What if I told you self-love put my Rheumatoid Arthritis of 14 years into remission and squashed my Irritable Bowel Disease, would you believe me?
During the course of my young adult and adult life, my health has been an Auto-Immune disease war zone. For those that don’t know, I was diagnosed at 17 years old with severe Rheumatoid Arthritis and soon after, fell so ill from the autoimmune disease, my doctor recommended getting a wheel chair to get around. Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic progressive disease that has no cure. It causes inflammation in the joints, resulting in ungodly pain, ugly deformities and immobility.
There were times in my 20’s that my Sed rate (the rate at which specific blood cells settle, indicating inflammation) was 120 where the normal range is below 20. I pretty much functioned in a state of painful stuper. I lived in enough pain, I could barely stand to hear myself breath. Oh and if you were wondering what the pain feels like, imagine your body burning in flames and while burning, someone thinks it’s a great idea to stab you repeatedly with knives. “Shina, are you serious?” No, of course not. I am dead serious. Fire and knives my friends. The pain was so crippling, I couldn’t accomplish simple task like brushing my teeth, combing my hair or buttoning my pants without having some assistance. Everything hurt so bad, I wouldn’t even eat. Severely anemic, an unhealthy 116 pounds at 5’9.
There were many dark days where all I saw was “No there is no cure.” The doctors would say "your body doesn’t seem to be responding to any of the medications but we can’t figure out why.” My medication list looked liked a thesaurus of words the average bear couldn’t pronounce. The trial and errors, I felt like a science project. This won’t work , lets start over and add this to the list, right back to this isn’t working again went on and on and on. And of course on again. Infusions at the Cancer institute, at home injections, pills and needles, more pills and even more needles. I have so many sharps containers, my house looks like a biohazard collection center. I couldn’t see any light, like none at all. I was depressed and living under an extremely dark cloud.
To add insult to injury, at some point along the way, I acquired Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which is another form of an auto-immune disease manifestation. It is common to suffer from IBD in conjunction with RA, as Auto-Immune diseases seem to like to hold hands and often come in pairs.
That too was painful. Not sure if it was worse in pain or just more of an embarrassment and inconvenience to be spending 70% of my life over or on a toilet. Everything that I consumed, seemed to get rejected immediately, causing my body to be missing the vitamins to function as a normal human being. Imagine going through the motions of life in a constant fog everyday, where your brain seems to be on vacation and your body can’t muster up the energy to get off your keister and live life. The symptoms of dehydration were too real, as nothing stayed in my body long enough to be broken down into anything nutritious.
I’ve been dancing with Rheumatoid Arthritis for 14 plus years, some of which were decent, but I’ve always been on immuno supressants (except pre pregnancy and during pregnancy). For the longest, I’ve taken 2 needles a week and a concoction of other pills. However, for the past 3 months or so, I haven’t been taking anything. Not because I consciously decided that I was breaking up with my meds, but basically I’m a rebel and I do what I want cause I’m poppin! LOL Just kidding.
My body usually shouts, “Hey girl, time to take your meds, we are starting to struggle here.” Pretty much the only reason I ever take the darn things. But honestly, I have been forgetting, because there haven’t been any painful reminders. So I have just been going about my business… Deet te dee. And then bam it hit me. “Hey girl, its been a while and you're still fine.” And just like that, it’s been 3 months of inconsistent meds but I am feeling lively and full of LOVE, almost pain free.
Wait, what?!? How did I get here? I'm not sure I can even map my quest to good health. What I do know is, that through my spiritual journey this year, my self-love has grown tremendously. I am more mindful of the energies I am sensitive too and in knowing that, I do my best to balance them and keep the good ones flowing. I honor myself. I express my gratitude to God through many modalities and in my open expression, my love for myself and humanity has grown in ways I cannot capture in words. I do my best to replace judgment with love and pretty much sprinkle it everywhere, on everything. Like for real, I aint' een' trying to be deep right now, but seriously, I am full of love. But why love you ask? Love is the secret ingredient to healing.
“Love is energy and energy is everything”. When we love ourselves, without condition, without boundaries, without judgement, we are sending our earthly body a message of positive energy. We are energetically charging ourselves with divine goodness. Healing, love and light. We are also equipping our bodies to keep toxins at bay.
As I grow on my spiritual journey, my self- love continues to mound and I am so excited for the day love completely conquers my RA. As I come in awareness of how powerful energy is, I’ll continue to self-heal, sending my body lots of love and light. Thank you self-love for putting my Autoimmune diseases in remission. You are the real MVP!
To everyone reading this, I wish you the same kind of inexplicable self-love that has inspired this love tool!
Love and light to you all!
Besos,
Shina