Dateline: 2007 – January 2008
Location: My Body (Also Known as the Scene of the Crime)
The Day My Body Hit the Brakes (And Forgot to Tell Me Why)
It started off innocently enough, a perfectly average weekday. I opened my eyes, mentally prepared for the chaos of the school run and the madness of work… and then realised I couldn’t get out of bed. Like, physically could not. I was 28 years old and felt like someone had yanked out my batteries and forgotten to plug me back in.
Now, to be clear—I never take time off work. I could be limping, coughing, possibly missing a limb, and I’d still show up. So this? This was major. I called my boss and, when she asked what was wrong, I said, “I’m just… exhausted. I literally can’t get up.” She paused. I could practically hear her picturing me hungover, surrounded by takeaway boxes, after a wild night out. Spoiler alert: I wasn’t. Unless folding laundry and passing out at 9 counts as a bender.
Two days later, I dragged myself back into the world, convinced I just needed to “shake it off.” But I wasn’t right. I felt like a foggy, malfunctioning version of myself—shaky, slow, barely there. Like a zombie, but one that still had to pack school lunches and attend team meetings. In the weeks and months that followed, I operated on survival mode only: I dropped my daughter off at my parents’ so I could nap on their sofa. I napped before work. I crashed the minute she went to sleep. That wasn’t living—it was mechanical existing.
Oh, and the infections? Like a buy-one-get-one-free offer. Chest, throat, sinus—you name it. Eventually, I landed myself a delightful kidney infection, and yes, I still went to work. Because… why stop now?
Before this whole crash, life had been a little stressful. (Translation: it was a pressure cooker with no release valve.) I was working all hours trying to climb the career ladder—#ambition #youngmumlife—and the company was going through its own little meltdown. Money was tight, and home life? Let’s just say not exactly Instagram-perfect. We’d just bought our first house, a glorious repossession that needed so much work, we joked we’d finish renovating by the time we retired.
But here’s the thing—when you’re young, you think you’re bulletproof. I didn’t pay attention to the stress. Looking back? My body was screaming at me to slow down, but I was too busy being “fine” to hear it.
I’m telling you all this because, according to research, Sarcoidosis is a mystery illness—no known cause, possibly linked to genetics, environmental triggers… and maybe, just maybe, stress. And while science is still figuring that out, I’m here to say with every fibre of my slightly frayed being: stress absolutely plays a part. These days, I feel stress in my body instantly. It’s like an internal alarm system. Back then? I was completely disconnected from it. But I know now—my crash was not random. My body was waving a giant red flag and I just kept ploughing through it.
So life went on. The exhaustion stuck around like an unwanted houseguest. I dropped a stone. It sounds glamorous, but heads up: it’s not when you’re silently Googling every symptom imaginable at 2am. That anxiety that whisks you from “maybe I need a nap” to “I definitely have something terminal” in about 3 seconds? Yeah, I lived there.
February 2008-May 2008
When “Just Back Pain” Decides to Ruin Your Whole Life (And No One Believes You)
Ah yes — back pain. The classic adult rite of passage. Except mine didn’t come gently with a little stiffness and a couple of ibuprofen. No, my back pain decided to enter stage left with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball: severe spasms, lightning bolt zaps down my spine, and the delightful bonus feature of needing to brace for impact every time I tried to exit a car. Oscar-worthy stuff.
I went to an osteopath, desperately hoping they could help, after one particularly frightening episode where I was left stuck in a car park for two hours, unable to move the seat out of recline. In that moment, I wasn’t just uncomfortable — I was scared and searching for anything that might bring relief.
But wait — the plot thickens. Just when I thought my body was done throwing tantrums, in came the headaches. Not your run-of-the-mill tension ones either. These felt like my brain was trying to bust out of my skull, the pressure in my head was excrutiating. Oh, and add in shooting pain down the back of my neck just to keep things spicy.
And then my breathing started to hurt. Yes, breathing. Sharp stabs right into my rib cage every time I dared to inhale like a normal human. Not ideal when oxygen is, you know, kind of essential.
Pile on a level of fatigue so profound I was dragging myself through the day like I’d just finished the London Marathon — in heels, through mud, while carrying a boulder — and you’ve got the perfect cocktail of “What fresh hell is this?”
So, like any rational adult clinging to hope, I went to my GP, expecting maybe a scan, some investigation, or at the very least someone who might look concerned. Instead, I got:
Diagnosis: 🤷‍♂️
Treatment: Diclofenac for the back pain.
