I’m going to admit...I am scared to do this and my heart at the moment feels like it is going to jump out of my chest and run from me. Has this ever happened to you? My entire being is screaming at me not to do this, but, then I have this small but over powering part of me that is saying, speak, let it go!  I’ve always kept a lot of my personal life to myself, especially my health. I never wanted people to treat me differently. I was always the strong one I’ve been told and acted like things didn’t bother me,  If they only knew that I was shattered to pieces inside. That the fight that I was fighting was all internal. My body has been fighting this war that never ends and it is consuming me, I am withering away. The picture above of over 500 bottles/boxes of medications, is only a small part of my story, the picture above doesn't include all medications given to me through out the years. This is just a tiny window into my world.  By the grace of God I still have His breath in me and I am still here. I am following His lead and I am going to let it all go and just trust this process.........Okay, here I go. 

My name is Steffanie; I hope you are doing well. Thank you for taking the time to be in this moment with me. I have to do a lot of fast forwarding so there will be details that I am going to have to skip over. As of August 1,2020 it will be 4,593 days of severe pain and inflammation. This all started when I was 24 years old in March 2008. My body has been fighting a battle for 12 years and I went to bed as a healthy, active, funny, loving person and woke up the next morning  to what I didn’t realize at the time, to a nightmare that would be with me 24 hours a day for a decade. I woke up one morning and had this terrible pain in the back of my skull and it was nothing I have ever experienced and thought I must have slept really wrong because this was the worst head/neck pain I’ve ever felt. The first day went by then the second and I kept getting worse. Now it’s a week and I’ve barely slept, something is horribly wrong, this isn’t normal. I am now having full on migraines every day for over a year. This wouldn’t let up for me and I was on constant ice packs and in bed majority of my days. The only way to describe how bad this pain had gotten was it felt like something deep within my head and neck was trying to eat its way out of me. It burned like it was on fire and throbbed, ached, it pierced through my skull and the burning, constricting pain was finally radiating throughout my head and it would go into my face down my neck into my shoulder blades. I had to learn very quickly that if I cried it made things so much worse for me, even though I wanted to scream, I couldn’t, because I knew the consequences and it would mean more pain and another ER visit. I had to cry quickly and lightly and get it over with. I had to shut off all emotions. I couldn’t think clearly, I wasn’t sleeping. I remember the whole house would be so quiet and everyone looked so peacefully sleeping and I could hear every creak of the house and the pine tree scrapping the side of the house and I was on the living room floor rocking back and forth, This wasn’t the first time I had asked God to take me, I couldn’t suffer like this anymore. I thought here I am in my 20’s and have lived in the ER and hospitals and had every scan done and they couldn’t find anything. This became my life, Doctors, Specialist’s, ER’s, Hospitals, Mayo Clinic, Diamond Clinic, MRI’s, CT’s, X-Rays, Physical Therapy, Acupuncture, Chiropractor, STIM, Red Laser Therapy, Traction, Magnetic Therapy, Blood work, spinal tap, 2 year Botox study, nerve blocks, steroid shots, etc. Everything came back normal; or body rejected and put me in more pain.  How is this even possible if these things are supposed to help you?  Everything in my life took a back seat, my career, school, my friendships started to fade because I couldn’t go out with them anymore, my family relationships suffered and couldn’t see them. I could not be present and when I was able, I had to physically, mentally, emotionally prepare myself to do this in advance. Everything I did had to be planned out and I knew whatever I did there was always consequences and my body was going to pay for it. A 5 on the pain scale is a great day for me. This is when I am able to do more and be more active. I had to learn how to live, think, speak, move through this level of pain, this took years.

Fast forward I am now 30 years old. This pain started in one part of my body and it has now traveled to other places in my body. My entire body has been at war with itself and I was told that I have Fibromyalgia an auto immune disorder. I went years of having MRI’s and CT scans and now they finally are able to see something. Due to all the inflammation, I now have three cervical bulging disks in my spine. For so many years I just needed something to show up on these scans to explain why I was in so much pain and I was told that this should not be putting me in all the pain I was in. I was already fighting something bigger than myself and I’ve had to fight doctors too? I was then labeled as a special case and unfortunately there is nothing special about it. This meant things were too complicated and a lot of doctor’s gave up on me and I kept having to search for more answers. I was given so many medications that nothing could bring down all this pain and inflammation, not even the anti-inflammatory shots I had to give myself daily in my legs to try and get this to stop. I felt so hopeless and doomed, I was stuck in a pain suit.

I am now 32 and some of the medications that I take help take the edge off, but I am still high on the pain scale. All these medications are not the answer for long term use and don’t always help me, I am still searching for answers. I can see the changes in my body from all that it has been through. My body is even more sensitive now to chemicals, certain foods, I can’t wear perfume, lotions, nail polish. I am sensitive to light, smells, sounds, etc.

