A journey through childhood symptoms, family history, missed clues, and the decades-long path to understanding Crohn’s Disease and MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis.
“The diagnoses gave my illnesses names, but the story had been writing itself for years.”
📖 A Quick Note Before We Begin
Before we dive in, I should probably warn you that this is one of the longest diary entries I’ve written for The Dual Diagnosis Diaries.
Grab a cup of coffee.
Maybe two.
Trust me, if six-year-old me could drink coffee for medical reasons, you can handle one while reading this.
You may even want a snack.
Preferably one approved by your gastroenterologist.
Normally, I try to keep my diary entries short enough that you can read them during a lunch break or while hiding in the bathroom pretending to work.
This is not one of those diary entries.
This diary entry spans nearly five decades.
Now, I suppose I could have broken this journey into five or six separate diary entries.
Maybe ten.
Honestly, there are probably enough stories here to keep The Dual Diagnosis Diaries busy for the next year.
But sometimes it’s easier to just rip off the band-aid.
Besides, if my body spent decades creating this medical mystery, the least I can do is tell the whole story in one place.
Consider this the director’s cut.
The extended edition.
The version with all the deleted scenes, plot twists, surprise guest appearances, and medical plot holes that somehow managed to make perfect sense years later.
It includes two autoimmune diseases, more specialists than I can reasonably count, countless symptoms, enough bloodwork to qualify me as a frequent donor against my will, and enough plot twists to make a soap opera writer jealous.
As I sat down to write this entry, I realized something.
Many of the diary entries I’ve already shared through The Dual Diagnosis Diaries make sense on their own.
But they make even more sense when you understand how we got here.
In many ways, this diary entry is the prequel to everything you’ve already read and everything I will write in the future.
Think of it as the origin entry.
The backstory.
The “previously on my immune system” episode.
This is the diary entry that connects the dots between the little girl who thought coffee for constipation was normal and the woman living with Crohn’s Disease, MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis, and polyautoimmunity today.
If you’ve ever read one of my diary entries and wondered:
“How did she end up here?”
This is your answer.
And if you’ve ever wondered how one person ended up with Crohn’s Disease, MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis, a collection of specialists, enough medical records to fill a small library, and an unwanted lifetime membership in the polyautoimmune club…
Well…
You’re definitely going to want to keep reading.
Because while this may be one diary entry, it is also the foundation of many others.
It’s the missing chapter.
The origin entry.
The explanation behind so many of the diary entries that came before it—and many that are still to come.
Ready?
Let’s start at the beginning.
💭 How Did We Get Here?
Lately, I’ve found myself asking a simple question:
How did we get here?
Not just to Crohn’s Disease.
Not just to MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis.
But to this exact moment in my life.
How did it take decades to connect dots that now seem so obvious?
How did so many symptoms become normal?
How did so many clues go unnoticed?
And perhaps most importantly…
How did a six-year-old drinking coffee for constipation not raise more questions?
Seriously.
That one detail alone should have prompted somebody to say:
“You know what? Maybe we should look into this.”
Instead, everyone—including me—accepted it as normal.
Which, as you’ll soon discover, became a recurring theme throughout my life.
The truth is, when you’ve lived with symptoms for as long as I have, you stop seeing them as clues.
You see them as life.
You stop asking questions.
You stop wondering what “normal” feels like.
Because your version of normal is all you’ve ever known.
What I’ve come to understand is that my body had been trying to tell me a story for years.
The problem was that I didn’t know I was reading one.
What I thought were unrelated chapters turned out to be part of the same book.
The digestive issues.
The insomnia.
The anemia.
The breathing problems.
The swallowing difficulties.
The fatigue.
The diagnoses.
The surgeries.
The endless appointments.
At the time, each one seemed separate.
Today, I know better.
Today, I can see the thread connecting them all.
Hindsight has a way of making things look easier than they actually were.
It’s easy to connect the dots once someone hands you the completed picture.
It’s much harder when you’re standing in the middle of the story trying to make sense of pieces that don’t seem connected.
My body was dropping clues like breadcrumbs.
Unfortunately, both my doctors and I seemed to have gotten lost in the woods.
To be fair, my body wasn’t exactly known for clear communication.
It preferred riddles.
Plot twists.
Red herrings.
And surprise endings.
If my immune system were a coworker, Human Resources would have received multiple complaints by now.
But despite the confusion, the delays, the missed clues, and the years spent searching for answers, every piece of this journey matters.
Because understanding where I am today requires understanding where I started.
And that story begins long before anyone ever uttered the words Crohn’s Disease or MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis.
It begins with a little girl who had no idea her body was already leaving clues behind.
🚸 The First Clues
The first clues belonged to Crohn’s Disease.
I displayed symptoms as early as five or six years old from what I can remember, although they may have started even earlier.
One of my biggest struggles as a child was severe constipation. Not the occasional constipation that most kids experience, but the kind that could leave me miserable for days. Sometimes laxatives weren’t enough to help.
My aunt, whom I affectionately called Gamas, eventually discovered that giving me coffee would stimulate my system and help me go.
These days, I can laugh about it.
I was probably the only six-year-old I knew who drank coffee on a regular basis—not because I wanted to, but because my digestive system refused to cooperate.
Most kids were drinking juice boxes.
I was over here drinking coffee and discussing bowel habits before first grade.
In hindsight, that probably should have raised a few questions.
At the time, Gamas wasn’t trying to solve a medical mystery.
She was simply trying to help a little girl who couldn’t go to the bathroom.
Neither of us knew we were looking at one of the earliest clues in a journey that would take decades to fully understand.
At the time, nobody thought much about it.
The funny thing about growing up with chronic symptoms is that everyone adjusts to them.
My family adjusted.
I adjusted.
Doctors adjusted.
What should have seemed unusual slowly became normal.
The constipation became normal.
The stomach pain became normal.
The fatigue became normal.
The insomnia became normal.
The hospital visits became normal.
At some point, I assumed everyone spent this much time thinking about their digestive system.
Spoiler alert: they don’t.
When something has always been part of your life, you stop seeing it as a warning sign.
You just see it as life.
My medical journey actually started even before I can remember.
I was born with a hernia, and as a result, my appendix was removed when I was only six months old.
It’s almost fitting that my relationship with the healthcare system began before I was old enough to walk, talk, or understand what was happening around me.
Long before I would face Crohn’s Disease.
Long before severe anemia.
