Sick tips for Uni. | Blogmas 2018 | Day 4

Everybody has at least one area of their life that has been or are lacking. I had a great childhood. My parents support and love me endlessly. My siblings are my ride or dies and I have a good few solid friends who know me better than I know myself. Now that's not to say everything is perfect, but I have been pretty lucky with regards to all that. My downfall is my health, particularly in the last 3 or 4 years. Things are definitely better than before but my health still brings a lot of struggle into my life. (I'm actually working on a health update at the moment so keep your eyes peeled for that post if you're interested in my health journey!) With that said, todays post is dedicated to my top tips and tricks on how to deal with being sick while at Uni (or school or work or basically just life haha).

*Future Holly interjection*
I wrote this yesterday and I think I may be psychic because I woke up SO SICK! So as I sit here in bed with my pouding head as I try not to puke, I guess its time to follow my own advice! Anyway, back to past Holly...

Uni is essentially a germ pool where you spend 20% of your time getting sick, 60% of your time being unwell and the other 20% feeling like you're just about to come out the other end of it before we go right back to square one. Unless I have suddenly lost my ability to do maths, thats 100% of your time feeling under the weather. Now my extremely scientific and accurate results here are purely based of my experience of 1st semester and with my poor excuse of an immune system, it may no be applicable to everyone. That being said, the general concensous seems to be that you get sick alot at uni and unfortunately you don't get a say in the matter. So, as a very professional and experienced sick person, here are my sick tips for Uni... see what I did there... sick tips. Such comedy gold.

Tip 1. Remember that your health ALWAYS COMES FIRST.
Now this comes in at number one becuause it really is the most important one. If there is one thing that I have learnt over the last few years, it is the sheer importance of your health and what happens when you don't make that a priority. Let me tell you, it is not a pretty picture. Health is the centre of everything and poor health can affect every aspect of your life. When my health was at its worse I couldn't attend school, couldn't hold a job, I had to drop all my hobbies besides reading (which even then I couldn't do as much), I felt like I lost my friends, my anxiety got worse, my whole life just came to a crashing halt. Now this is a real extreme example but if you refuse to prioritise your health, there is a real possibility you could be heading to much more serious health issues. If you are sick, your priority is to be healthy again. Above everything, is your health. If you need an extension, ask for it. If your health is coming in between studies, talk to your tutor. Your health is first and any decent Uni should understand that too.

Tip 2. Do the boring healthy things
Yes, I know they are boring. They are dull and time consuming and generally not that enjoyable but there is a reason these things get repeated so often. Up the fruit and vegetable intake. Reduce the sugar intake (and I personally find reducing dairy and gluten help speed up the healing process). Drink tons of water. Take your vitamins/supplements (I personally live by Doterras -contact my mamma for more info- and blame my inconsistancy with them for the decline in my health after months of being my healthiest in years). Get some fresh air. Excersice regularly to help avoid getting sick in the first place. You know these things but somehow we forgot to do them still. Probably because its not fun, but hey you know what else isn't fun? Getting sick. Go eat an apple. (Please, you can get one in the reduced section!)

Tip 3. Manage stress!
Again, this is likely something you have heard before. Stress is bad. But, this is actually something that while I knew, I have really come to understand a little more recently, and actually I am so interested in the physcial responses to stress and just how much it can impact us. There is this fabulous video by SciShow Psych ft. Hank Green which I think summarises it all quite nicely and gives you a great insight into the power of stress - deffo reccomend giving this a cheeky watch if you've got a spare 5 mins. While we all know stress doesn't feel good, there is a good chance that its contributing to why you got sick or even why you're struggling to recover properly. This is something I am working on right now as I am a very highly strung person who is basically anxious like 78% of the time. But, what I have found useful so far is journaling, music, gentle exercise and meditiation. I do these things somewhat sporadically and think I might try a little week long experiment to see how these techniques work in practice, any body interested in that? The point is, these are all things you can incorperate into your life, even as a busy Uni student.

Tip 4. Be a lazy potato
If you are sick, you need to rest. Its annoying and inconvenient but that's just the way it is. 1 day of responsible rest will always beat a week of recovery after refusing to achknowledge your need to rest. Try and attend lectures if you can but there will be other socials. The FOMO at uni is so real but in some ways, that works to your advantage here. There is always so much going on, that is is garunteed you can find something to do once youre well enough. Lie down, sleep and rest.