Plan: Two weeks off work.
Follow-up: tumbleweeds
I told him I couldn’t breathe properly. He told me to rest and take my Asthma pump. I hadn’t used an Asthma pump since I was a child! He looked about as worried as someone reading the side of a cereal box. And despite every cell in my body screaming, “This isn’t just back pain!” — I nodded, took the pills, and went home like a good little patient.
The two weeks dragged on. I attempted to swim, because apparently “low-impact exercise” was supposed to help. Instead, I felt like I was going to pass out mid-paddle and crawled home feeling worse than before. Still, I said nothing. Just kept on suffering in silence — the unofficial sport of the medically dismissed.
Once I returned to work, things really started to nosedive. Breathing got harder. Neck and back spasms flared. And that internal alarm bell that had been softly dinging? Now it was blaring. I remembered I had health insurance through work and thought, Time to activate Plan B before I drop dead. That is honestly how I felt, I truly believed I had something seriously wrong with me.
In organising an MRI with a musculoskeletal surgeon he noticed the rib pain on breathing and, credit where it’s due, recommended I see a lung specialist. Great idea. Except I didn’t make it to that appointment.
Because I was in the hospital first.
Let me set the scene: I was still working, because apparently I’m stubborn and unhinged. My breathing had gotten so bad I couldn’t lift my arms without pain shooting through my ribs. So I called my mum. “Can you drive me to the office, I have an important meeting?” Yes — the office. Not the hospital. I insisted on going to work because I was so worried about anything effecting my chances of future promotion. You see I was desperate to try and earn more because things were so tight at home, the company was going through tough times it seemed like my chance to shine.
My mum, saint that she is did suggest the hospital. I said “nah.” She could have overruled me, but I think she was trying to respect my “independence” — a mistake we now both acknowledge with deep sighs and eye rolls.
When I got to work, I walked up the stairs (mistake) and was immediately intercepted by HR, who informed me I had gone grey. Not “you look tired” grey, Corpse-like grey. Every breath was a battle. I was dizzy, exhausted, and — for the first time — truly scared.
That’s when I finally ended up in A&E.
Now, A&E was its usual chaotic mess, and despite gasping like a fish out of water and explaining that simply existing hurt, I was not offered a bed. I begged to lie down, but the nurse — clearly unimpressed — told me there were people with “real emergencies” who needed the beds. Cue: deep shame spiral. I remember standing holding on to a chair, trying to look inconspicuous, which is difficult when you’re sobbing into your coat sleeve.
And then — plot twist.
Blood test results came back. Something was off. Suddenly the same doctor who barely glanced my way was walking at pace toward me. “ We think you have a blood clot, your platelet levels are extremely high ,” she said. Oh now I get a bed?
Cue three days in urgent care. No ward bed available — it was standing room only, but lying down. I got the full treatment: antibiotics, inhalers, blood thinners injected straight into my stomach (would not recommend). They did a V/Q lung scan checking for a clot in my lungs. A few doctors poked and prodded. The verdict? Probably pleurisy.
No chest CT. No X-ray. No PET Scan.
They would now watch my platelet levels (which had skyrocketed), and if they didn’t drop, they said they’d need to do a bone marrow test. A what now?! Of course now I think I have cancer -the looming threat was enough to keep me wide awake despite the fatigue.
After six weeks of antibiotics, weekly blood tests, and what felt like a short-lived lease on life, I started to improve and could breathe again. But the question that haunted me?
What the hell just happened?
What had really caused all this?
It was only the beginning of a long, baffling, occasionally infuriating journey to an eventual diagnosis… which, just for fun, didn’t happen for another 14 years.
Because when it comes to complex health conditions, the road to answers is never straight. It’s a spiral — and sometimes it doubles back just to mess with you.
But we’ll get to that part later.
And that was just the beginning…
I wasn’t actually diagnosed until 2021—which, yes, is a very long time to be wandering around in the dark, pondering why my body kept betraying me. But looking back, it’s obvious, Sarcoidosis had been lurking in the background for years. The signs are with me today in fibrosis scaring that previous episodes left behind. The symptoms were the breadcrumbs I didn’t know I was meant to be following.
Turns out, this wasn’t some one-off blip. My body had been trying to flag this up for a long time—I just didn’t have the translation guide yet.
Next post… The period before diagnosis.
CuriousBethLivingLife 