Long before gallbladder surgery.
Long before kidney stones.
Long before sleep studies, oxygen, BiPAP, IVAPS, and MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis.
My body was already writing a story that would take decades to fully understand.
One thing I’ve learned is that the clues weren’t hiding.
They weren’t subtle.
They weren’t buried deep inside complicated medical records.
Many of them were right there in plain sight.
We just didn’t know what they meant yet.
And honestly, when your six-year-old self is drinking coffee for constipation, maybe the universe was trying a little harder than usual to get everyone’s attention.
🏥 A Childhood Full of Specialists
My health struggles didn’t stop with digestive issues.
As a child, I also had constant problems with my tonsils.
It seemed like I was always battling infections, sore throats, or some new issue involving them.
Unlike many kids who outgrow those issues, mine followed me well into my teenage years.
Eventually, the problems became severe enough that my tonsils were removed when I was seventeen years old.
By that point, I had spent most of my life rotating through doctor’s offices, specialists, medications, and medical explanations.
My body was already building a résumé of medical concerns that no teenager should have had.
Then there was the asthma.
I honestly can’t remember a time when asthma wasn’t part of my life.
Some of my earliest memories involve inhalers, breathing treatments, doctor’s appointments, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations because I couldn’t breathe.
At one point, I was spending so much time around medical professionals that I probably should have been earning reward points.
Unfortunately, healthcare doesn’t have a loyalty program.
Trust me, I checked.
The thing is, I definitely had asthma.
Nobody is disputing that.
The question is whether asthma was working alone or whether MuSK+ MG had quietly joined the team years before introducing itself.
Because if autoimmune diseases were coworkers, MuSK+ MG was definitely the one sneaking into meetings without introducing itself.
Then there was the insomnia.
Just like the asthma, I can’t remember a time when sleep came easily to me.
Long before sleep studies, oxygen, BiPAP, IVAPS, and breathing diagnoses, I was the child lying awake while everyone else slept.
I spent countless nights staring at the ceiling.
Watching the clock.
Listening to the sounds of a sleeping house.
Wondering why sleep seemed to come so easily to everyone else.
While other kids were counting sheep, I was apparently conducting overnight research projects.
If overthinking were an Olympic sport, I would have qualified decades ago.
Sleep wasn’t something I did.
Sleep was something I negotiated with.
Poorly.
And unfortunately, my body was a terrible negotiator.
At the time, all of these things seemed unrelated.
The asthma.
The tonsils.
The insomnia.
The digestive issues.
Each symptom had its own explanation.
Each diagnosis had its own specialist.
Each specialist had their own piece of the puzzle.
In hindsight, it feels like everyone had one puzzle piece, but nobody had the picture on the box.
The pulmonologist focused on my lungs.
The ENT focused on my throat.
The gastroenterologist focused on my digestive system.
And somewhere in the middle was me, collecting specialists the way some kids collected baseball cards.
Unfortunately, my collection was significantly less valuable.
Every specialist was doing exactly what they were trained to do.
They were treating the symptoms in front of them.
The problem wasn’t that anyone was wrong.
The problem was that nobody could see the entire picture yet.
What none of us understood at the time was that my body was telling more than one story simultaneously.
The asthma was real.
The insomnia was real.
The digestive issues were real.
The tonsil problems were real.
But some of the clues belonged to illnesses that hadn’t yet been identified.
My body already knew the ending.
The rest of us were still trying to figure out the plot.
And it would take decades before all the pieces finally came together.
🧬 Looking Back Through a Different Lens
One of the most frustrating parts of my journey is knowing that some of the clues may have been overlooked not because they weren’t there, but because they didn’t fit what doctors expected to see at the time.
To understand that, it’s important to remember when and where this story began.
I grew up during a time when Crohn’s Disease was still considered relatively uncommon and was most frequently associated with people of Northern European or Ashkenazi Jewish descent.
Medical knowledge has evolved significantly since then, but during the 1970s and 1980s, many physicians simply weren’t looking for Crohn’s Disease in children who looked like me.
Growing up as a multi-racial child, I didn’t fit neatly into the profile many doctors associated with inflammatory bowel disease.
And to be fair, medicine often relies on patterns and statistics.
The problem is that sometimes people don’t fit neatly into the boxes those statistics create.
Apparently, neither my DNA nor my immune system received that memo.
Years later, after exploring my family history and reviewing my DNA results, I gained a deeper understanding of just how diverse my ancestry really is.
As it turns out, my family tree is significantly more complicated than the forms I used to fill out at doctor’s offices.
And honestly, that’s part of what makes it beautiful.
The more I learned about my ancestry, the more I realized that many of the assumptions made about me never captured the full picture.
The irony is that while doctors were trying to fit me into a box, my DNA was quietly over here saying:
“Good luck with that.”
When I eventually learned more about my heritage, I discovered a rich blend of African, European, and other ancestral backgrounds that tell a much more complex story than any single box on a medical form ever could.
Then again, if my life has taught me anything, it’s that very few things about me fit neatly into a single category.
Not my ancestry.
Not my health.
Not my immune system.
My immune system, in particular, has always preferred to color outside the lines.
Aggressively.
What makes this part of the story even harder is that when testing was eventually performed, the results reportedly showed evidence consistent with Crohn’s Disease.
Yet the diagnosis was still missed.
Years later, I learned that assumptions may have been made based on my ethnicity rather than taking the time to ask questions about my family background or consider the complete picture.
Imagine that for a moment.
After years of symptoms, there was evidence pointing toward an answer.
And still, the answer wasn’t seen.
I often wonder how different things might have been if someone had paused long enough to ask a few more questions.
Not because it would have changed who I am.
Not because it would have prevented every struggle that followed.
But because earlier answers might have meant earlier treatment.
Earlier understanding.
Earlier relief.
One thing I’ve learned through both my genealogy research and my health journey is that every part of our story matters.
Our family history.
Our ancestry.
Our symptoms.
The conversations that happened.
And sometimes the conversations that didn’t.
Because sometimes the missing piece isn’t found in a lab result.
Sometimes it’s found in understanding where you came from.
As I’ve spent time researching my family tree, I’ve come to appreciate how much we inherit from the generations before us.
We inherit traditions.
We inherit stories.
We inherit resilience.
Sometimes we inherit unanswered questions.
And sometimes we inherit medical conditions.
The challenge is that we can’t learn from information that isn’t shared.
