Chronic Illness Challenge Day 1

Well the first post of this is to introduce yourself and kind of put yourself out there so here I am. My name is Kali and I’m twenty years old. And my chronic illnesses are a heart murmur, chronic migraines, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hypermobility type), painsomnia, Meniere’s disease, Asthma and chronic pain due to having broken my kneecaps in semi freak accidents. And I am also partially deaf in my left ear.

As for how long I’ve been sick I would definitely say that in a way that has been one heck of an adventure in itself. For the record though, I would like to say that I was actually born three months premature. My mother developed preeclampsia and her liver started to fail.

So my heart murmur I’ve actually had my entire life, my mother has one too so I’m going to assume that that is actually genetic in origin. My chronic migraines I would say began around middle school. But according to my neurologist, she thinks that they actually aren’t related to changes in hormone levels at all.

The Ehlers Danlos Syndrome I was actually formally diagnosed with fairly recently, but I have most likely also had that my entire life as well. The painsomnia came about as a result of the EDS, migraines and chronic leg/knee pain. Though the entire leg pain I have learned also occurs as a result of low potassium levels.

Meniere’s disease was actually the first thing that I was diagnosed with that I would classify as a true chronic illness. I say this because I never really thought that all of these separate illnesses or things actually made such an impact on my life until I really sat down and thought about it. Then after I thought about my Meniere’s diagnosis and how much one thing that was wrong with me fed something else that was wrong with me. An example would be my painsomnia leading me to be awake all night, then that would result in an increase in the volume of my tinnitus. Then the tinnitus and lack of sleep would lead to a migraine, which would leave me stuck in bed all day.

The Meniere’s I would also say that I have also had my entire life but it had a more gradual onset than the rest of my illnesses. When I was younger I used to get dizzy only when I would get ear infections and my pediatrician would pass it off as a symptom of the ear infection. And I did get an unusually high amount of ear infections as a child but this had always felt different to me. Eventually I had a VNG, which revealed 32% damage to my inner ear of my right ear. I’ve had it for as of three years this September.

And lastly Asthma, I think I’ve confused the most people with this than any other illness I have to be honest. I actually started having symptoms of Asthma in around late middle school to early high school. I had asthma tests done and they were positive. Though the tests also showed that my lungs are somewhat too small for my body as well as it appeared that I actually had results from the test that indicated that I also had mild lung damage. Which we then correlated to an accident in my mechanics class where I had accidently inhaled soldering fumes. I did have a severe asthma attack that day as well, and had to end up going to the doctor for a nebulizer treatment and a strong course of oral steroids.