In 2016, Victoria Gibbs was stunned when she returned from vacation in Mexico with a serious sunburn.
“This was very unusual for me. With my dark skin, the sun hasn’t really been an issue,” Gibbs, 37, of Manhattan, told TODAY. “I just shrugged it off.”
At the time, she was training for a national yoga competition, where she practiced twice daily for 90 minutes. While she should have been at the peak of her physical health, she began experiencing other strange symptoms, including night sweats, sleeping 12 hours a day, and blood blisters on her fingertips. She visited urgent care clinics but no one had any answers.
“I finally went to an urgent care doctor and she said, ‘Something is very wrong.’ ‘You should see your GP,'” Gibbs said. ‘She’s like, ‘I can’t help you.’
Doctors eventually diagnosed Gibbs with lupus and she started taking medication and made some lifestyle changes to manage it. She hopes to help others with chronic health conditions.
“At least by sharing my story, the good and the bad, you will give people some solace and allow them to realize that they are not alone in their struggle and there are other people who are going through the same,” she said. “May that give them hope and inspire that they too can do it one day at a time.”
The usual symptoms – complete exhaustion and brain fog
After returning from her trip with a strange sunburn, Gibbs slowly developed new symptoms. While she was suffering from night sweats, she noticed that she did not sweat during hot yoga sessions. The more she exercises in the hot studio, the less she will be able to do it. I’ve grown more and more able to do yoga for a few hours a day. During the competition her symptoms intensified.
“Once I caught a cold, I noticed I started to have blood blisters on my fingers and I had a high fever and a cough. It sounded like whooping cough,” Gibbs remembers. “My dad always joked that I might have had tuberculosis.”
As I stepped onto the stage in the bright lights, Gibbs’ vision darkened.
“I completely lost consciousness. I couldn’t see anything,” she said. “My body basically collapsed on stage.”
Gibbs felt “totally devastated” and stopped practicing yoga. She visited several urgent care clinics but no one knew what was wrong and urged her to rest.
“My face started to explode. It looked like I had mumps. My cheeks completely exploded and I couldn’t fathom it,” she said. “I never worked like myself. I was getting phone calls at work from my parents or a friend – someone to check in and say hello – and I wouldn’t recognize their voices anymore.”
Then she started having migraines and serious bouts of brain fog.
“I couldn’t read anything. The only thing that was registering me was the colours,” she said. “It was so painful and my body moved so fast. It all happened within four months.”
She also lost weight, developed white sores on the roof of her mouth and throat, lost clumps of her hair and started sleeping 18 hours a day. After her urgent care physician and boyfriend at the time encouraged Gibbs to see her doctor regularly, she called her parents reluctantly.
“It wasn’t until my parents forced me to go home and realized how bad my health was,” she said.
Lupus diagnosis
Her GP ran blood tests and couldn’t tell exactly what was wrong, so Gibbs recommended she see a rheumatologist.
“She was saying, ‘I’m not 100% sure, but I think you have lupus,’ and I literally started crying because I had no idea I had lupus,” she said. I said: Is this the end of my existence? Like, “Will I be powerless for the rest of my life?”
Doctor Gibbs started on steroids to help calm the symptoms. She developed a fever and her parents took her to the hospital, who confirmed she had lupus nephritis, which targets the kidneys. She started taking more medications that suppress her immune system and treat her symptoms.
“All my symptoms have subsided. I will say in six weeks I am starting to feel like a human again.” Steroids really help with my kidney function and calm it down. It also helps get rid of all kinds of inflammation and joint pain.”
Since her diagnosis, she has been taking steroids to control her symptoms. Her doctor gradually reduces it based on how severe her symptoms are. If you have a flare-up, you may need to eat more. If her health stabilizes, she can take less. Gibbs hopes that one day her lupus will be in remission and she will not need to take it at all.
“I hope that by sometime next year I can be off steroids because it’s not a way I want to live personally,” she said. “I had to make some lifestyle changes.”
Gibbs eats a mostly plant-based diet, although she sometimes eats fish if she feels she needs more protein. Don’t drink, smoke or take drugs and try to reduce her stress as much as you can. She returned to her yoga practice, which helped her greatly.
“It allows me to really calm my mind, calm my body. I meditate every day,” she said. “I realized I couldn’t stand the stress of something. It eventually leads to some kind of flare, joint pain, or random inflammation.”
Since her diagnosis, Gibbs has first prioritized herself and has become attuned to what her body is telling her.
“There are always cues to tell you what’s going on with your body. Whether you actually listen to them or not and pay attention and slow down,” she said, “I’ve always been someone who put other people’s needs before mine but with lupus, I honestly can’t do that.”
She now does yoga four times a week, instead of twice a day, and if she takes a hot yoga class, she only practices twice a week so she doesn’t push her body too much.
“I highly recommend doing yoga,” she said. “Moving your body at this amplitude really helps with any kind of joint pain. It helps with inflammation tremendously.”
She said that even moving “five to ten minutes” a day helps her. She hopes her experience helps others dealing with their health or other challenges.
“Nothing to be ashamed of. It is something you should totally embrace,” she said. “If you can share this experience with someone else, it may also help them grow in their own life experiences.”
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