I will trust in the Lord!

I have had health issues since I was 15 years old. I was put on medication for stomach ulcers & GERD. Then, I started having joint pain and I was put on Celebrex which helped, but I was allergic. I was also put on birth control due to horrible periods. All of this happened before I graduated High School!

Once I entered college, I started having bouts of anger & rage, then depression, then mania. I was all over the place. I got tested and diagnosed with Bipolar II. I started therapy & medications at that point, but I was never consistent with either. A few years went by before I was diagnosed with Endometriosis. This was very painful and it made my life harder than it already was. I ended up getting a hysterectomy when I was 26.

So to recap, I was 20 years old and I had GERD, Bipolar, joint pain & Endometriosis. I was devastated. Who is going to want to date me? I am broken!! I stopped going to church every Sunday like I used to. Eventually, I stopped going all together. I thought I could handle all of my problems by myself. I started drinking a lot and dating random men. I was living a destructive lifestyle, even turning to marijuana to ease my pain. Obviously none of this was going to “fix” me, but I believed it would.

When I was 24, I decided to turn my life around. I started attending church every Sunday again. I also started reading my Bible regularly for the first time in my life. Two years later, I met the man of my dreams. Three weeks later, we were engaged and 6 months later, we were married. Life was great!!

We started the journey of adoption a year and a half later and decided to foster to adopt. When Jacob came to our home, he was 3 months old and weighed 8 pounds. He was the smallest 3 month old I had ever seen, and he was also the most beautiful baby I had ever seen! We fell in love with him immediately and completely. It took us 19 months of ups & downs before he became a Carpenter, but it was one the best days of our lives!! We were a complete and happy family.

At age 30, I started having really bad neck pain. There would be days when I couldn’t even move it. I got massages monthly to help ease the pain, but it was unbearable at times. Then, my feet started to hurt and my hands started to swell. I started going to different Doctors to try and figure out what was wrong. I gained 50 pounds due to the pain, yet all of them said the pain was caused by my weight. They looked at the number on the scale and didn’t give my symptoms a second thought. I was so depressed that no one was willing to help me.

Finally a friend referred me to her Rheumatologist. The first time I saw him, he ordered x-rays and an MRI on my neck. Turns out, I had a bulging disc touching my spinal cord with degenerative & narrowing of the spine. No wonder I was in so much pain!! He sent me to a pain Dr. for injections, but they didn’t work. I finally had surgery to get rid of the bulging disc and sat at home in a neck brace for 6 weeks. After my recovery, I started having bad neck pain again. My doctor did another exam and diagnosed me with Psoriatic Arthritis.

The diagnosis of PsA hit me hard. I was OK until I started researching it and realized that since it is an autoimmune disease, it was only going to get worse. I was 31 and I was going to have this disease for the rest of my life…another stupid disease!! Once I started on my treatments I started to gain hope again. My Dr. assured me that he was going to “fix” me, or at the very least help my pain.

Nine months later, I still have a hard time walking or standing. I cannot work all day without a pain pill or two, and my vision fluctuates making it hard to drive. On the outside, my future looks hopeless. I look like I am destined for a life of pain and sickness. I have a handicapped license plate and my friends don’t invite to do anything anymore because I can’t do a whole lot besides sit around. On the inside, God is working on me. He is strengthening my heart and helping me learn to trust him more and more. It’s time to give him my life 100%!!

I love being a child of God, a wife and a mother. My life is complete and I’m not going to let sickness destroy me. I will have bad days, but if I keep my eyes on him, they will be less depressing. I will stop feeling helpless and start feeling hopeful. Yes I have a long way to go, but at least I’m moving in the right direction. Praise God!!