Growing up, health wasn’t something my family talked about openly.
Like many families, we talked about work.
We talked about life.
We talked about surviving.
But we didn’t always talk about medical histories.
As a result, I had no idea that some relatives had also struggled with Crohn’s Disease until many years after my own diagnosis.
That discovery would eventually become another clue.
Another piece of the puzzle.
Another reminder that sometimes the answers we’re searching for have been part of our story all along.
We just didn’t know where to look.
And in many ways, that’s exactly what this diary entry is about.
Not blame.
Not regret.
Not rewriting the past.
It’s about understanding it.
Because the more I understand where I came from, the better I understand how I got here.
😢 The Diagnosis That Almost Wasn’t
By the time I was finally diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, I had already spent years living with symptoms.
Years of stomach issues.
Years of constipation.
Years of fatigue.
Years of anemia.
Years of wondering why my body seemed to operate differently than everyone else’s.
The irony is that evidence had appeared before.
Testing reportedly showed findings consistent with Crohn’s Disease.
Yet somehow, the diagnosis was still missed.
At the time, I had no idea any of that had happened.
I was simply trying to survive whatever my body decided to do on any given day.
And trust me, my body rarely believed in consistency.
Apparently, unpredictability was one of its favorite hobbies.
Years later, when I learned that evidence had existed but the diagnosis had been overlooked, I experienced a mixture of emotions.
Frustration.
Confusion.
Disbelief.
Because when you’re searching for answers, it’s hard not to wonder how different things might have been if those answers had come sooner.
Would earlier treatment have changed anything?
Would earlier intervention have prevented some of the complications that followed?
Would I have spent fewer years wondering what was wrong?
Those are questions I’ll never be able to answer.
Eventually, though, the answer came.
Crohn’s Disease.
After years of symptoms, uncertainty, and searching, someone finally put a name to what was happening inside my body.
The problem was that I had absolutely no idea what that name meant.
Today, if someone receives a diagnosis, they can pull out a phone and immediately research it.
Back then, things weren’t quite so simple.
All I knew was that a doctor had told me I had a disease I’d never heard of before.
And naturally, my brain skipped right past curiosity and landed directly on:
“Am I dying?”
I remember calling my mom crying hysterically.
Not because I understood Crohn’s Disease.
But because I didn’t.
“What the hell is Crohn’s Disease?” I remember asking through tears.
The diagnosis I’d spent years searching for had finally arrived.
And instead of relief, I felt fear.
I was twenty-three years old.
I had never heard of Crohn’s Disease.
I didn’t know anyone who had it.
I didn’t know what it meant for my future.
I didn’t know whether I would get better.
I didn’t know whether my life would ever feel normal again.
I just knew that something had been found.
And that finding had a name.
It’s funny how often we think getting answers will immediately make us feel better.
Sometimes answers bring relief.
Sometimes they bring understanding.
And sometimes they bring a whole new set of questions.
For me, it brought all three.
The diagnosis changed my life.
Not because Crohn’s Disease suddenly appeared that day.
The disease had likely been part of my story for years.
The diagnosis simply gave it a name.
A name for the pain.
A name for the fatigue.
A name for the anemia.
A name for the symptoms that had followed me for as long as I could remember.
For the first time, I knew what I was fighting.
I wasn’t imagining it.
I wasn’t overreacting.
I wasn’t weak.
I wasn’t lazy.
There was a reason.
There had always been a reason.
We just hadn’t found it yet.
Of course, if someone had told twenty-three-year-old me that this would eventually lead to infusions, surgeries, specialists, biologics, gallbladder removal, kidney stones, a second autoimmune disease, and enough medical records to fill a small library, I probably would have hung up the phone and requested a refund.
Unfortunately, chronic illness doesn’t come with a return policy.
Trust me.
I checked.
What I didn’t know then was that receiving a Crohn’s Disease diagnosis wasn’t the end of the mystery.
It was only the end of the first chapter.
There were still clues I didn’t understand.
Still symptoms that didn’t quite fit.
Still answers waiting decades to be discovered.
I just didn’t know it yet.
🌳 The Family Secret Nobody Talked About
Another thing that surprised me was what I learned years later.
Growing up, my family didn’t really talk about health issues.
We talked about family.
We talked about work.
We talked about life.
But medical conditions weren’t often discussed.
As a result, I had no idea that some of my relatives had also struggled with Crohn’s Disease.
I didn’t learn that until years after my own diagnosis.
Apparently, this information was being stored in the same family vault that held all the other important secrets.
Looking back, I often wonder how differently I might have viewed my diagnosis if I had known.
Maybe I wouldn’t have felt so alone.
Maybe I wouldn’t have been so scared.
Maybe I would have realized sooner that I wasn’t the first person in my family walking this path.
Instead, I spent years believing I was navigating something completely unfamiliar, only to later discover that pieces of this story had already existed within my own family tree.
The irony isn’t lost on me.
For years, I searched for answers in doctor’s offices, hospitals, lab reports, and medical records.
Meanwhile, some of the answers were sitting around family dinner tables, tucked away in conversations that never happened.
As I’ve gotten older, researched my genealogy, and learned more about my family’s history, I’ve realized that every family has stories that get passed down and stories that don’t.
Some stories are told so often they become family legends.
Others quietly disappear with time.
Unfortunately, health stories are often among the ones that go untold.
Just like my ancestry research uncovered branches of my family history I never knew existed, my health journey uncovered connections I never knew were there.
The more I learned, the more I realized that some of the answers I had spent years searching for were hiding in conversations that never happened.
Sometimes we inherit more than eye color, hair texture, or facial features.
Sometimes we inherit medical conditions.
Sometimes we inherit unanswered questions.
And sometimes we inherit silence.
Not intentionally.
Not maliciously.
Simply because previous generations didn’t talk about health the way we do today.
Looking back, I wish those conversations had happened.
Not because they would have changed my diagnosis.
Not because they would have prevented my journey.
But because they might have helped me understand that I wasn’t alone.
They might have helped me realize that I wasn’t the first person in my family trying to make sense of symptoms that didn’t seem to fit together.
They might have helped me feel a little less afraid.
Had I known that Crohn’s Disease already existed somewhere within my family tree, it wouldn’t have changed my diagnosis.
But it might have changed how alone I felt when I received it.
Sometimes the answers aren’t hidden.
They’re simply stories that were never told.
