So shoot forward to graduating high school. I graduated over a year early, again because I hated school and just wanted to be done. I Continued modeling for a while, which I had been doing while in high school as well. But things weren’t falling into place like I had imagined. I wasn’t getting the jobs that I wanted at the places that I wanted. Moving to New York was not working out either, for many reasons, but mainly because a fellow model that I was going to room with got married. I couldn’t understand getting married so young without becoming independent first. Soon after, I guess due to my innate hard working, dependable nature, I all of a sudden found myself working a lot of odd jobs for distant acquaintances. I did some retail work and fell into tons of temp jobs like being a nanny/babysitter, house sitter, dog walker, and personal assistant work. I never sought out to do any of this, but the pay was good, referrals went crazy, and it kept me busy.
I wish I could say what it was that helped me make the decision on my career, well it was God obviously, but no true “event” at the time drove me to this. I was bored with all of my temp work. There was no way I could do all that forever. I was also losing interest in modeling. Although I absolutely love fashion, the self-absorption involved in the entire industry is something I learned I could not tolerate. It was one evening, I remember going into the bathroom as my mom was washing her face and I told her, “Okay, I don’t want to do it and I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I am going to be a Chiropractor”. She started the very next day helping me figure out what all I needed to get done at the community college in order to start at Parker College of Chiropractic. I have a very smart, supportive mother. She knew that I was different than most. She knew that there was no point in “making” me go to college unless I was aiming for something and chose to go on my own.
It is true that if you are determined to do something, hard work will get you anywhere. I learned quickly, while in school, that God allowed me to go through Lupus and all the many problems that come with the disease, in order for me to have the passion, drive, and determination to get through school so that I could help others. My close friends and I often enjoyed how a substantial amount of exam questions, both on lecture and board exams, were successfully answered by us solely because I had been through that particular ailment either when I was younger or had gone through it during school.
No not all of my problems stayed away after my initial Chiropractic “miracle”. Maintenance is key with a health history like mine. When your body goes through as much trauma as mine did, you have to make a choice of whether or not you want to be aggressive in your desire to stay healthy, or if you want to let things go back to the way they originally were, and eventually progress even further. With the high level of stress I experienced while going through school, I went through a multitude of rather enjoyable trials regarding my health. It came to a point where it all became rather comical to my mother and I each time I received either a new diagnosis or a puzzled specialist who couldn’t provide us with any answer. I will provide you with a few selections for enjoyment purposes.
A large amount of stress drastically started during undergrad at my local community college. Now you may think community college is no big deal. And actually it isn’t to most people, but when you have never actually been to a classroom before there are a lot of new things to get used to. Correct, I was home-schooled. Thankfully though, I took a lot of online classes during undergrad in order to get everything done faster, but all of the changes apparently still didn’t agree with my body. One day, when I was thankfully at home, over a period of about twenty minutes, I completely lost all of my vision. Yes, it was terrifying. I had no other symptoms, simply could not see for about four hours. It was bedtime when I finally got my vision back so I went to bed and woke up the next morning and everything was fine. At first we ignored it because that’s just how we treated all of my weird problems. Ignore them and maybe they’ll go away. Well the vision loss kept becoming more and more frequent and it did start to become a little dangerous. What if it happened while I was driving? And it in fact did once. There was also no way of predicting when it would happen or how long it would last. Speeding through an exam at school several times because I knew my vision was quickly fading, quite honestly sucked too.
And so back to the specialists we went. I can’t say how many Doctors we went to regarding this but they all said the same thing, “I have no idea”. I did receive some other diagnoses’ along the way though as well as discover that each time I went in to see them, me vision decreased more and more. Those poor Doctors probably thought my mom and I were insane the way we bust out with laughter each time one would tell us that I should have died because of a certain condition they subsequently discovered. So I soon got sick of them telling us not only that they didn’t know what the vision loss was caused from, but also the lack of an informed bedside manner and individual patient care. This one specialist at Southwestern Medical Center in particular I had been seeing once a week, sometimes more, for over a month provided me with the final straw to end the diagnoses journey for that particular problem. On the day of our last visit, he walked into the room, flipped through my chart, said everything looked fine, and then said, “Now what exactly is your concern? Why are you coming here?” And with that I laughed and said, “yea mom I’m done, let’s go.”
I have never gotten an official diagnoses regarding this particular vision problem, but over the years, with the help from a Chiropractor/Professor, I have come to my own conclusion. One of the many symptoms of Lupus is decreased circulation, and stress as we know, affects all parts of your body in a negative way, especially when you have a history like I do. I was diagnosed with optic neuritis several times, sometimes having it during these episodes of vision loss and sometimes not. With this condition being a problem with inflammation, like a majority of the conditions I have had, I see a similarity of inflammation of nerves and blood vessels, and maybe some brain involvement due to past head trauma. I am not one of those people who are necessarily concerned in diagnosing every little thing that goes wrong, but what I was mainly looking for was if there was prevention to umm going blind. Cleanses, rest/decreased stress, adjustments, and exercise have seemed to be the key for this particular problem. When I am not paying attention to these things, I will have a vision loss episode a couple times a week. When I am focused on my lifestyle, I have gone almost a year without any problems.
No comments:
Post a Comment