Rebuilding after Becoming Allergic to my Favorite Chicken Sandwich (and everything else in my life)

Fighting my way back to a beautiful life after slipping into a chronic health spiral

I have always trusted my body to deliver. It has carried me through hundred mile bike rides, marathons, and bustling long work days in high volume retail. It endured an episode of over 100 bee stings, a global pandemic, and an undisclosed number of fender benders, mostly unscathed. So why then, when I felt all systems were firing, did everything start failing? How did I go from a few headaches a month, to daily chronic pain? How about no food allergies to kale is the anaphylactic devil and now I just eat bowl of beef and butter three times a day thank you very much.

I don’t mean to brag, but when it comes to having a 1/4 life crisis, I am winning the game. To say life went sideways is an understatement, but I am determined to get back on the horse. According to my therapist, ChatGPT M.D., that means understanding what happened so we know where to go from here. So, if that means putting it on Substack for probably just my Mom to read, by golly, I will do the dang thing.

But first, a little background-

Recalling when the rhythm of pain set in on my life, I look back on Tuesdays. These were the Instagram LIVE days where I would bounce around in front of the camera for an hour, gabbing into the ether and performing rapid outfit changes. Women would comment into the chat, claiming pieces to buy, and the whole thing was fun and exhilarating, except for the small fact that these days now featured an unwelcome guest: migraine.

(here I am pedaling leather jackets to a local boot shop, yeehaw)

I would leave the set of my QVC-esq performance, both buzzing and exhausted and head to Postino’s for a chicken sandwich. Scarfing it down from the front seat of my minivan, I was a vigorous multitasker. When not scrolling incessantly or responding to DM’s, I was taking phone calls, talking a mile a minute through bites of food. The pain would spike in a rage, but I sidelined it. I was busy girl bossing after all, and this was just a pesky annoyance.

This cycle trudged on for a year, intensity growing. Now, the pain would linger, and pop back up every few days. Suddenly, it wasn’t just my beloved Postino’s chicken sandwich causing a spike, it was all food. I had worked myself into a state of perpetual pain, and still I was rejecting it. After all, I had designed my life around working hard and working out. My husband and I rose early on the weekends for runs, bike rides, and mountain hikes with our dog. Sometimes all in one day! We even did all of these things un-caffinated, because we are snobby puritans / don’t like how caffeine feels. (A fact our friends find deplorable.) The other days of the week, I would have my nose to the grindstone, pivoting at the needs of the growing business I worked for. Personal styling with a top client? No problem. Track inventory? Sure. Take out the trash? Yep. Run to Peru to meet with manufacturer? Done. Merchandise new store? On it. I had designed my life just as I wanted it. Interesting and hectic and packed to the brim. There was no margin for the ruminating pain that had settled into the background of my daily life, so I took matters into my own hands.

First, I took booze out of the equation (it wasn’t there much to begin with). Then, I tried haphazardly to clean up my diet. (Who doesn’t wind down the day with cookies and ice cream???) These interventions decreased the spiking but never pinned the pain. I took more steps. I scaled down my beloved exercise routine. I pulled back from socializing, restricted my eating all together, and stopped setting an alarm in the morning. I know now this is a *cutesy* way to give yourself depression, but at the time it felt like the sensible thing to do. Who says girl boss doesn’t need beauty sleep?

Beauty sleep did nothing. In fact, I would wake up with a slew of strange symptoms that now accompanied my ever present migraine. The new cast of characters included chronic hives, face and eyes swollen nearly shut, gut issues, tongue swelling, fatigue, joint pain, and brain fog. I was messing up at work, I couldn’t exercise, and thanks to a negligent TMJ doctor, I was so over medicated that I couldn’t drive a car or string together a coherent sentence.

And it was at this point I decided to crash the girl-boss-mobile right into the wall. No more were the days taking calls from the toilet (I was crazy. I know.) I wouldn’t get to see our new line of designs come to fruition. I wouldn’t be there to facilitate the opening of the new store and worst of all I would be letting down the kind and hard working young women I managed and worked alongside for years.

The whole thing was devastating, and I thank God every day he gave me the strength to do it. Stepping away from my work was a gift my broken body gave me, knowing now my dopamine fried brain never would have. I called my husband, worked up into a pant. This hadn’t been on the agenda for the day, or even at all. I relayed to him that I had just quit my job, and I was very sorry as this was probably something husbands and wives were supposed to discuss beforehand. He was incredibly kind and gracious, and remains so. We joke now, he was not two months into his first job out of graduate school and I had promptly promoted myself to stay-at-home wife. Looking back it has been much more of a journey than we had anticipated. I am fortunate for a kind and loving spouse to walk alongside me in the messy parts of life.

(Here is a pic of my husband and me, enjoying bikes and beers for the 4th of July)

6 months have now passed, 20+ doctors appointments, countless tests and specialists, a (sort of?) diagnosis. I am finally working with a naturopathic M.D who has placed my case somewhere between histamine intolerance and MCAS, a bugger of a disease that affects your gut, immune system, and nervous system, making daily life a landmine of triggers that can set off a slew of unsavory symptoms for seemingly no reason.

I am grateful to share that incredible progress has been made on some fronts. I am no longer crawling out of my skin with hives and can recall the names of my nieces and nephews. Others, including my chronic daily migraine, remain devastatingly immovable for now.

I am determined to heal and to share the realities of my less than linear journey.

I will use this Substack to track progress with things like:

-Nervous system regulation

-Hormone replacement therapy & regulation

-Supplementation

-Chronic pain

-Histamine Intolerance/MCAS

-Womanhood

-Faith

-Humor (or an attempt at it)

-And eventually all of these things will improve so dramatically this can just turn into a weather tracking Substack or something so stay tuned for that

I have dealt first hand with the pitfalls of healthcare in managing chronic pain, a painfully misunderstood experience shared by 1 in 5 Americans.

I have wrestled with God and magnesium supplements.

There is a lot more to my story, and I am here to make sense of what happened and to document my path to a happier, healthier ending.

Thanks to my Mom for reading, and anyone else in the off chance you ended up here too.

P.S.

For anyone fearing the superiority of AI, I did ask it to give me a title for this piece and the feedback was so hilariously terrible. Please enjoy to my own chagrin:

The Day I Quit Everything

When the Migraine Moved In

Girlboss to Grounded

The Tuesdays That Broke Me

Pain, Performance, and the Chicken Sandwich (this one actually has potential- so I recycled it)

Girlbossing Into the Abyss

Chronically Fabulous (Sort Of)

Caffeine-Free, Clarity-Free

How to Get Depression in 5 Easy Steps

My Brain Fogged So Hard I Quit My Job

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