaps I would like to be super-woman. A friend and I marveled how I looked so skinny, but needed a very large pattern to fit my abdomen. My mind fogged over; much had to be done just to take care of a family and trudge through. I had been this way for so long; I lost my perspective of how bodies should work. My symptoms fit in to my perception of reality. Sure, I swelled, but I always had. I felt tired, but this had always been. I told the doctor that I got a little tired sometimes, but they put this off by saying, "You have five children, right?" No further explanation was needed for them..

A promise helped me to make it through the transition: Jeremiah 29:11: " I will restore onto you, the years that the locusts have eaten." Surely locusts had ate up years of my life! But it wasn't over. Thank God, I have escaped from Nowhere! I hope each of you will be delivered too.

Dee (I felt like a more identifying name)