SPEAKER_00: hello everyone i am really excited today we have katie gardner joining us she is in buffalo new york katie is an licensed occupational therapist and she is here today because she is going to be sharing some of her journey with chronic illness which includes diagnosis for chronic fatigue syndrome as well as some other things i'll let her go into details of that but i'm just really excited to have you here welcome katie thank you for having me i'm so excited to meet with you and to be here i am really excited to hear more about your story and i'm so grateful and beyond impressed that you are willing and able to do this right now because i hope you don't mind my sharing but katie is thirty eight weeks pregnant as we speak

SPEAKER_00: hopefully not during this interview but that would add some excitement

SPEAKER_00: well you're a trooper thanks for doing us i hope your week goes well you induced on your wednesday getting induced on wednesday so very exciting your world is about to get even crazier

SPEAKER_00: i'm excited that's the thing like life opened up and once we got better you know everyone must be feeling this like i got a second chance at life

SPEAKER_00: everything i just like i don't even know because i couldn't even picture my future before i think it was too hard to dream or hope and now it's like who knows what will happen it's just amazing if i'm having even the slightest bad day i catch these moments and i have to catch myself and be like you are a walking miracle like this is incredible you are living something that you dreamed about every day for years like your life is a dream whatever it is that's stressing you out does not matter it does not matter yeah absolutely and it's it's funny that's one of my prayers is may i never forget may i never forget and become

SPEAKER_00: no offense but like a normal person

SPEAKER_00: who takes it for granted i never forget because that joy is so enlivening and it's like every day it's like you're winning the race every day you're like yes

SPEAKER_00: it's like being like when you watch a six year old wandering through the world and they're just like a flower a tree a puppy

SPEAKER_00: these new eyes where you just get to almost be childlike again and just really appreciate things so much so yeah i hope it doesn't go away yeah i don't think i don't think it will but it's something i do think about often

SPEAKER_00: i think i'll appreciate this it is hard though to have friends who've never been through it like most of my friends have obviously never been through it and they complain about their lives and i just feel such a detachment sometimes it is hard

SPEAKER_00: as much as it probably was hard for them to be my friend through it sometimes it's hard for me to be their friend now because i'm like you have it all

SPEAKER_00: i really struggle with people who probably we all have our triggers but people who seem physically able to go to the gym but just choose not to

SPEAKER_00: it was the worst for me when i was sick like i would give anything to because i love working out so that's one of my things that i really miss so when i can see people who could and just did it of course i don't know their life and i don't know what they're facing and they've got their own reasons and limitations i have no clue what's going on in their world but yes i know i know exactly what you mean i felt that way about people who complain about work and i'm like that's all i want to be able to do like i was my life and my identity but yeah you're right you know people are entitled to complain about their lives yeah their problems are real

SPEAKER_00: it does change things so it is nice to just connect with other people who kind of had this experience just before we dive in as i always say i'm not a medical professional katie is an occupational therapist so she is a medical professional but neither one of us are for sure your medical professionals at the moment so we're just sharing our own personal experience of living with and recovering from chronic illness so certainly nothing of what we share should be considered medical advice my story actually begins in childhood actually because i did have some major infection that impacted my ability to go to school and i was in the hospital no one knew really was wrong and the reason bring that up it's because it's relevant to later it was constant fungal infections in my stomach intestines and the doctor find it a lot of times couldn't treat it it's believed that some of that stuff may have triggered my genetic condition i did recover from that so i knew healing was possible and it wasn't until twenty fourteen that i actually started experience chronic fatigue symptoms where i couldn't walk i just wasn't recovering sleep so i would be working for about every i don't know two to four months and then i would end up collapsing and i just couldn't recover fully so anytime i did a strenuous task i would have that sort of

SPEAKER_00: price to pay so to speak so that's when i knew something was more serious and started to investigate it and try to heal so what happened when you initially went to the doctors what did they say i was initially diagnosed with fibromyalgia they completely ignored the ability that i was having a hard time moving against gravity and fatigued they really missed the fatigue so it took a while before i even got the chronic fatigue diagnosis but no one would even really treat it i don't think they really what to do they looked at just blood work ology it just really i wasn't really getting care for it for many years yeah unfortunately such a common story i'm sure you've seen as well it seems to be the same for so many of us in the beginning not a lot of answers not a lot of help so what did you do well i kept rehabilitate myself being an occupational therapist and leaving that possible because childhood experience i just

