My Healing Journey

The Beginning: A Life of Unexplained Illness

I can’t pinpoint exactly when it all started. It wasn’t one moment but rather a series of strange, unexplained symptoms that kept sending me to the doctor. I was in my early twenties, just trying to live a normal life, yet I found myself dealing with debilitating conditions that no one could explain.

There were times I’d be out with friends, and suddenly, my body would betray me. I’d have to cut the night short because I was covered in hives, welts, and painful lumps. Other times, I’d feel overwhelming weakness, dizziness, aching limbs, sore joints, or an unbearable coldness that no one else seemed to feel. I was constantly tired, constantly unwell.

By 2002, the pain and fatigue became unbearable – I described it as feeling like a hundred-year-old woman who had just run a marathon and then been hit by a bulldozer. No seriously – those were my exact feelings – exact words.  I could do nothing but lie down and suffer. These “attacks” would come and go throughout my life, and at the time, I had never even heard of fibromyalgia.

I had two major outbreaks of erythema multiforme and angioedema, ten years apart – first in 2004, then again in 2014. Both times, my entire body was covered in painful welts, which would swell and bruise me inside and out. It was terrifying. But still, there was no clear cause, treatment or answer.

The doctors would run tests, rule things out, and send me on my way. I would walk out of the appointments feeling relieved that I didn’t have one of the conditions they tested for – but then what was wrong with me? Why did I keep getting sick?

The thing with invisible illness is that when you take pride in your appearance, people assume you’re fine. My lipstick smile and carefully put-together outfit literally would cover my entire body and hid everything I was going through. In medical settings, I sometimes felt this worked against me. I looked okay, so how bad could it really be? But no one saw the pain I was pushing through just to function.

The First Clue: 2015 Emergency Room Visit

In 2015, things took a turn. I ended up in the emergency room with what doctors suspected was appendicitis. They performed a laparoscopy and found signs that I might have Crohn’s disease. But without concrete proof, the official diagnosis didn’t come. It was another case of “it could be this, but we can’t be sure.” I was sent home with no real answers, just like so many times before.

I had been feeling very ill for quite some time before this. I was missing lots of nights out and events because I kept feeling unwell, and I wanted to avoid drinking alcohol because this seemed to make things a lot worse. I was having excruciating stomach pain that seemed to come and go, and I often didn’t feel like eating – although, oddly, sometimes eating actually helped.

After several attempts to seek help and being brushed off by the doctor, they finally sent me for a laparoscopy after I became severely sick and started vomiting blood. At this point, the blood seemed to be coming out of every orifice, but after such a long medical history, I felt the doctors had written me off as neurotic since they could never really find any cause. I believe this led to me not getting the tests that could have led to my diagnosis much sooner.

During the operation, I aspirated, which was incredibly serious. This led to me contracting pneumonia while in the hospital, making an already awful situation even worse. I was extremely ill and had to remain in the hospital until I recovered. I was just desperate to get home and to get better. In my mind, I was still hoping that it would turn out to be something less serious than Crohn’s disease. I think I was in denial – grasping at the idea that maybe it wasn’t a lifelong condition, that maybe I’d get better and move on. But deep down, I knew something was seriously wrong.

I must have been suffering from Crohn’s disease for about four years before I received medication for it – that’s four years of damage to my terminal ileum and four years of suffering that might have been avoided. Had they taken a holistic approach, searched for the root cause rather than just treating the symptoms, and perhaps taken me more seriously from the start, things might have been different.

Even after a colonoscopy, I had a nurse tell me I probably just had IBS. This was a nurse who did not know me, my medical history, or what I had been through! I cried for about an hour after she said that, and it stuck with me to this day. I knew it wasn’t IBS. I knew it was serious. And yet this person assumed, because I looked okay, that I had something mild. How devastating. She will never know the harm that her comment caused me.

The Diagnosis: 2017

By 2017, I finally received confirmation: Crohn’s disease. An MRI revealed the truth, and while it was devastating to hear, it was also a strange relief. At least I finally had a name for what had been destroying my body for so long.

Ironically, just two years earlier, my mum had been diagnosed with Crohn’s as well. Looking back, she also had bouts of erythema and angioedema, but her cases were milder. It became clear that this wasn’t just a random misfortune – there was a pattern, a history, a genetic link.

At the time, doctors believed that my severe muscle pain was a side effect of Crohn’s and that the medications would help. But they didn’t. The pain persisted, and eventually, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia as well.

The Breaking Point: 2019

If I thought my journey had been difficult up to this point, nothing could have prepared me for 2019. My health deteriorated rapidly. My left shoulder had started causing pain in 2018, but by 2019, it was unbearable. I had such limited movement that even breathing hurt. On top of that, I was in so much pain from Crohn’s that I couldn’t even walk. The side effects of my medication were horrendous – morphine wasn’t even helping. I was collapsing from the effects of the Crohn’s drugs, my hair was falling out, I had gained a significant amount of weight, my gums were bleeding, my rectum was bleeding, and I had chronic fatigue so severe that getting off the couch felt impossible.

I had built a business from the ground up, pouring my heart and soul into it. But my body had other plans. I physically couldn’t do it anymore. Closing my business felt like losing a piece of myself. It wasn’t just the work – it was my confidence, my identity, my financial security. Everything I had worked for over ten years was slipping away, and I couldn’t stop it.

That year, I hit rock bottom. I genuinely didn’t know if I could go on. The pain was relentless, and with everything I had lost, I questioned if I even had a future worth fighting for. Sadly, the thought of ending it all crossed my mind more than once.

But then something inside me shifted. I realized I had two choices: let this disease define me, or fight back.

My body had spent nearly three decades trying to destroy me – but what if, instead of seeing it as the enemy, I chose to love it instead?

I decided I wasn’t going to let Crohn’s dictate my life anymore. I was going to take control, to change my mindset, and to give my body the love it had been starved of for so long.

I started making changes – small at first, but they built momentum. I paid attention to my body, learned to nourish it, and surrounded myself with positivity. I became my own advocate, pushing for the medical care I needed, researching everything I could, and treating my doctors as my team. I realised that no one was going to fight for me the way I could.

Fast forward to August 2024 – I had another major flare-up and ended up in the hospital several times, including A&E visits. I was put on steroids for three months, then started immunosuppressant therapy with two different drugs. But here’s the good news: I responded so well that by early 2025, I was down to just one medication – adalimumab, a bi-monthly injection – and my Crohn’s appears to be in remission.

Even more incredibly, just before my 50th birthday, I became almost fibromyalgia-free. After joining an Action for Pain group, I learned about the science behind chronic pain and how somatic healing works to rewire and retrain neural pathways. Understanding pain at a neurological level changed everything. Through these strategies, I was able to reduce my fibromyalgia symptoms until they were almost gone. Somatic healing is fascinating and powerful, and I continue to use it as an ongoing strategy to manage my health and well-being.

It’s been a long, brutal journey, but I’m still here. And that’s why I started Love Core – to show others that even in the darkest moments, there is hope.

I want people to see that if I can come back from rock bottom, they can too. I lost my career, my confidence, my health, and almost my life. But I’ve found something even more valuable: self-love, resilience, and a passion to help others find their own path to healing.

This is just the beginning of the story. I have so much more to say about my healing journey, about the power of the mind, the importance of community, and the way we can reclaim our lives, no matter how much we’ve lost. If you’re struggling, please know that you are not alone.

And most importantly, it does get better.