⚕️ The Beginning, Not the End
As frightening as the diagnosis was, receiving a name for what I was experiencing wasn’t the end of my journey.
In many ways, it was just the beginning.
Like many people newly diagnosed with a chronic illness, I thought the hardest part was over.
I thought finding the answer meant finding the solution.
Unfortunately, chronic illness doesn’t always work that way.
Sometimes a diagnosis answers one question while creating ten more.
Not long after my diagnosis, bloodwork revealed just how severe my anemia had become.
My iron levels were reported at only 3%.
Three percent.
To this day, I still don’t know how I was functioning.
Actually, that’s not entirely true.
I wasn’t functioning particularly well.
I was surviving.
There is a difference.
The fatigue became overwhelming.
Some days I was so exhausted that I would need to rest before driving home from work.
Not because I wanted to.
Because I didn’t trust myself not to fall asleep on the drive.
My friend Steph, who was my neighbor at the time and would later become a confidant and a key part of my safety plan, became one of the people helping me navigate that season.
I’d call her before leaving work so someone knew I was on the road.
If I didn’t make it home when expected, someone would know.
Thank you, Steph. 💜
At the time, neither of us fully understood why I was struggling so much.
We simply knew I needed support.
A few years later, another complication arrived.
Three years after being diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, a gallstone became lodged in my bile duct, leading to the removal of my gallbladder.
Because apparently my digestive system had decided that simply having Crohn’s Disease wasn’t enough excitement.
Then, about six years after my diagnosis, kidney stones joined the party.
And let me tell you, kidney stones are the kind of guests that nobody invites and nobody wants to host.
If you’ve ever had one, you already know.
If you haven’t, I sincerely hope you never do.
The years following my Crohn’s diagnosis taught me an important lesson.
Receiving a diagnosis doesn’t mean the journey is over.
It simply means the journey finally has a name.
And while Crohn’s Disease explained many of my symptoms, there were still questions that remained unanswered.
Questions that wouldn’t be answered for many years.
🪨 More Clues
As the years passed, I settled into life with Crohn’s Disease.
Or at least I tried to.
I learned how to navigate appointments.
Treatments.
Lab work.
Procedures.
Insurance approvals.
Medication changes.
And all the other things that come with managing a chronic illness.
In many ways, Crohn’s Disease became part of my normal.
The problem was that some pieces of the puzzle still didn’t fit.
Even when my Crohn’s Disease was better controlled, there were symptoms that seemed to have a life of their own.
Symptoms that didn’t always follow the rules.
Symptoms that didn’t always respond the way doctors expected.
At first, I assumed that was simply part of living with chronic illness.
After all, when you’ve spent years dealing with one autoimmune disease, it’s easy to blame every new symptom on the diagnosis you already have.
I certainly did.
It seemed reasonable.
The doctors thought it was reasonable.
Everyone thought it was reasonable.
And for a while, that explanation worked.
Until it didn’t.
There were moments when my body felt like it was trying to tell me something I couldn’t quite understand.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just enough to create questions.
Questions I couldn’t answer.
Questions my doctors couldn’t answer.
Questions that would linger in the background for years.
At the time, I didn’t realize I was standing between two chapters of the same story.
I thought I was learning how to live with Crohn’s Disease.
What I didn’t know was that another diagnosis was quietly waiting in the wings.
Preparing to introduce itself.
And when it finally did, it would change the way I understood nearly every chapter that came before it.
💼 Building a Career While Missing the Clues
Through all of it, I worked.
I built a career.
I managed properties.
I led teams.
I solved problems.
I hit goals.
I met deadlines.
I navigated crises.
I showed up.
Day after day.
Year after year.
It’s honestly amazing what a person can accomplish while running on determination, caffeine, and whatever iron reserves happen to be left in their body.
At the time, I didn’t think I was doing anything extraordinary.
I was simply doing what needed to be done.
Paying bills.
Building a career.
Taking care of responsibilities.
Showing up for the people who depended on me.
That’s what adults do, right?
They keep going.
So I kept going.
There is something almost ironic about spending my career identifying problems and finding solutions while my own body was sending warning signs I couldn’t fully interpret.
Every day, I was responsible for evaluating situations, identifying risks, solving problems, and preventing small issues from becoming larger ones.
Meanwhile, my body was sending me maintenance requests I couldn’t quite figure out.
Some were marked urgent.
Some had apparently been sitting in the queue for years.
And judging by the outcome, a few probably should have been escalated immediately.
Unfortunately, my body never learned how to submit a proper work order.
I was solving problems for everyone else while trying to survive symptoms I couldn’t explain.
Apparently, I can identify a lease violation from 100 yards away.
Diagnose my own body?
Not so much.
To be fair, property management manuals don’t include a chapter called:
“How to Identify a Rare Autoimmune Disease While Managing Occupancy, Delinquencies, Vendor Contracts, Resident Complaints, and Budget Season.”
If they did, I definitely missed that training.
The truth is, work became one of the ways I coped.
When life felt uncertain, I worked.
When my health felt unpredictable, I worked.
When I didn’t have answers, I worked.
Work gave me structure.
It gave me purpose.
It gave me something I could control when my body felt completely out of control.
And for a long time, that strategy worked.
At least on the surface.
What people didn’t always see were the things happening behind the scenes.
The exhaustion.
The naps.
The doctor appointments.
The procedures.
The medications.
The days I pushed through because there wasn’t another option.
The moments I wondered whether I could keep doing it all.
The reality is that chronic illness doesn’t stop when you clock in.
It doesn’t wait until after business hours.
It doesn’t respect deadlines, meetings, budgets, occupancy goals, audits, or quarterly reports.
It simply shows up.
Usually unannounced.
And unlike residents, it never gives proper notice before moving in.
Somehow, you learn how to show up too.
For years, I focused on proving I could keep going.
What I didn’t realize then was that resilience and self-sacrifice aren’t the same thing.
I was so focused on proving I could handle everything that I rarely stopped to ask whether I should.
I became an expert at carrying heavy things.
Responsibilities.
Expectations.
Symptoms.
Stress.
Pain.
Fatigue.
And because I carried them well, people assumed they weren’t heavy.
Sometimes I assumed that too.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that strength isn’t always found in pushing through.
Sometimes strength is found in asking for help.
Sometimes strength is found in resting.
Sometimes strength is found in acknowledging that something isn’t right.
And sometimes strength is found in continuing to search for answers when everyone else has stopped looking.