SPEAKER_00: researching doctors researching as much as i could and then eventually i moved from new york city back home to buffalo and that's where i got linked with some really great doctors first an integrated nurse practitioner

SPEAKER_00: level of investigative blood work that i was not used to i call her the blood detective she was looking at underlying infections candida epstein barr virus real infections and she went out helped me to go after that and for a while that actually made me worse it was pretty brutal treatment she would try to build my body up but at the same time it was getting down these infections i could for some reason never my body just couldn't fight and that was the missing link why couldn't my body fight these infections other people have epstein barr virus and they recover what was it about my body that was the missing link that's what brought me to my other doctor who's an immunologist and probably the most brilliant man i know and he started looking at genetic conditions that have to do with metabolic myopathies and mitochondrial dysfunction and what direction did he suggest going for that or what where did you take it from there so i had full genetic or full genome testing done and i did find that i have mitochondrial disease called mitochondrial dna depletion syndrome eleven and when i read about it it was like tears down my face because it's like targets the diaphragm i was like this is it finally and he put me on the cocktail which helped basically my body wasn't producing mitochondria i could never fight infections my body strength to fight so by him supplementing and boosting my mitochondria i could now fight the infections that i was trying for probably like a year and a half prior and when you came together it was like

SPEAKER_00: wow before you got this what were your days like or what were your weeks like oh my goodness i was working on a master's degree which you know is a lot it's a lot of work there full days i was doing clinical rotations i had friends i went out almost every night of the week i don't even know how i didn't look good in school i love to socialize i love to go out i traveled i lived in colorado i lived in philadelphia new york city i'm sure everyone was shocked when i got just not something that anyone probably could have predicted or coming wasn't at all like my childhood experience it's completely different yeah it sounds like it came on pretty suddenly it seems like that but when i look back i think that there were some signs that i was stressed i had been in graduate school i'd been in a stressful relationship a toxic relationship i was just probably overworking myself i was living in new york city working very long hours i was a traveling therapist at one point so i was walking i was working ten hour days walking from one end of manhattan to the other end of manhattan i'm warning signs i wasn't necessarily the healthiest person

SPEAKER_00: so many things it just really seems like so many of us have so much of the same you know it seems like it comes on suddenly but when we look back we see we have pretty much i mean i'm sure it's not everybody but i imagine you've noticed the same really pushing it not taking such good care of ourselves but on the surface we look so vibrant so healthy we're always on the go we might be working out a lot you know just very social happy looking people so you went from obviously being very active you know very engaged in life when you got sick what did that look like what did your days and your weeks look like after that for those for that first year however long before you started getting the help that you needed the first year was kind of basically me living in denial i would continue to try to work and people would pull me aside like this is dangerous

SPEAKER_00: because i was also working with patients i was i was scared i rob people i was scared i hurt people i felt an ethical responsibility it just wasn't safe i didn't feel safe riding the subway home because i thought i'd fall asleep or pass out and wake up and not know but it was very difficult to do grocery shopping so i just kept trying and then

SPEAKER_00: it took me a while to realize that this was serious and that it needed a full time job so eventually you had to quit your job and focus on getting your health back what are some other things that have contributed to your recovery i would say lifestyle modification i had to dramatically change my diet through i had to do basically an elimination diet first to figure out what was causing basically use food as medicine as a mindset of healing and then i also had to really work on rehab through movement and for me that's really important because i can't get my cells oxygen if i'm not so i know movement is a very hot topic and it is very controversial because it's not done properly but i had to

SPEAKER_00: gradually increase my ability to

SPEAKER_00: and then also i removed all toxic ingredients immunotoxic i

SPEAKER_00: water filtration system on my house i just the lengths which i went to and it really helped my so you mentioned diet played a big role and it seems that a lot of us find this and i'm curious what diet changes ended up helping for you not because i think necessarily it's the key for anyone else but i think it's good for people to see that there are different paths to health through diet for people and it is very much individual so i'm curious for you what ended up being your what did your body respond to well the three main offenders that were pretty obvious before i even did the elimination diet were dairy gluten and sugar and then from there i tried many different diets i did find for me i needed a high protein meat based diet i don't know if that's

