The Mystery Illness Diaries

Well HELLO there, little Irish Blog! It's been well over a year since I have updated, and although I have not been faithfully posting, I have not forgotten you. Time for a resurrection!

I started this blog because I wanted to write a little bit about the adventures I was having when I was living and working in Ireland at the end of 2010. Obviously I've been back in the States for over a year now, and a lot has happened since I left the Emerald Isle. One of the biggest life changes that occurred was last July when I suddenly became a runner, working myself from Couch to Half Marathon (13.1 miles) in 3-4 months ♥. My journey as a runner has been pretty life-changing, and I have often thought of recording my many running adventures and mishaps right here in this blog. As soon as I feel healthy enough to run again, I would like to make good on that intention.

Which brings me to my next Major Life Event (as well as the title of this post): my Mystery Illness.

On Sunday, March 4th I began having some incredibly strange symptoms that included numbness in my hands and feet, stiffness and pain in my head/neck/back and jaw, fatigue, nausea, and EXTREME weakness in my legs, to the point where I couldn't walk up and down stairs and struggled to get out of bed. Pretty scary for a girl whose strong legs had recently carried her through two Half Marathons and over 10 other 5k, 10k, and 15k races.

Over the past month I have logged nine days in the hospital, given enough blood samples to quench the thirst of a Zombie Army, have stumped and confused a myriad of doctors and specialists, had an MRI, a spinal tap, and am going to go in for a few CAT Scans later today. And to this day, no one seems to know what is wrong with me, why this all happened in the first place, or what kind of recovery plan I will need to follow. This entire process has been pretty scary at times, and frustrating throughout. But thankfully, I have had an incredible amount of support from family and friends from around the world, literally. Facebook has allowed me to chronicle my Medical Maladies in blog-like status updates that I write fairly frequently. I started writing my updates as an easy way to update the family members and friends who were following my journey all at once, but to be perfectly honest I now write as much for myself as I do for them. It's incredibly therapeutic, to say the least.

I'd like to start posting my updates here on this blog, but rather than try to recount my entire journey now, I'd rather just take all the posts I wrote on facebook and move them over here, one at a time, in chronological order. They will be unedited, copied and pasted in here exactly the way I posted them originally.

In other words, it's time to Tilt The Milk on this bitch ♥. Let the Mystery Illness Diaries begin!