A Day In The Life: Healing Chronic Illness

How I manage RCCX genes and have reversed a plethora of "incurable" diagnoses

I was recently asked to share all the things I did/do daily to heal chronic illness.

This has changed a lot depending on the season of life I am in, so I will share a sample day in my life through four seasons:

1. Pre-diagnosis

2. Bedridden

3. Making Progress

4. “Healed”

November 2016 at the Majorelle Garden in Marrakech, Morocco

Pre-Diagnosis

In my twenties and early thirties, while I did have sporadic symptoms, I didn’t have any diagnoses. I worked as a consultant and had a career climbing the corporate ladder, and I didn’t have kids until I was 33. My health issues started spiking in pregnancy, still undiagnosed, but didn’t hit me in a major way until I was 35.

This is the “day in the life” for about a decade that contributed to my health crash.

Morning

Wake up late. Immediately look at work emails on my phone, respond to anything I can, and clock the time I started working because I’m definitely going to be late getting to the office.

Throw on a dress and a blazer, grab my keys, phone, purse and head out the door to the bus stop. Skip breakfast. Order an almond/coconut/oat milk latte from my phone and pick it up in the foyer of my office building before heading up to my desk.

Afternoon

Grab a salad on my way to a clients office. Or, skip lunch because I have too much to do and no time between meetings to eat, plus my stomach hurts anyway. Get a second afternoon coffee, preferably with a client or coworker with whom I can discuss industry gossip.

Evening

Text my husband around 5 and try to time our commutes home so we can meet near the train station and walk home together. Convince him to pick up food on his way or Door Dash whatever the latest hip restaurant is in San Francisco/New York/Brooklyn/Oakland. Watch TV while working late, festering with irritation about my job.

Work a lot, make a lot of money, low key hate my day-to-day, spend a lot of time travel planning to maximize my PTO and enjoy the time I do have away from work.

March 22, 2020. The hospital was requiring masks but didn’t have any adult ones so they made me wear a pediatric mask. They tested me for Covid but the early tests were faulty — it came back negative but my doctor told me this particular test didn’t work well on women as they were all testing negative.

Bedridden

Age 35, one toddler, early pandemic days. I was one of the first to have Covid and it set off a cascade of symptoms that got worse and worse until I had to take a leave of absence from work (I ended up retiring early). Friends and family don’t understand how sick I am, everyone is traumatized from the pandemic, no one can see each other, and my husband has almost no help working from home with a toddler and a bedridden wife he has become a full-time carer for, while our family has lost half of our income. I have little in the way of answers and have been told there is a 50% chance I will get better, and a 50% chance I will just get worse until I die. Not great odds. We are mentally preparing ourselves for the possibility my husband will be a single father to our only daughter.