SPEAKER_00: mitochondrial disease but when i tried vegetarian i had a hard time with beans i had a hard time with soy and so i struggled with some of those components of it so i found that some nightshades bother me i don't know if i'm familiar with nightshades but i did have a problem with those for a while nightshades that's things like what is that is that tomatoes and bell peppers or what is yes it's tomato potatoes eggplant the one i can't take i can't tolerate anymore i can't see the funny thing when i did the elimination diet and i gave my body a break to heal i slowly could incorporate those things back in without being as inflamed over time so it's kind of scary at first you're like what am i going to have left but eggs were bothering me for a while they don't bother me

SPEAKER_00: just took some things out for a while gave my body that chance to heal and slowly would incorporate them and sometimes they did offend me still and sometimes they did well that's encouraging that you didn't have to cut everything out forever because that is a bit of a scary prognosis to look at for your life like how eating is just going to be stressful forever it was stressful and it's very hard to do i did it as a last resort after years of suffering it wasn't my first

SPEAKER_00: trying to do that it is very hard

SPEAKER_00: from my husband and my mom and help because i was honestly too sick to cook for myself and with those types of restrictions it's just hard to meal plan hard to it's a hard process and for me it also required i think i hear you saying the same thing but just a level of desperation because it is hard but you get to a point where you're so desperate you just need you'll do just about anything to get your health back so all of a sudden what felt unthinkable is suddenly doable and another thing that helped me because for a while i tried really hard to get my diet in order but i would cheat and fall off and then come back to it before i really got serious as time rolled on and i could see that i wasn't getting my life back i was going to have to get more serious but another thing sugar we all mentioned seem to mention sugar and sugar was a massive one for me and sugar was a tough one for me not just because i liked it and i didn't want to get rid of it because i clearly had a physical addiction it was intense i would get up in the middle of the night every single night and eat sugar like there was something happening i would sometimes take a spoon

SPEAKER_01: and eat it right out of the

SPEAKER_00: canister like it was insane so for me it was healing my gut getting more probiotics and i always thought it was a willpower thing i was just weak and i just why can't i stop i know this is bad for me but once my body started healing the cravings went away i think the desperation combined with the body starting to heal and get a bit more imbalance so those cravings go away and it all becomes a bit more doable it does become a bit more doable it's really hard at first and i had i have memories of being a little kid and like going in the corner and like eating treats like nonstop and bread i was obsessed with

SPEAKER_00: eating that infection and there was some sort of addiction there and i mean it's very it's very hard to fight fight that but once i got broke through you're right i didn't feel those cravings the same way and doesn't it just feel like freedom i thought i was going to have to face this the rest of my life i thought my whole life was going to be a battle with food because it really was before i got sick and it's just incredible to have this healthy relationship with food where it's not a battle and you're not trying to force yourself to eat the right things okay so i just want to make sure i'm catching all of this so for you the main things

SPEAKER_00: could you summarize for us what were the main things that worked for you for your recovery the main things that worked there's something

SPEAKER_00: i did have to go back and heal trauma i had to do some spiritual healing so some mind body work i had to modify my diet i had to create some sort of movement routine that worked for my body that i could tolerate and not decline with and i had to remove all environmental toxins yeah it sounds very similar to my journey as well and i think it's good using the word movement and this was one of the mistakes i think when i talk about my recovery journey as i call it exercise and when people hear exercise they picture at the gym or going for a run but when i'm talking about my exercise program it was so small you know it was one to two minutes a day and in the beginning not even every single day and it was just really gentle movement because i think you're right it is definitely a sensitive topic and with good reason because full blown exercise can put people in the hospital even just three or four minutes of it and wrapping your head around i gotta get this lymph moving to reduce i have to put i have to and i have to get oxygen and nutrients to my cells and that happens through movement

