So a full year of being sick has officially gone by, one of the longest years that I have had. It all started early March 2018 with an earache, a sore throat and a hell of a vertigo. If you don’t know what I’ve been through or if you want to know what I’ve been through, please keep on reading. After a year of no social media posts or actually talking about it, I thought it was time to share a bit. I go into my illness, my lifestyle changes, the depression, friendships, the lot.

My entire life revolves around a headache, not just a normal one, the headache that brings you to your knees , the headache that makes you vomit. It feels like a balloon is overinflated and about to pop inside my head. The life that I’m living now is not nearly the same life that I was living 12 months ago, I need to pace myself.
After 5 Ear-Nose-Throat visits, 4 different General Practitioners, MRI Scan, multiple bloodwork done (10 – 15 tests), Maxillofacial Surgeon (2 Teeth removed in the chair), Chiropractic Adjustments, Homeopathy (Total waste of money), Ear Institute, special made biteplate, antidepressants , I still have no idea what is wrong with me and no improvement has been made.

I can write pages and pages about what is exactly wrong with me, but I’ll spare you the details. Imagine sleeping 10 hours and to still feel like you haven’t slept at all, every day is an uphill battle to get through work, I have so little energy and the pain is surreal. I wake up 5 out of 7 mornings with a severe headache , the other 2 mornings it normally hits me after breakfast. I have a sore throat about 4 days of the week and major sinus issues every single day. My soft palate does this popping sound (sounds like small bubbles popping ), this sound echoes through my left or right ear depending on how I open my mouth. This was my big issue in the beginning, I’m so used to it at the moment that I forget about it till I’m in a quiet place. Shortly after I got sick, the Tinnitus started. At first I could not fall asleep, now it’s more of a friend to me. Normally my neck starts to pain and then the headaches start. It starts at the right back of my head and then moves over to the top front part of my head.

For the first 3 months medication was my best friend, I tried every single thing that the Dr gave me. Pain pills (10 stilpanes a day), all types of pills that were given to stop the inflammation in my mouth, antiviral drugs, many courses of antibiotics, daily immune boosters, the list goes on. I soon realized that the meds were making things worse, bloody stomach, loss of energy and so I stopped every single pill that I was on. I now take the occasional painkiller to ease an episode but nothing much. After stopping the meds I tried the natural way of letting my body heal itself. As soon as I got my immune system up, the headaches were not as frequent anymore but still daily, I had more energy at least.

I tried changing my diet, no more dairy , no cheese, no milk, no yogurt, no dairy for 8 weeks. I cut out coffee completely for 8 weeks (it was terrible), they said that tea calms oneself and the caffeine can have a negative impact. I cut out any fizzy drinks, any sugars that weren’t natural for 3 months and I still keep them to a minimum. After all the diet changes, still no difference. At least I am back to 2 cups of coffee a day and no more sugar aswell as 5 to 8 glasses of water a day.

Lunch time is a quick devouring of the biggest plate of healthy cooked food from home and then a 45 minute session in a dark room with my best friend, the icepack. This literally gets me through the day, I would die from the headaches if I didn’t rest. My time sleeping has been upped to about 9 to 10 hours a night helped by my eye mask, earplugs and white noise sounds.
I can’t sleep when all 3 of those are not being implemented.

I can’t go cycling at all, I tried a few times but I was useless and the aftermath just isn’t worth it. I would go do a very easy 10km ride, instantly followed by a severe headache and a sore throat, I would take days to recover. I decided that it wasn’t worth it, even though I love cycling so much.

Partying is a thing of the past, the only party I go to is an Xbox live party or my Fortnite party to join the crew. I haven’t touched alcohol since I got sick and don’t plan on doing so till I’m healthy again.

My religion has grown a lot and I plan on growing my relationship with God even more, this has been a big factor in my progress. With my change of habits I also became more financially stable, paying off my debts from the partying and letting go of all these materialistic things, trust me that was my best decision ever. The amount of stress that I have taken out by changing my lifestyle is what’s getting me through all of this.

I still have fun, just a new type of fun that is totally different to my old lifestyle. I go to all the nice coffee shops, all the small and chilled restaurants, anything that has a natural feeling to it and I’m there. I go for hikes in mountains with my girlfriend, we have the same interests so that helps. Going from a full blown party lifestyle to my current lifestyle is totally different, but it was so easy to make the transition, much easier than I thought. I love the new me, the old me is dead and gone (dead and gone). My personality is still the same but my habits are totally different, totally.

The one thing that I never thought I would go through is depression. I work in the cycling industry and seeing everyone ride their bikes while I can’t ride mine literally made me sad, it still does. Seeing people happy and smiling while I am in so much pain also gets to me, I still smile but not as much as I would like to. I hit a low after no improvement at about 6 months and by this I mean a heavily depressed me. Though times reveal true friends, I lost a lot of friends (nearly all my friends). Going through what I’m going through I realized that I was always there for everyone, but when I needed them, they were no where to be found. This made the depression even worse.
Friends can break your heart too, at the moment I struggle to make new friends due to the fact that I don’t want the same to happen again, I’ll get over it, but it takes time. Luckily for me I found the girl of my dreams who supports me full time and helps wherever she can, a new best friend and a lover. With the sickness I get irritated much easier and a few mood swings, she sticks with me through it all. I got through my depression but I still have the occasional low, but I get through it. I used to say why me? Now all I say is try me. These tough times will eventually pass and then I’ll be able to live a full life with a different view, a more humble view.

Appreciate the health that you have today for it could be gone tomorrow.

If you got this far, thank you for taking the time to read my post, much appreciated.