Today, I am incredibly proud of the career I’ve built.
I’m proud of the teams I’ve led.
I’m proud of the goals I’ve achieved.
I’m proud of everything I accomplished while fighting battles most people couldn’t see.
But if I could go back and tell that younger version of myself one thing, it would be this:
Show yourself the same compassion you so freely give to everyone else.
Because while I was busy managing properties, leading teams, solving problems, and putting out fires, my body was quietly trying to tell me a story.
And like so many other clues throughout my life, I wouldn’t fully understand it until years later.
🧩 The Missing Piece
By this point, I had already accumulated a lifetime of diagnoses.
Asthma.
Insomnia.
Anemia.
Crohn’s Disease.
Gallbladder disease.
Kidney stones.
GERD.
A hiatal hernia.
Each diagnosis answered a question.
But none of them answered all of the questions.
For years, I believed Crohn’s Disease explained most of what I was experiencing.
Sure, I had other medical conditions.
Sure, I had a growing collection of specialists.
And yes, my medication list was beginning to resemble a small novel.
But I still believed there was one primary explanation for everything.
What I didn’t know was that another autoimmune disease was quietly weaving itself into the story.
At some point, I stopped asking why there always seemed to be another diagnosis.
Another specialist.
Another test.
Another procedure.
Another explanation for symptoms that never seemed completely connected.
Honestly, by then I was becoming a professional patient.
I knew where the good parking spots were at multiple medical facilities.
I knew which labs moved the fastest.
And I could fill out medical history paperwork with the efficiency of someone applying for a mortgage.
Those aren’t exactly life skills I ever planned to master, but here we are.
Over time, I began to understand that I wasn’t simply collecting unrelated medical conditions.
My body was revealing a pattern.
A pattern that would take decades to fully emerge.
Crohn’s Disease was the first autoimmune disease to receive a name.
MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis would become the second.
Somewhere along the way, I unknowingly became a member of the polyautoimmune club.
An exclusive membership nobody asks for and nobody wants.
I checked.
There was no tote bag.
No rewards program.
No complimentary vacation.
No “Congratulations on Your Diagnosis” gift basket.
Just specialists, prescriptions, lab work, prior authorizations, and follow-up appointments.
The membership requirements are surprisingly easy.
The cancellation policy, however, is terrible.
The diagnoses were different.
The symptoms were different.
But the underlying theme was the same.
My immune system had been struggling for far longer than anyone realized.
What I know now is that Crohn’s Disease and MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis are very different diseases.
One attacks the digestive tract.
The other attacks communication between nerves and muscles.
Yet both share a common thread.
Both occur because the immune system mistakenly attacks the body it was designed to protect.
The more I learned about autoimmune disease, the more I began to understand that perhaps my body wasn’t experiencing random unrelated events.
Perhaps it had been waving the same red flag for decades.
We just didn’t recognize it yet.
Today, I can recognize symptoms that may have belonged to MuSK+ MG long before anyone suspected it.
The fatigue.
The breathing issues.
The swallowing difficulties.
The episodes that were blamed on asthma.
The symptoms attributed to reflux.
The symptoms attributed to my hiatal hernia.
The symptoms attributed to stress.
The symptoms attributed to being overweight.
The symptoms attributed to poor sleep.
At one point, I think every explanation was considered except the one that was actually correct.
Maybe it was asthma.
Maybe it was reflux.
Maybe it was my hiatal hernia.
Maybe it was stress.
Maybe it was my weight.
Maybe I needed to exercise more.
Maybe I needed to sleep more.
Maybe Mercury was in retrograde.
At some point, we had considered almost everything except the actual answer.
The challenge with MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis is that it often disguises itself as something else.
The swallowing difficulties can look like reflux.
The breathing problems can look like asthma.
The choking episodes can look like anxiety.
The fatigue can be blamed on work, stress, anemia, poor sleep, or countless other explanations.
And because I already had legitimate diagnoses that explained pieces of my symptoms, nobody had a reason to look deeper.
Including me.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that symptoms don’t always belong to the diagnosis we think they do.
Sometimes the hardest diagnosis to find is the one hiding behind diagnoses you already have.
In many ways, MuSK+ MG was the perfect disguise.
It hid behind asthma.
It hid behind reflux.
It hid behind a hiatal hernia.
It hid behind insomnia.
It hid behind anemia.
It hid behind the assumption that everything could somehow be traced back to Crohn’s Disease.
The reality is that when you’ve spent years collecting diagnoses, it’s easy for new symptoms to get filed under an existing explanation.
After all, if you’ve already been diagnosed with multiple chronic conditions, who is looking for another one?
Certainly not me.
I was too busy trying to survive the conditions I already knew about.
What I’ve come to understand is that the missing piece had been sitting on the table the entire time.
I just didn’t recognize it.
And sometimes the missing piece isn’t hidden.
It’s sitting right in front of you.
You just don’t realize where it belongs until the picture finally comes into focus.
By the time MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis finally revealed itself, it wasn’t creating a new story.
It was helping explain an old one.
Suddenly, symptoms that had never quite fit together began making sense.
The puzzle pieces started connecting.
And for the first time, I began to understand that I wasn’t dealing with unrelated medical mysteries.
I was looking at a bigger picture.
One that had been years—perhaps decades—in the making.
The clues were always there.
I just didn’t know what they were pointing to.
Not yet.
🌬️ The Diagnosis That Changed Everything
What I understand now is that MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis had been quietly introducing itself long before anyone recognized it.
The irony is that the symptom that finally got everyone’s attention wasn’t actually the beginning of the story.
It was simply the symptom that became impossible to ignore.
For years, I had explanations for everything.
If I couldn’t breathe, it was asthma.
If I was exhausted, it was anemia.
If I had trouble swallowing, it was reflux.
If I wasn’t sleeping, it was insomnia.
If I felt weak, I was overworked.
If I became short of breath, I needed to lose weight.
Every symptom had an explanation.
The problem was that none of the explanations completely fit.
At some point, my medical chart started to resemble a group project where everyone completed their section but nobody compared notes.
Everything looked reasonable on its own.
Together?
Not so much.
The symptoms kept changing.
The symptoms kept progressing.
And deep down, I knew something wasn’t adding up.
I just didn’t know what.
One of the challenges with MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis is that it doesn’t always look the way people expect.
In my case, many of the symptoms overlapped with conditions I already had.
