The Year of a Healthy Me!

I'll start off being completely honest with you. I had all the best intentions of starting 2023 off with a health and wellness journey to help me combat symptoms of menopause and ADHD and maybe lose some weight.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, right?

In August of 2022 I had a strange incident. While sitting at my son's football game, I began feeling dizzy, then like I was going to pass out. My vision was very blurry and it was all I could do to walk down the stadium steps and to my car to go home early (don't worry, Tommy was driving). Once home, my speech started slurring and slowing down significantly so I immediately thought "stroke" and we went to the Emergency Room. After an overnight stay with more tests than I care to remember, the doctors determined that they didn't know what happened except it might have something to do with the medicine prescribed to manage my newly diagnosed ADHD (I still maintain that isn't an accurate diagnosis, but I no longer take that medication and manage my symptoms naturally with caffeine). For those of you who remember, Bill had his medical episode exactly 2 days after mine. I tease him that he was trying to bite my style.

As you can imagine, it scared the bejesus out of me (especially hearing, "possible stroke victim" when they were talking about me and my speech was so slowed down I couldn't participate in the conversation). I made some changes the very next day like cutting out gluten in my diet and cutting way back on dairy (except for cheese which is too hard to fully give up, but I know I need to). I cut back on my alcohol intake. I started walking daily. It was going pretty well until I started following up with other specialists my general practitioner recommended to be sure nothing else was going on since the hospital wasn't clear on the exact issue that brought me there in the first place.

Those specialists found more stuff...

I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and a chronic auto-immune disease called Hidradenitis Suppurativa all within a few weeks of leaving the hospital. It was a lot to take in and a lot to manage.

Then I got covid for the first time. Freakin' covid! I was sick for a solid two weeks and had lingering brain fog for many more weeks after the other symptoms subsided.

Did I mention while all this was going on I was also managing symptoms of menopause like regular hot flashes, more brain fog, nausea, exhaustion and generally being frustrated by any and everything that crossed my path?

My healthy 2023 has been fraught with frustration. I feel like I've been sick since the end of August and when I look back at my calendar, I can see that I actually have been sick regularly since last August. It's pissing me off! I'm not a nice sick person. As I write this, I have bronchitis that evolved from a sinus infection.

There's this joke that men act like babies when they're sick, but that's me. I'm a giant baby and I constantly beat myself up for being sick (which is so dumb, but it's my natural response and yes, I'm working on it). Thank God I'm married to a saint of a man who loves me through rough times!

I get mad because it's delayed my book progress. It's caused me to cut back on work, delayed my personal progress, and it's making me feel angry more than I'd like.

And I know Im not the only one feeling this way. I know many of you also face health challenges. Whether severe or mild, I know I'm not alone in being concerned about my health. And these valid concerns can include weight management, heart and lung issues (anyone else experienced weird chest pains past 40?), chronic disease, and the psychological cost of allowing these feelings to build when you don't talk about them.

So I wanted to talk about it because talking about stuff helps. Please join me on Wednesday, April 5th and April 12th at 10am central/11am eastern/8am pacific for a special conversation on the NBB Building Authentic Relationships calls. We're going to share our current health and wellness struggles in a safe environment and take the opportunity to offer up advice to each other. I'm especially interested in having the men of NBB join us because I know that men don't often have a place to go to share these kinds of feelings and I'd like to change that narrative.

And if you know me....you know this is all leading to a health challenge for Notary Business Builders who believe, like I do, that food and community are medicine and accountability is important. Let's work together for better health and wellness.

#NBBHealthy