Apologies if you were hoping for something revolutionary here, but the truth is that with health, there are no short cuts. It takes effort and perserverance and self dicipline but it is so worth it becasue when your'e healthy you can really live your best life.

Do you have any secret health tips? (Please tell me because I need them all)

Hope you have a lovely day and I will speak to you tomorrow,

P.S- Get well soon!

Being sick for 2 years... and how it nearly destroyed me.

As mentioned in a previous post, I am transferring my blog posts from the last year (they were on a different site) so here is number 3 of 9! Enjoy!

This was originally posted on 20/06/2017.

Destroy'

verb

End the existence of (something) by damaging or attacking it.

1. 1.1 Ruin (someone) emotionally or spiritually.
2. 1.2 Defeat (someone) utterly.
3. 1.3 Kill (a sick, savage, or unwanted animal) by humane means.

May 2017 marked the two year anniversary of me getting Lyme disease. Two whole years. That's 730 crazy long Lyme disease fighting days... and I didn't even get a card! I joke, I joke. This isn't the kind of anniversary you feel like celebrating. 

I've always tried to be pretty open with my battle against Lyme disease as it was and still is a massively significant part of my life. I would probably go as far as to say that it was one of, if not the hardest thing I have had to deal with. Even now, when physical health wise I am doing the best I have since this all began, it effects my daily life and I think that it always will. 

For some reason, I always try to play my illness down. But you know what? It was hard. In fact it was really hard. It was long and scary and it sucked. You don't go through something as significant and traumatising as that and come through unscathed. And I was no exception. 

Before I jump into this story, let's just talk about the word 'destroy' real quick. I was very hesitant to use this word in my post. It's quite a harsh word. Destroy. It's not a word I use often and it's definitely not a word I would typically use to talk about myself and my battle with Lyme... and yet I did. I do. The word 'destroy' sounds violent and extreme. It sounds dramatic. In fact that is one of the main reason I was so hesitant to use that word. I don't want to come across as some dramatic blogger begging for sympathy, because that really not my intention. But my battle with Lyme disease over the last two years has been detrimental in every sense. Not only did my physical body suffer a lot, but mentally it has drained me. I spent 2 years in a cloud of worry, fear and isolation. Not only in the physical sense (I spent an unhealthy amount of time in bed ... not by choice) but also mentally. I have the most amazing family and a good few solid friendships too, but I had never felt so alone in my life, and nothing could have changed that. Nothing that anybody could have said or done would have changed that. And as if that wasn't enough, my social life suffered. All my relationships with people suffered. Every single aspect of my life suffered in one way or another. Directly or indirectly. It suffered. I suffered. So I don't use the word 'destroy' easily. And I don't use it for sympathy. I use it because in a case like this, I think that maybe it can be justified. 

And now onto the meaty part of this post ...

I've been thinking about the topic of this post a lot over the last few days. I like to think that I am a very 'self-aware' kind of person. I often look at my actions and thoughts and feelings. I am always trying to work on myself and be a better person. I think it's in my personality. So, being the self-aware being that I am, I began to notice something about myself. Something which to you may seem like an unbelievably obvious thing but to me was hidden under some scary camouflage blanket in a dark corner of my room covered in cobwebs. So it was not so obvious to me. And here is what I discovered. 

I am not the same person I was before all of this illness shenanigans. 

(Meaning I am not the same person I was 2 years ago... Shocker.)

I told you it would seem obvious. See this is kind of how it went down.  I got sick May 2015. I thought it was the flu and I thought it would end in a couple of days, a week tops. But it did not. I thought 'wow I have got a real bad strain of flu! Give it a couple of weeks, it will be out of my system by then'. But it was not. I thought 'Oh the doctors will sort this out. In a week or two I will be back on my feet". But I was not. Are you starting to see a pattern here? I spent the entirety of my illness sitting and waiting for the storm to pass. I sat there hugging my knees as the wind whistled by and the thunder roared and the rain came hammering down. I sat there waiting for the storm to pass. I sat there hugging my knees, paralysed by this storm that only seemed to fall on me. Everyone around me got up and got on with their life. They made progress and had success and failure and kept moving forward anyway because that is how life works. All the while I hadn't moved an inch, because I couldn't. The storm hadn't passed. I sat there paralysed as I watched everyone around me get up and move on. Not move away, because they were always there supporting me as best they could, but moving on. As they should have by the way. I am not naive enough to think the entire would should come to a halt when my life appears to. I am only saying this to give you an insight as to how it felt. 