I am now 33 and having new symptoms and went to see an OBGYN and I was told I needed to have some biopsies done of my cervix. I was then sent to an Oncologist who wanted to do more testing; they think I might have cancer of the cervix. I was told after all the tests I had stage 3 cervical cancer that spread to Lymph nodes. I was told I needed to have chemotherapy and radiation and if I didn’t, I would maybe have a year to live. This was a hard pill to swallow and a part of me didn’t want to go through with treatment, I was already so tired. I remember just sitting at home with no TV or music on, just silence, I went days like this because I had a huge decision to make. I thought of what my sister went through and she passed away when she was 28 years old from cancer. I thought of my Mom who passed away a year after my sister and my father who passed 8 months before my sister. I thought my family is going to lose me too and if I didn’t try to fight this, I would let them down. I honestly didn’t want treatment and I wasn’t going to take it. But I had to try for them. I didn’t want to let my loved ones down, I felt we already had it tough for a long time and something has to change for us. My treatment plan was chemotherapy, external radiation and internal radiation. My body did not react well to any of these, it was rejecting treatment and I had to be hospitalized for pain management and observation. I finally made it to my third treatment which was the internal radiation. This was more invasive and the first go didn’t go as planned. I had to be put to sleep to have a small rod stitched into my cervix which would guide and line up the machine. This thing looked like a black octopus, very strange and odd looking and they had to pack me with a lot of gauze to keep this thing with legs in place so it doesn’t move while I’m receiving radiation. Well I’m thinking all will be OK when I wake up since I was put to sleep so there would be no pain. Boy was I wrong; I woke up screaming and for them to take it all out. It felt like sand paper was rubbing inside me. I didn’t get to have treatment that day because for my body we now know we have to come up with a game plan for pain. I don’t have a normal body and I am extremely sensitive to pain. I was given an epidural each time I needed this done. I was supposed to have five treatments total. The piece that was stitched to my cervix actually fell out before my fourth treatment so we decided that the fifth treatment wasn’t necessary, honestly it was probably a blessing in disguise because my body really needed to rest now.  Fast forward, I am going to bypass the gory details. As of today July 2020, I am in my second year of remission!!! I know we needed some good news, So I am happy to report that. It’s been a long time coming and I am so thankful that I made it through a lot of the healing that had to take place after all of that, it was a very slow process. I can also say I had a great team of doctors, nurses and technicians who helped get me through the treatments. From holding my hand and encouraging me, I am so thankful for each and every one of you.

I am now 36 years old and I am feeling more symptoms. I feel my pain and symptoms have layers to it and it goes much deeper then I can explain. I am having a lot of severe pain in my abdomen, this pain makes my body tremble, shooting pain down my legs, up towards my chest and this pain stays there it doesn’t ease up. It almost feels like my muscles are locked up and sometimes it’s hard to get a good breath. I am very fatigued, weight loss, my body has these severe over heating/sticky episodes, these are different from hot flashes since I went into menopause as soon as I started cancer treatments.  I’m in bed a lot due to all these symptoms and it’s hard to even find the words to describe it all, it is pretty overwhelming and so scary.

 I am currently not working and have no income. I have made a lot of lifestyle changes to try and help my body heal. My hope is healing from more natural elements. This brings up my next phase in my health journey. There is a Holistic Nutritionist I would like to see and a friend of mine recommended this to me. It has helped her as well as her son who is in college. They were having some health issues and this health practitioner helped run tests that other doctors would not do. They both are doing so much better. This Holistic Nutritionist will dig deeper in testing to find out the root cause and not just treat all the symptoms. I’ve never had someone who was willing to investigate into this for me and wants to know what my daily hour by hour looks like. No one has ever taken the time to do this type of investigative work for me. My insurance  does not cover this, everything would be out of pocket.  I am right at the door and those answers I’ve been longing and praying  for are right there. The only thing that is stopping me are funds to help pay for this door to open and to dig further to find the root cause. 

To end this with positivity, my other very good news is, I officially surrendered it all to God and I was baptized May 4, 2019. I believe He is guiding me towards a healthier me and finding out what is truly going on with my body. To have those answers and finding the right treatment, it would allow me to be present in this life. My goal is to get off all medications and for this huge number to become zero. To find what nutrition works for my body so I can learn what I can eat and what I cannot and to give my body what it truly needs. To also test if my environment could be causing this. My hope is with what I learn and all that I've been through to be a light for others who are going through hardships. To help fight for the ones who can’t because they just don’t have the energy or strength. All your energy goes towards fighting what’s going on inside you. Everything else in life gets pushed aside. Just a side note for anyone that has someone in their life with health challenges, you are not pushed to the side because they don’t love or care for you. It’s definitely not intentional, what they are fighting is just extremely exhausting and they don’t have the energy for anything else. Please don’t give up on them, they need your love more than ever.

 Thank you family and friends for your love and compassion and for being so understanding to all my limitations. There is power in prayer and thank you for keeping me in yours. I love you much!

 I don’t know what is going to happen or if others will read this. Honestly this is terrifying, I’ve been very silent about what has happened in my life. So, today, now, I’m letting go and letting God. 

Love,
Steffanie

After you have suffered a little while, God in all his grace will restore you and make you strong and firm, steadfast.  1 Peter 5:10