The breathing difficulties looked like asthma.
The swallowing difficulties looked like reflux.
The choking episodes looked like GERD.
The fatigue looked like anemia.
The muscle weakness looked like exhaustion.
And because I already had diagnoses that explained pieces of the puzzle, nobody had a reason to question them.
Including me.
What I’ve since learned is that MuSK+ MG can often mimic conditions involving the throat, esophagus, diaphragm, and respiratory system.
It’s one of the reasons some patients spend years searching for answers.
The disease can hide behind diagnoses that seem perfectly reasonable.
And in my case, it did exactly that.
For years, I carried a diagnosis of a hiatal hernia.
Sometimes I wonder how many of the symptoms we attributed to that diagnosis were actually early signs of MuSK+ MG.
After all, both conditions can cause swallowing difficulties.
Both can cause reflux-like symptoms.
Both can create the sensation that food isn’t moving properly.
Both can affect breathing.
The difference is that one is a structural issue.
The other is a neuromuscular disease.
And unless someone knows to look for it, the symptoms can appear remarkably similar.
Unfortunately, neither condition came with a giant flashing label identifying which symptoms belonged to whom.
That would have been helpful.
A color-coded symptom guide would have been even better.
Maybe a user manual.
I’d have settled for bullet points.
What I know now is that MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis affects communication between nerves and muscles.
When that communication breaks down, muscles fatigue and weaken.
Including the muscles responsible for swallowing.
Speaking.
Breathing.
And in some cases, even holding your head up.
The more I learned about MuSK+ MG, the more I found myself looking backward instead of forward.
Because suddenly, years of symptoms began making sense.
The puzzle pieces that had seemed unrelated started fitting together.
The fatigue.
The breathing problems.
The swallowing difficulties.
The episodes that couldn’t quite be explained.
The symptoms that never fully responded to treatment.
The symptoms that always seemed just a little different from what doctors expected.
Today, I can recognize clues that may have been there long before the diagnosis.
The problem with hindsight is that it makes everything seem obvious.
At the time, it wasn’t.
At the time, I was simply trying to get through the day.
Trying to breathe.
Trying to work.
Trying to function.
Trying to convince myself that tomorrow would be better.
One thing I’ve learned from this journey is that there is a difference between having an answer and understanding the answer.
When I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, I was terrified because I didn’t know what it meant.
When I was diagnosed with MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis, I was terrified for a different reason.
This time, I understood enough to know how serious it was.
I understood enough to know that MuSK+ MG is one of the rarer forms of myasthenia gravis, affecting only a small percentage of people diagnosed with MG.
Because apparently having one rare autoimmune disease wasn’t enough.
My immune system looked at the menu and said:
“I’ll take the complicated option.”
I understood enough to know that MuSK+ MG often affects breathing and swallowing.
I understood enough to know that my life was about to change again.
Not because I suddenly became sick.
I had been sick for years.
The diagnosis didn’t create the disease.
It simply gave it a name.
And there is something strangely validating about finally learning the name of the thing you’ve been fighting all along.
For the first time, I wasn’t imagining it.
I wasn’t overreacting.
I wasn’t lazy.
I wasn’t out of shape.
I wasn’t simply stressed.
I wasn’t being dramatic.
There was a reason.
There had always been a reason.
We just hadn’t found it yet.
To be fair, we were looking.
Unfortunately, it felt like we were trying to assemble a thousand-piece puzzle while someone kept handing us pieces from three different boxes.
For years, I tried to force symptoms into explanations that never quite fit.
It was like trying to complete a puzzle using pieces from the wrong box.
No matter how hard I tried, the picture never made sense.
Then one day someone handed me the right box.
And suddenly everything looked different.
The breathing problems.
The swallowing difficulties.
The fatigue.
The weakness.
The symptoms that had spent years hiding behind other diagnoses.
For the first time, the picture started coming into focus.
And when it did, everything changed.
Not because the symptoms disappeared.
Not because life suddenly became easier.
Not because I had all the answers.
But because for the first time, I understood what I was fighting.
There is power in that.
There is comfort in that.
There is validation in that.
When you’ve spent years wondering whether what you’re experiencing is real, finally having an explanation can feel like someone turning on a light in a room you’ve been stumbling through in the dark.
The room hadn’t changed.
The obstacles were still there.
My immune system was still committed to making things unnecessarily complicated.
At least now I knew which opponent I was dealing with.
There’s a certain comfort in finally being able to put the correct name on the troublemaker.
And that makes all the difference.
The breathing problems weren’t the beginning of my MuSK+ MG story.
They were simply the symptom that finally stood up, waved both arms in the air, and shouted:
“Excuse me! We’ve been trying to reach you about your autoimmune disease.”
They were simply the chapter that finally got everyone’s attention.
And today, I can finally see where the story began.
Because MuSK+ MG didn’t start when I was diagnosed.
Just like Crohn’s Disease didn’t start when I was diagnosed.
The diagnoses simply gave names to battles that had been unfolding for years.
The clues were always there.
We just didn’t know how to read them yet.
🔄 Learning to Adapt
The human body adapts.
But so do the people living inside those bodies.
Over the years, I became incredibly good at adapting.
I adapted to fatigue.
I adapted to pain.
I adapted to poor sleep.
I adapted to digestive issues.
I adapted to breathing difficulties.
I adapted to doctor appointments, blood draws, procedures, medications, and test results.
I adapted because I didn’t think I had a choice.
When you’ve been dealing with symptoms for years—or in my case, decades—you stop measuring your life against what is normal.
You measure it against what is normal for you.
And for me, feeling exhausted was normal.
Digestive issues were normal.
Insomnia was normal.
Breathing problems were normal.
Hospital visits were normal.
At some point, I assumed everyone had a running mental checklist of symptoms they monitored throughout the day.
Turns out most people wake up and simply start their day.
They aren’t conducting a full systems diagnostic before getting out of bed.
Spoiler alert: they don’t.
The funny thing about adaptation is that it can be both a gift and a curse.
On one hand, it allows you to survive things you never thought you could survive.
On the other hand, it can make serious symptoms seem ordinary.
When you learn how to function despite your symptoms, people assume you’re okay.
Sometimes you start believing it yourself.
For years, I celebrated my ability to push through.
Push through the fatigue.
Push through the pain.
Push through the sleepless nights.
Push through the breathing issues.
Push through work.
Push through life.
And society rewards that.