So I sat there and waited out the storm. I held tight and I waited it out. (Editing note: Scratch that. I fought it out. I fought real hard to get to where I am health wise and I should give my self credit for that. Ok. Proceed previous Holly...). Yet in my head, I thought when the storm had passed, I would just get up and everything would be the exact same. I thought I would feel the same. I thought everything around me would look the same. I thought I would be the same. I think subconsciously I thought that because I had put pause on my life, that life would just pause. Which it obviously didn't because life is real inconsiderate like that.... I'm joking. Kind of. Anyway, fast forward two years and the storm has almost passed. It's not quite gone. There is a still a drizzle and it's pretty gusty. but I can stand and I can see and I don't feel paralysed by the storm anymore. Let it be noted at this point that this was a very slow process of the storm passing and it didn't happen all at once because that is not how life works. But yes, I got up and I looked around. I thought I would see things exactly as I had left them and I thought I would see myself exactly as I was before. Yet that did not happen. I looked down to see a body full of bruises and battle scars. I looked weak. I looked around to see that I was not where I was before. I was in a completely unknown location, with no idea of how I go there, in a body that felt weak. I felt as if I had been abducted by aliens and then dropped back down to some crazy unknown planet. Pretty terrifying stuff.

I know I just threw out some pretty crazy metaphors, but I don't really know how else to explain it. So if you managed to understand anything that I just said, then congrats to you! 

So yes, I survived the storm. Now it goes without saying that my body is a bit of a mess. It just spent 2 years fighting every single day and quite frankly its exhausted. It will take a while before it's back to full health because it needs time to rest and repair and slowly build things back to the way they were before. But I kind of expected that. I mean, I was kind of hoping that one day I'd wake up full of energy and feeling great, but I know that health doesn't work like that. I fully expected my physical body to be feeling a little worn out after being unwell for so long. However, that wasn't what nearly destroyed me. I mean it sucked and it almost ruined my life, but I wouldn't use the word 'destroy'. No, what almost destroyed me was how I completely lost my 18th year of life. I spent my entire year of being 18 (as well as half my 17th year and half my 19th year) waiting out the storm. So when I finally came around, I was older but I had had none of those life experiences that make you feel older. I had missed the train. What almost destroyed me was how lost and alone I felt both during and after the storm. It wasn't the physical illness that almost destroyed me, but it was everything else.

"It wasn't the physical illness that almost destroyed me, but it was everything else"

Did you notice how I used the word 'almost'?

'almost'

Adverb

Not quite; very nearly.

Lyme disease has been a real pain in the butt. It flipped my world upside, shook it around a little (or a lot) and lobbed it into a brick wall. It did some real damage. Every single aspect of my life has suffered and it very nearly destroyed me. But it didn't. I got up, put one foot in front of the other and kept going forwards. It often feels like I'm walking in quick sand or some kind of thick mud, but I keep moving anyway. Its not easy and its not over, but it will be someday. Im almost cringing writing this because it just sounds so dramatic. But who knows maybe somebody needs to hear this. Maybe somebody needs to be told to stand up, put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward. Small steps are bigger than no steps. Then one day you will realise that the quick sand became grass and you'll look back and notice that the storm is so far behind you that you can't even see it anymore. Just stand up, put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward. You can scream and cry and take a minute to rest if you need it. But then you get right back up and you keep moving forward. You don't look around to see where everyone else is. You focus on yourself and you keep. moving. forward.

... and breathe.  

That was pretty deep. I feel like I've just revealed part of my soul, haha! Sometimes I feel like writing about pizza and sometimes I feel like writing about my deepest darkest feelings and I guess today it was the latter. I hope this didn't sound too crazy and that my jumble of words and feeling came out as coherent sentences. I felt it was time for a way too personal and vulnerable post, it had been a while.

If anybody wants to share some equally scary and vulnerable stuff in the comments, I would highly encourage that. I always love having a natter in the comments. 

"Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change" - Brene Brown 

And on that note it is time for me to love you and leave you. I have waffled on for too long and in all honesty, I'm not entirely sure what I have just written. Anyway, I hope you are having a wonderful day and I will speak to you very soon! 

Holly Xx

P.s- You should totally subscribe to my emailing list if you want to be notified when I upload a new blog post!

​

Quotes that help me deal with Chronic Illness.

Chronic illness is known to be illness lasting 3 months or longer. For many, having something as simple as a common cold can take a toll on them, affecting their entire week. So you can only imagine how chronic illness lasting over 3 months, for many years or even their lifetime, can take such a toll on someone. It becomes much more than the physical pain and struggles, although trust me they're no walk in the park, but it becomes very mentally challenging too. 

You're faced with the frustration of your body not healing itself. Then the frustration of doctors being unable to heal you. Then the frustration of the illness stealing your life from you. The list of frustrations and mental struggles goes on for miles, alongside with the fact that anxiety, depression e.t.c is often a symptom of chronic illness too.

Cowden Support Programme || Week 4

With only 2 day's left of month 1, I am beyond impressed with the results I am seeing in myself. If you looked at me a month ago and compared it to myself now, you would struggle to believe it was the same person! I still have a long way to go until I am back to full health, but just knowing that each day I am a step closer, is very re-assuring. 

For anybody who may be new to my blog, I have Lyme disease. You can check out my post about that here or watch my video here. Almost a month ago, I started a new treatment called the Cowden Support Programme/Protocol. Each day I document how I have been feeling and each week, I post about how my week has been. This makes it easier for me to look back on and also helps to show people how I am getting on with the protocol, and if it is working for me. Feel free to check out my previous weeks here...

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Now for week 4! Here is what my week looked like... 

Getting A Diagnosis~ Lyme Disease.

I have been wanting to write this post for quite some time but it never really felt right (I will explain why later) until now. This blog has always been something quite personal to me and I am usually pretty happy to share what is going on in my life. I really enjoy having this blog and enjoy sharing these parts of my life. However, it can also be a little daunting sharing such personal things, so bare with me. In this case, I feel the need to share not only for my personal gain but in hope that it will educate others in an area I feel not many are aware of.

So, in my case this all started about 6 months ago, towards the end of May. I remember suddenly getting pretty ill. I was completely wiped out and was struggling to go about my normal day. Being around the time of my exams, I assumed that the stress of A-levels and revision had just exhausted me and that I would feel better within a few days of rest. Throughout my life I have had a tendency to get sick pretty easily and was always catching a cold. So, when this came along I didn't think much of it. I thought that it was a little odd how quickly it had come on, but I just assumed that it was nothing too major. Then, I started to accumulate more symptoms. Along with this intense fatigue, I started to get really strong headaches, pain throughout my body and my vision started playing up. I have never had great vision, hence why I have glasses, but it just got worse very suddenly and my glasses didn't make much of a difference. After this, we decided it would be a good idea to take a trip to the doctors. 

Over the next month, I had taken numerous trips to doctors, had a few different blood tests (which I really did not enjoy by the way... I have a tendency to get more than a little faint), get even worse symptoms and still no answers. By this point I was having chest pains, more frequent pains in my knees and back, difficulty concentrating and with my memory and all my previous symptoms had worsened. Overall, I just really did not feel like myself. Typically, I think that I am a pretty positive and bubbly person, but practically overnight I had switched and just felt like a completely different person. At this point, the doctors were struggling to give me a diagnosis, all tests had come back normal, including Lyme's, and it was beginning to look like I had CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). I really didn't feel like this was my diagnosis but I couldn't think of any other answers. Throughout this time, I was constantly asked about my home life and school like, asking if I was depressed. I can obviously understand why they have to ask this but I knew that I wasn't depressed and I knew that it wasn't all in head. But as time went on and we still had no answers, I began to worry that maybe I just needed to get over it. I knew that as hard as I tried, that wouldn't work but I was simply running out of options. 