SPEAKER_00: yeah it's confusing because we're trying to get in sync with our body and listen to our body which is part of this journey but a big part of the message is our body is telling us some of the time it's just don't move but i found i couldn't rest my way out of this i couldn't just lay in bed or lay on the couch all day i was never going to get better i tried that for a long time and it didn't get me anywhere i agree i did the same thing so it's great there are so many things that did work for you were there some things that you tried that didn't work for you and what were they

SPEAKER_00: that doesn't work chasing symptoms

SPEAKER_00: i was in pain for a long time whether it was taking this pill taking this supplement everyone always wants to know what supplements i'm on and i'm going to real honest the supplements i take are based on my blood work and my genetic profile they're not necessarily applicable to else it doesn't

SPEAKER_00: and i don't think supplements are the cure clearly the supplements i take are supporting metabolic disease i have where my body

SPEAKER_00: so idea that there's going to be a quick

SPEAKER_00: pill just chasing symptoms i mean you do need symptoms and it's one of the best things i ever did

SPEAKER_00: one of the best things you did was go off coffee

SPEAKER_00: hormonally helped rebalance my hormones healed my gut and also i have such good energy throughout the day it just it was it was shooting up my cortisol too much and rocking my just my adrenals so it made it made a big impact but for a while i was like quick fix like this

SPEAKER_00: it seems like almost cruel advice for someone with chronic fatigue syndrome to say to stop having coffee what do you mean it's just the only thing that makes me feel better but it makes me feel better at least for me in the moment but it put me on such a roller coaster it messed up my blood sugar in time came to realize that big part of my afternoon crashes was just the caffeine crash and it's not a regular person caffeine crash with cfs it seems to be amplified it's just

SPEAKER_00: yeah and it's a good point about the symptoms too i think we're all kind of brought up to chase symptoms you know we treat things one at a time we look at our body like a car you know fix little parts individually and i agree i think it's a balance you do have to treat some of them you know like for me i wasn't sleeping and i did all the things under the sun that you're supposed to do and it just wasn't working so for a while i had to take some you know prescription sedatives and like you had i had to target some symptoms individually but in the end what seems to pull its weight is looking at things in a more holistic viewpoint i agree and i had insomnia too and i had to take medication and i'm not against that but i'm talking about yeah overall healing yeah yeah when people ask things like you know what supplement should i take for brain fog or what should i do for you know whatever pain in my body and it's it's really hard i can't break any of it most of it down there wasn't specific things i did that worked for specific symptoms it was just slowly pulling my body out of all of it so i actually get some people messaging me or commenting on videos that are wanting to get pregnant or thinking about having a child and that actually naturally brings up a lot of stuff for them i don't have any children so i don't have anything to offer on this but i'm curious for you what has this process been like this pregnancy with your history of illness

SPEAKER_00: well if you told me two years ago that i'd be pregnant i would have thought that that's crazy

SPEAKER_00: like i was literally almost on my deathbed two years ago i could never have imagined this future i could have never imagined well enough because i didn't want to be a burden more of a burden to my husband i didn't want the financial responsibility i didn't think i could be a good mom i didn't want to

SPEAKER_00: with that watch that so it was not even thought about and then when i got better so quickly heal and heal from endometriosis all these other things i was like well i kind of i have a good relationship with god right i was like well what's next what do you want from me and i did feel i gave my life over so i realized that was the one area i was holding back because i was still i didn't want to live in fear

SPEAKER_00: because there's not a lot of research out there doctors couldn't make any promises to me

SPEAKER_00: you'll be fine and i'm like

SPEAKER_00: pregnant and so that set me on a course of learning how to give up control in a whole nother way and

SPEAKER_00: it has been quite a journey i mean i keep reminding myself these are normal symptoms it does triggering it's triggering sometimes to be like is this normal fatigue or is this going back and you know are these headaches are they going to turn into migraines again you know but i keep reminding myself no it's normal to have headaches when you're pregnant it's normal to feel tired

SPEAKER_00: you know and so i think in a way this experience is healing in itself because it's reminding me that i