People call you strong.
People admire your resilience.
People praise your work ethic.
What they don’t see is the cost.
Sometimes “pushing through” is just another way of saying you’re ignoring things that desperately need attention.
I became so good at adapting that I stopped asking whether what I was experiencing was normal.
I simply asked whether I could function.
Could I go to work?
Could I make it through the day?
Could I get home?
Could I do it all again tomorrow?
If the answer was yes, I kept going.
What I didn’t realize then was that mindset may have delayed some answers.
Not because I was ignoring my symptoms.
But because I had become an expert at living with them.
I had normalized things that should never have felt normal.
The severe fatigue.
The swallowing difficulties.
The breathing problems.
The exhaustion that required strategic naps.
The insomnia that had followed me since childhood.
The reality is that adaptation can sometimes hide illness as effectively as denial.
Not because you’re pretending nothing is wrong.
But because you’ve learned how to survive despite what is wrong.
And after enough years, survival starts to look a lot like normal life.
One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is that just because you’ve adapted to something doesn’t mean it’s normal.
It doesn’t mean it’s healthy.
And it doesn’t mean you should stop looking for answers.
The reality is that many of the clues remained hidden for so long because I had become so skilled at adapting to them.
The symptoms didn’t disappear.
I just learned how to carry them.
The fatigue.
The pain.
The sleepless nights.
The digestive issues.
The breathing problems.
I carried them because I thought I had to.
And after enough years, carrying them simply became part of who I was.
The truly remarkable thing about the human spirit is its ability to adapt.
The dangerous thing about adaptation is that sometimes it convinces us to accept things we should be questioning.
I wasn’t ignoring the symptoms.
I wasn’t pretending they didn’t exist.
I had simply become fluent in survival.
So fluent, in fact, that I stopped noticing how much energy survival required.
And sometimes carrying something for long enough makes you forget how heavy it really is.
The truth is, adaptation helped me survive.
But adaptation also made it easier to overlook just how much I was surviving.
And that’s the paradox of chronic illness.
The better you become at carrying it, the less visible it becomes—to everyone, including yourself.
💪 Strength Was Never the Goal
People often tell me how strong I am.
It’s meant as a compliment, and I know it comes from a place of kindness.
But the truth is, strength was never the goal.
Personally, I would have preferred being healthy, well-rested, and not needing a collection of specialists who could probably fill an entire conference room.
Preferably a conference room with comfortable chairs and good snacks, considering how much time I’ve spent with them.
But apparently that wasn’t one of the options on the menu.
I wasn’t trying to be strong.
I was trying to survive.
There’s a difference.
When people look at my journey now, they see resilience.
They see perseverance.
They see someone who continued working, building a career, raising a family, and showing up despite everything life threw at her.
What they don’t always see are the moments behind the scenes.
The fear.
The frustration.
The exhaustion.
The tears.
The uncertainty.
The nights spent wondering what was wrong.
The days spent pretending I felt better than I did.
The moments when I questioned whether I could keep doing it all.
Strength wasn’t something I consciously chose.
It was the byproduct of having no other option.
When you have bills to pay, responsibilities to meet, and people depending on you, you keep going.
When you don’t have answers, you keep going.
When the symptoms don’t make sense, you keep going.
When the doctors don’t have explanations, you keep going.
You keep going because stopping doesn’t feel like an option.
For most of my life, I thought being strong meant pushing through.
Push through the fatigue.
Push through the pain.
Push through the sleepless nights.
Push through the breathing difficulties.
Push through the uncertainty.
Push through everything.
And to be fair, that approach got me pretty far.
The problem is that nobody teaches you when to stop pushing.
Nobody teaches you that constantly operating in survival mode comes with a cost.
Nobody teaches you that resilience can sometimes become a disguise for suffering.
If there had been an Olympic event for pretending everything was fine, I probably would have made the podium.
Maybe not gold.
But definitely a medal.
The reality is that strength isn’t always found in enduring more.
Sometimes strength is found in acknowledging that something is wrong.
Sometimes strength is found in asking for help.
Sometimes strength is found in resting.
Sometimes strength is found in admitting that you’re scared.
And sometimes strength is found in allowing yourself to be vulnerable enough to tell your story.
That’s one of the reasons The Dual Diagnosis Diaries exists.
Because for so many years, I carried these experiences quietly.
I pushed through.
I adapted.
I survived.
But surviving and living aren’t the same thing.
Today, when people tell me I’m strong, I appreciate the sentiment.
But if I’m being completely honest, I don’t want my journey to be remembered because I was strong.
I want it to be remembered because I kept searching for answers.
Because I refused to give up.
Because I learned to advocate for myself.
Because I chose to share my experiences in the hope that someone else might recognize their own clues a little sooner than I did.
The truth is, strength was never the goal.
Understanding was.
Healing was.
Answers were.
And if strength showed up along the way, it was simply because I didn’t have the luxury of giving up.
What I’ve come to understand is something important.
The little girl drinking coffee because she couldn’t go to the bathroom wasn’t strong.
The young woman crying hysterically because she thought Crohn’s Disease meant she was dying wasn’t strong.
The professional taking naps before driving home because her iron levels were dangerously low wasn’t strong.
The woman struggling to breathe before her MuSK+ MG diagnosis wasn’t strong.
They were human.
They were scared.
They were exhausted.
They were doing the best they could with the information they had at the time.
And maybe that’s what strength really is.
Not the absence of fear.
Not the absence of struggle.
But the decision to keep moving forward despite both.
Because the truth is, I never set out to be strong.
I was just trying to make it to tomorrow.
And somehow, one tomorrow at a time, I did.
💜 Final Thoughts
For years, I viewed my health challenges as obstacles standing in the way of the life I wanted.
Today, I see them differently.
They shaped me into the person I am.
They taught me resilience.
They taught me empathy.
They taught me patience.
They taught me how to advocate for myself when no one else could.
Most importantly, they taught me that answers don’t always arrive when we want them to.
Sometimes they arrive when we’re finally ready to understand them.
One thing I’ve learned through all of this is that hindsight is undefeated.
Today, the clues seem obvious.
Living through them in real time?
Not so much.
Kind of like finding your car keys after spending twenty minutes looking for them.
Except the keys were autoimmune diseases and the search lasted decades.
If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably realizing what took me decades to figure out:
My body has apparently never been interested in taking the direct route to anything.
Not diagnosis.