I had started my first part-time job back at easter and only a couple of months in I had to take a month off due to the illness. Having had a month's rest and no longer having to worry about school, I felt a little better and managed to go back to work. This was only a part-time job where I worked 5 hours, twice a week but I still struggled with this. I had to sleep before going and I was in pain the entire time. It was really difficult and I dreaded it each week. However, I needed to earn the money to pay for a exhibition planned for 2016. It finally came to the end of summer and I knew that school would be starting soon. I knew that I wouldn't be able to manage school and work together and it really worried me. But, I sat down and figured out that I should have earned just enough money alongside the other fundraising ideas I had planned. I was so so thankful that I was then able to quit my job. I hadn't had the job very long but it was what was best for me and I knew I would be a lot happier without the job to worry about. 

The next week, school had started and I was feeling well enough to attend. I didn't feel like my normal self, but it was good enough. I was still having difficulty in class in terms of my concentration and memory abilities but I just figured that I needed to work harder. I think this was around this time that a lovely lady from our church got in touch and asked us if I had been tested for Lymes disease. She had a friend who was diagnosed with Lyme after many many years. Many years too late for him. My symptoms sounded very familiar to him and he was worried about me. We then got into contact with him where he began to share his knowledge about the disease with us. I hadn't really ever heard of the disease up until then and found it all very interesting. It was around this time that we discovered that the tests in the UK are very unreliable and that the doctors do not know very much about this Lyme disease. I didn't remember having a bulls-eye rash, the main symptom that doctors appear to use for this diagnosis, nor did I remember ever seeing a tick on myself. As familiar as the symptoms sounded to me, I just didn't think I could have this disease. 

By the start of October I was missing school. My symptoms had worsened again and I literally felt as if my body was shutting down. It then continued to get worse to the point where some days I couldn't even get out of bed. I believe it was around this time that we decided to look into private Lyme testing in Germany. We had discovered that this rash was only found in about 50% of sufferers and that ticks can be as small as a poppy seed meaning that I could easily have been bitten without realising. The more research I did, the more people I found who also didn't realise they had been bitten and had very similar symptoms. Speaking to this friend who is a sufferer, he also was feeling worried for me as he recognised the signs and symptoms all too well. We also had learnt that the longer you leave treatment, the worse the disease gets and can leave you with lifelong issues. With this in mind and still no answers, we decided to go with the private tests. I was very fortunate that my parents were willing to go to this effort and pay the additional money or the private tests as I know that no everybody would be this lucky. 

We had the blood taken and sent off to Germany and my symptoms continued. I was too unwell to complete any school work and was always worrying about my health, my education and even my future. It felt like this illness was going to stick with me forever and I worried that I wouldn't be able to live the life I wanted. I am a pretty positive person and I tried to keep these thoughts at bay, but as you can imagine, they arose every now and then. About a week after sending the blood, we got the results. My mum was actually out when she received the e-mail but she couldn't open the document on her phone so she called me to do it from home. I was seriously hoping that the results would be positive (as strange as that may sound) because I was just dying for an answer. I was really really nervous before opening the e-mail and I was shaking like a leaf.

I finally opened the document to see the words 'negative' over and over. My heart sank as I assumed this meant no more answers. However, I then scrolled through the rest of the document where there were lots more results with numbers and other things I didn't really understand. One thing that stood out to me was 'indication for an actual cellular activity against borrelia burgdorferi'. To me, this sounded like it was saying I did have the disease. At this point I was just very confused and didn't know what to think. So, my mum send these results to a lady from the private testing base in England and to our friend, the sufferer, asking if they could interpret this for us. To which they responded telling us that it looked like I did, in fact, have Lyme disease! I was so so so beyond happy upon receiving the news. I had finally been given an answer after 6 months of struggling and a month of being in bed. I know that some people go years and years and years without getting diagnosed and I really feel for those people. I am very thankful that we were able to go down this route and finally receive at least some form of answer.

Throughout this time I have often wanted to write about it on my blog. However, considering I had no idea what was wrong with me, I didn't know what to write. I also had many theories about what it could be but didn't want to offend anybody who was an actual sufferer. Finally, when I did have something confirmed to say, I felt too unwell to write about it, hence why it has taken me so long to write this post. 

I am very aware of how huge this post is right now so I think that will be all for this post. However, I still have a ton more to share about the symptoms in detail, trying to get treatment, my NHS journey (the different hospitals and tests) and where I am at now. I plan on sharing all of this information, but if you have any specific questions about this then feel free to leave a comment or contact me directly. 

I am still not well, however, I am getting there and feeling better than I have in weeks and weeks. 

Thanks for reading,

Holly Xx