SPEAKER_00: do that our bodies are more amazing than we think that they are

SPEAKER_00: and so it's been definitely an interesting experience yeah i can only imagine it's something that i experience even not being pregnant i imagine it's something we all experience to a certain extent we're just a bit i don't want to say paranoid but we've been through a lot so it's natural to question all these things and to get scared and have anxiety and is it coming back is this normal i thought i was better and it's a constant reminder i have to have for myself that getting better doesn't mean perfection nobody is nobody is perfect

SPEAKER_00: yeah i mean normal healthy people get headaches healthy people have bad days and so i try to draw that line somewhere but you know i did get gestational diabetes with this pregnancy and i remind myself two of my husband's coworkers have gestate had gestation like but it's so hard when we are so used to our own trauma from this experience to not think oh no like something and probably go easy on ourselves for having those thoughts it's it's natural i think anyone's going to and i would hope and i would imagine that as time passes we'll get more and more comfortable with this and more used to just the regular ups and downs of life this has clearly been a massive ordeal that you've been through i always love knowing you know how this has changed you how it's impacted your life oh yeah i mean total different direction i thought i was going to have this full time career

SPEAKER_00: occupational therapy and how i saw my identity how i valued myself was on my achievements and that was taken away and i had to realize that my value was deeper than that and people love me people want to help me i could learn to accept that

SPEAKER_00: and i humbled me changed me i maybe was prideful before i wouldn't say i had a spirituality before relationship with god and it took me getting so sick and so desperate and exhausting all my options

SPEAKER_00: willing to pray like the simplest thing which is free you're spending thousands and thousands on all these treatments and all these things and that changed me i never be the person i was before and i'm thankful for that appreciate life more i don't know quite how to put this but it's a bit of a conflicted relationship isn't it with illness because i think it really does bring a lot of good and it really changes us and it really catapults our growth and puts us in a better direction a lot of us anyways so you know it's something that is so horrible and so horrendous and you wouldn't wish on anybody but at the same time it's hard to imagine your life what it would be like if it hadn't gone that way it is really hard to describe what suffering does i mean this sometimes feels like i was in prison physically and then i'm set free trying to teach i only get one i only get one life

SPEAKER_00: what is this life experience trying to teach me while i'm here how can i get the most out

SPEAKER_00: yeah i think it is a perspective and an attitude too i mean you can choose to take things away from it or not it's happening either way there's no taking it away there's no choosing a life without it so we can either use it to shape us into someone better than we were before or not it sounds like you've definitely definitely gotten a lot out of this so good for you for doing all of this work and coming out of this in such a good place thank you it's exciting to see that in other people i love that i love hearing other people

SPEAKER_00: it really is and there really are so many people that are getting past these things and i just i don't think we see enough of it it can be so discouraging to look online and see the prognosis for some of these illnesses but there are so many people who are getting better at various stages of recovery there's so much reason to be hopeful and i love that there's more and more stories like yours coming out and thank you so much for sharing yours because it just it makes a world of difference you know i remember when i first got sick i was trying to find recovery stories and i just couldn't find any this was twelve years ago or something i didn't hear of anyone getting better until i had gotten better

SPEAKER_00: and then people other people start reaching out to me it's crazy we're just so shocked like hey so nice to meet you you recovered as well this is incredible

SPEAKER_00: yeah it's just really nice it's really nice to see so if you could go back in time to when this first all happened i'm curious what you would tell yourself what would you have wanted to know at the beginning that you think could have helped you navigate this or at least been better prepared for what was to come i guess what we just said i think

SPEAKER_00: that there are other people out there that have gotten better if i own that in the beginning i don't know my motivation i mean i was pretty motivated but man just knowing that would have just i was so defeated from day one when a doctor told me your life is over when i was first diagnosed fibromyalgia and they said this is it your life is over this is forever and i didn't want to believe that part of me rejected it but you can't unhear it so it messed with my mind and if i know no that's not true you can't limit a person's potential you don't know everything about chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia so how can you possibly have answers and for me now my faith it's like you cannot limit a limitless guy so i guess i would just tell myself to trust that process because i think i did have to go through all those years of research and learning i couldn't just skip ahead

SPEAKER_00: to know what i know now i mean that took years that took years it was like going to getting a bachelor's degree and chronic illness so i don't know if there's

SPEAKER_00: quick way through that of learning your body and learning what works specifically for you