Not treatment.
Not sleep.
Not breathing.
Not even going to the bathroom apparently.
I can now see a little girl struggling with symptoms nobody fully understood.
I can see a teenager learning to normalize things that should never have felt normal.
I can see a young woman crying hysterically because she thought Crohn’s Disease meant she was dying.
I can see a professional taking naps before driving home because her iron levels were dangerously low.
I can see a woman struggling to breathe while being told it was asthma, reflux, a hiatal hernia, stress, weight, or any number of other explanations.
And I can see someone who spent decades searching for answers without realizing how many clues had been scattered along the path.
The clues were always there.
The constipation.
The insomnia.
The anemia.
The breathing issues.
The swallowing difficulties.
The exhaustion.
The surgeries.
The diagnoses.
The family history.
The stories that were never told.
The clues weren’t hiding.
We just didn’t know how to read them yet.
If Gamas were here today, I can only imagine the laugh we would share knowing that her coffee remedy became part of a story about Crohn’s Disease, MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis, and a lifetime of medical mysteries.
She was just trying to help me go to the bathroom.
Neither of us knew she was helping write the opening chapter of The Dual Diagnosis Diaries.
Although, if we’re being honest, she probably would have looked at this entire story and said:
“Baby, I told you something wasn’t right.”
And she probably wouldn’t have been wrong.
The truth is, my body spent decades dropping hints.
Unfortunately, it appears both my doctors and I were collectively terrible at solving riddles.
In our defense, “six-year-old prescribed coffee for constipation” should have been considered a fairly significant clue.
One thing my journey has taught me is that the people who love us often notice things long before we do.
Sometimes they see our struggles more clearly than we can.
Sometimes they’re carrying concerns they don’t know how to express.
And sometimes they’re simply standing beside us, helping us survive one day at a time.
As I think about my journey, I realize it wasn’t just built on diagnoses, procedures, lab work, and medical records.
It was built on people.
Gamas.
My mom.
My son.
Steph.
Margot.
People McNugget.
Friends.
Family.
Doctors who kept searching.
People who answered the phone.
People who sat with me when I was scared.
People who believed me when I didn’t have answers.
People who helped carry burdens they didn’t create.
No one gets through a journey like this alone.
And I am grateful for every person who helped me find my way.
It’s impossible to include every person who has played a role in this journey in a single diary entry.
Many of the names mentioned here—and many others who have supported, encouraged, challenged, loved, advocated for, or simply listened to me along the way—have their own chapters within The Dual Diagnosis Diaries.
If you’ve been following my journey for a while, you’ve likely met some of them already.
Margot.
People McNugget.
Steph.
Family members.
Friends.
And the countless individuals who have crossed my path at exactly the right moment.
Each has contributed to my story in their own way.
Some helped me find answers.
Some helped me survive difficult seasons.
Some reminded me who I was when I forgot.
And some simply sat beside me while I figured things out.
Not every story fit into this diary entry.
But that doesn’t make those people any less important.
Their chapters have been written before, and many more will be written in the future.
Because while this post is about the clues that led to my diagnoses, it is also about the people who helped me follow them.
After nearly five decades of clues, symptoms, diagnoses, and unanswered questions, one thing becomes abundantly clear:
I may have been the one living this journey, but I was never walking it alone.
For that, I will always be grateful.
If I’m being completely honest, there are moments when I wish I could go back and talk to that little girl.
Not to warn her.
Not to tell her what was coming.
But to reassure her.
To tell her that one day the confusion would make sense.
That one day the symptoms would have names.
That one day she would stop wondering if what she was experiencing was all in her head.
That one day she would stop apologizing for being sick.
That one day she would discover she wasn’t weak.
She wasn’t lazy.
She wasn’t dramatic.
She wasn’t imagining things.
She wasn’t failing.
She was fighting battles nobody could see.
And she was doing the best she could with the information she had at the time.
I’d also tell her to appreciate those carefree years before specialists became a regular part of her life.
And maybe invest in stock for coffee.
Because apparently that was going to become part of her medical treatment plan.
And while we’re at it, maybe buy stock in gastroenterology, pulmonology, neurology, and sleep medicine too.
The return on investment would have been phenomenal.
How did we get here?
One symptom.
One diagnosis.
One surgery.
One hospitalization.
One specialist.
One clue at a time.
The breathing problems weren’t the beginning of my MuSK+ MG story.
They were simply the chapter that finally got everyone’s attention.
The Crohn’s diagnosis wasn’t the beginning of my story either.
It was simply the first time someone gave part of that story a name.
Because the truth is, my story didn’t begin with a diagnosis.
It began with a little girl whose body was trying to tell a story long before anyone knew how to listen.
And now that I know the ending, I can finally see where the story began.
If there is one thing I hope people take away from my journey, it is this:
Listen to your body.
Ask questions.
Trust yourself when something doesn’t feel right.
Advocate for yourself.
And don’t be afraid to seek another opinion when the answers don’t fit.
Because sometimes the symptoms that seem unrelated are connected.
Sometimes the answers take years to find.
Sometimes the diagnosis comes decades after the first clue.
And sometimes the clues arrive long before anyone knows what they mean.
Mine certainly did.
The clues were always there.
We just hadn’t learned how to read them yet.
“Sometimes the answers take years to find because the clues arrive long before we know what they mean.”
💜 A Final Note
Thank you for taking this journey with me.
If this story resonated with you, know that you are not alone.
Whether you’re still searching for answers, living with a chronic illness, supporting someone you love, or simply trying to understand your own body a little better, I hope this diary entry reminds you to trust yourself, ask questions, and keep advocating for your health.
Sometimes the answers take years to find.
Sometimes the diagnosis comes decades after the first clue.
And sometimes the clues are there all along—we just haven’t learned how to read them yet.
If my journey has taught me anything, it’s that our bodies often tell us what they need long before we understand the language they’re speaking.
Keep listening.
Keep asking questions.
Keep advocating for yourself.
And most importantly, keep believing yourself.
Because you know your body better than anyone else.
Until next time, extend yourself grace, celebrate every victory no matter how small, and remember that your story matters.
The clues were always there.
This is the story of finally learning how to read them.
💜
Kia Lorice
Founder & Author
The Dual Diagnosis Diaries
Real stories. Real struggles. Real resilience.
Crohn’s Disease • MuSK+ Myasthenia Gravis • Polyautoimmunity • Hope
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