The Early Years

Continuing my journey with my health, the early years.  I was born a blue baby, as my mother had rh negative blood. I had to have 2 blood transfusions.  I was then placed in an incubator for a period of time.  I was born with inner strength that kept me alive and well from my birth forward.

I recall being sick pretty often growing up.  I think a lot had to do with having many silver fillings in my mouth, as well as an undiagnosed allergy to dairy.  Both, can cause a massive amount of symptoms in the body.  Some early signs were that I had a runny nose most of the time, bloating, and feeling tired often.

When I was 10 years old, an unfortunate event happened that changed my life forever.  My dad died tragically at age 46.  I was numb for a long time, as I was very close to him. How could the closest person in your life, just disappear like that overnight?  I became even quieter than I already was.  I felt sad and alone most of the time.  I was lost and lonely. It took over 5 years to get over the fact that my dad wasn’t coming home again.  I fortunately, had a few good friends to help me through it, and still have a few of those friends today. There was a big learning experience from my loss.  Every few years, I grew more and more.  Wanting to help others, to help ease my pain.  I started in Girl Scouts, helping a girl who was handicapped and was about to drink a bottle of glue.  I stopped her, and helped her out weekly for quite some time.  It felt good, even at a young age, to help someone else in need.

When I was 12 years old, in school they luckily started to check all the kids for scoliosis.  I wasn’t really sure what it was at first.  I was told, unfortunately that I had scoliosis.  I thought the wool was pulled over my eyes! Not another stressful thing to happen to me! We got several opinions from doctors.  Some felt surgery was the way to go.  Others felt a Milwaukee Brace was the way to go.  We ended up opting for the brace.  My doctor was excellent and world renowned.  I ended up over time, liking the brace, how it supported me and taught me excellent posture.  It helped my curve progressing. My doctor wanted me to either take up swimming or lift weights at a gym.  I took the latter one.  Lifting weights at 12 1/2 was a bit young, but it felt great.  I built muscle and strength not only in my back, but the rest of my body as well. It also gave me confidence.  I haven’t stopped exercising since then.

Going through a few years that were very tough for me,  taught me acceptance, resiliency, and determination.