Power in Illness

I’ve felt like a phoney. I’ve felt like an imposter.  I’ve had to drag myself out of bed during autoimmune flares as if a ton of bricks were tied to my feet, my brain trailing behind me in a dense fog.  Aching to crawl back into bed and wake up when the storm had passed. 

But instead I go to work and take care of others.

I’m a doctor because I’ve experienced more illness than I would wish upon my worst enemy.  I’ve experience more illness in my first 10 years of life than many will experience in an entire lifetime. But you likely won’t believe me on that point. From the outside, I can look pretty dang normal - even healthy.  

I stumbled upon “alternative” medicine out of desperation and this medicine felt like the greatest health triumph I could have ever imagined.  It gave me a new lease on life. Why didn’t everyone know about this stuff?

I’ve dedicated my life to this work and to advocating that alternative medicine is not alternative at all. I thought I learned IT ALL. I’d applied it ALL to myself and felt like I had ALL the answers - the secret sauces to life’s mysterious autoimmune diseases.  

But I still slid back into flares. 

How could I sit and look my patients in the face and ask them to drink this tea, take this botanical, use this cream, move this way, do this, don’t do this, eat this way, think this way, act this way, when I had done all of that and still found days back at square one, sitting across from them as the so-called expert?

Autoimmunity is a finicky beast. It ebbs and flows, sometimes the patterns make perfect sense, other times not and can threaten to break the mind and spirit. 

I may be a doctor, but I am also just plain human.  I have two intense auto-immune illnesses that often don’t care if I’ve done “all the right things” for my health.  There will be days that threaten to irreparably damage my soul.  There will be days that challenge me to accept my limitations and ask me to take a step back.  My limits come sooner than the average Joe and to not respect this is ignorance. 

For all those on the outside, looking in to my world and thinking “she sure looks nice and healthy”, she often is. I have days where I feel on top of the world. I have days of everlasting energy and balanced everything. The more I dedicate myself to what I teach the more of those days I experience.

But the flares still come to visit, taunting me to go deeper, learn more, and keep humility.  

The days when I have felt the lowest, like there was no more possible wiggle room to feel any worse were the days that I opened the most. These days erased my judgement as to the possibility that 1 tiny thing on this green earth could improve my health, no matter how seemingly small or inconsequential.  THIS is where I discover and rediscover the magic.  

It’s were I’ve been so desperate that I dropped all my preconceived notions of what is reasonable and what is scientific and what makes sense.  Healing doesn’t have to make sense - you just have to be open enough to change your body, mind and actions and choose a different path. To stop listening to your mind and let your heart take over.

So you see, the bottom of the health barrel is the most powerful place to be. It’s the most powerful place I’ve ever been. 

I encourage anyone reading this to know that there is power in illness.

You are not broken.  

You are not less than. 

You are being tempted to drink that mysterious elixir and dive down the rabbit hole. 

-Dr. Laura Neville

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