SPEAKER_00: but i guess i would just tell myself that it is very very possible

SPEAKER_00: so perfectly put i've never heard that before like getting a bachelor's degree in chronic illness that is pretty much what all of us have to do i worked way harder at this recovery than any of my actual degrees you know you had to learn so much i think that is the most important point about the hope and not just hope but knowledge that people do get past it because that's it's the really the biggest part of the fuel because this is such a marathon it really is it's really hard it's exhausting it's a lot of work it's boring it's lonely it's stressful it's depressing and if you don't even know that it's actually possible i think most of us hold on to this deep hope within us like i will get past this i am determined but when you don't even know if it's possible most really bad days or weeks or months it's really hard to keep picking yourself back up important

SPEAKER_00: to know watching people do get better we don't know you know what everyone's prognosis is and we don't know what everyone's journey is going to be so you obviously can't say for certain what's going to happen for everybody but i think exactly as you said we cannot put limits on it no one can put limits on your recovery thank you so much katie for sharing your story today it really is incredibly moving you know i've had goosebumps you brought me to tears it's just really wonderful how far you've come and it's so amazing to see you living this amazing life and happy and thriving and about to have your baby very soon so just thank you so much for sharing this with us today for asking me to do it it's my pleasure i love it i love what you're doing i'm so happy i got to meet liz and i've gotten to meet oh my goodness so many people it's i literally when i think about like us being in a room i probably would just cry

SPEAKER_00: and like i would just high five people and hug people and cry and we survived we did it how amazing would that be i just it's just so i think about somebody i can picture somebody and they're bad just

SPEAKER_00: i mean this would have been mind blowing to me to have i would have been like what and it's funny i don't i don't know if you get these types of messages too but people will be like how do you know you really had chronic fatigue

SPEAKER_00: they can't wrap their head around someone could feel because they've been told so many times

SPEAKER_00: and i'm like that's why the more pictures we can show them of people so it's not just me saying it a whole group of people stepping forward that it's like undeniable evidence yeah i definitely get that too you know that comments or people sort of like oh i'm not sure you ever really had it or you probably clearly you weren't all that sick or that doesn't actually work for chronic fatigue syndrome because no one can get better from that or most people aren't like that most people you know are there's a lot of positivity out there but you can understand the people who are jaded who are skeptical and they just can't wrap their head around it no this can't be you're not like me we're not the same that's not possible i don't know what's happening there but that's not it so i try not to be like defensive i'm like whatever i know my life like i don't have anything to prove that's such a good attitude to have and that's such a good way to look at it because i find it is easy to get defensive because sometimes it can feel like an attack and feel like you have to defend your illness which is not helping anything or anyone if people want to find you if they want to ask you questions or know more about you where can they find you i'm on instagram my handle is healing faithfully one word and i have a site where i share more details about my story and healing aspects it's called healing faithfully com and i do

SPEAKER_00: called healing faithfully

SPEAKER_00: the best way my email is actually on instagram

SPEAKER_00: great and i'll have all of this listed in the video description so if anyone wants to take a look and find exactly the details it will all be there all right and for those of you watching as always we'd love to hear your thoughts we'd love to hear from you if you have any questions for katie i'm sure she'd be happy to answer them so yeah so please leave your thoughts leave your comments below we'd really love to hear from you and if you enjoyed this video if you think it's helpful if you think it had value please share it you can share it on facebook there are share links below the video that you can do it directly or you can just copy the link and share it yourself or you can take a screenshot and share it on instagram let's get these stories out there let's keep the hope and inspiration

SPEAKER_00: going and help one another out because there are far far too many people who are still suffering right now that i'm sure could use a little inspiration sent their way so if we're not already friends on instagram please come find katie come find myself we'd love to hear from you and you can see a little bit more about us and our lives and a little bit of the behind the scenes stuff that's going on and thank you to all of you who are watching thank you for your support thank you for commenting and liking and subscribing and all of that we really do appreciate it and there are more videos and more interviews coming up with more necfs stories so if you haven't already subscribed make sure to do so because you're not going to want to miss those so thank you again to katie thank you to all of you watching and that is it for today take care everyone
