Hi, I\u2019m Lyn. I\u2019m 54, chronically ill, occasionally hilarious, and the proud owner of a medical history that makes doctors blink twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My labs said I was fine. My body strongly disagreed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It took 46 years to get answers that made sense. By the time the diagnoses finally arrived \u2014 dysautonomia, small fiber neuropathy, gastroparesis, autoimmune urticaria, and a few other plot twists \u2014 I had already become an expert in navigating chronic illness without a roadmap. Or a seatbelt. Or, frankly, a functioning nervous system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t get here gracefully. I got here the way many of us do: through medical gaslighting, \u201cnormal\u201d test results, and symptoms that make you question your sanity long before anyone else does. I learned to advocate for myself because the alternative was disappearing into the cracks of a system that wasn\u2019t built for people like me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tethered and Free is where I tell the stories I wish someone had told me. Where I say the quiet parts out loud, and make jokes because sometimes the only thing between me and despair is a punchline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019re here because you\u2019re sick, exhausted, confused, dismissed, or just trying to survive your own body, you\u2019re not alone. If you\u2019re here because you love someone who\u2019s chronically ill and you\u2019re trying to understand, welcome. If you\u2019re here because you enjoy dark humor and medical absurdity, come on in!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m tethered to this body. But I\u2019m still free in every way that matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And if you\u2019re surviving the absurdity of chronic illness one dark joke at a time\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
you\u2019re in the right place, my friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It probably started on Easter Sunday when I was nine years old. I was dressed up, standing in church, minding my own business, and my nervous system made an executive decision. I fainted… and slipped right under the pew!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fainting was blamed on low blood sugar, even though it was Easter Sunday, and I had gobbled down a good portion of a cream-filled chocolate egg before church. Two years later when the hives appeared, I was told it was a figment of my imagination. I was a child with an autonomic nervous system already in revolt, autoimmune urticaria nobody believed existed, and a spine quietly deteriorating \u2014 and the medical consensus was essentially: less candy, less soda, and maybe stop making things up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the record: I was right. About all of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also had Degenerative Disc Disease as a teenager, just like both my parents. When I told doctors, they told my mom it was in my head.
That pattern would continue for a very long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After my first back surgery, I noticed a strange feeling \u2014 like a string wrapped around my toe. Post-surgical, everyone said. It\u2019ll resolve.
It did not resolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the following decades that sensation progressed, worsened, and spread. By February 2020, when I finally had a skin punch biopsy, my toes were nearly completely numb. The results: extremely severe Small Fiber Neuropathy. A condition that had been destroying my small nerve fibers for approximately 26 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am turning 55 in August. Do the math. My body knew long before medicine was willing to listen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My most acute symptoms began in 2019. And I want to be honest about this: I genuinely thought I was having a major mental health crisis. The symptoms were bizarre, overlapping, and didn\u2019t fit any pattern I recognized. I\u2019d never heard of dysautonomia. Neither had most of the doctors I saw. I thought I was losing my last good marble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What followed was years of fighting. Of being dismissed. Of a gaslighting neurologist who looked at my very real, very measurable neurological symptoms and suggested they were functional \u2014 meaning, essentially, in my head. He tried to hand me a Functional Neurological Disorder diagnosis instead of answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I fired him. I fired multiple GI and neurology doctors before finally getting referred to a neuro-GI specialist who actually looked at the whole picture and diagnosed gastroparesis \u2014 two years ago. My stomach had been failing for years before anyone named it.
The important lesson I learned the hard way, and that I will say plainly here: be your own advocate. Because no one else will do it for you. The system is not designed to connect the dots. You have to connect them yourself, or find the one doctor who will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here is what we know now:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dysautonomia \u2014 POTS. Severe Small Fiber Neuropathy affecting my feet, legs, hands, and every system with small nerves, especially my digestive, urinary, reproductive systems. Gastroparesis, meaning my stomach quit and has refused to negotiate. My gallbladder, essentially taken out by nerve damage, was removed in April 2020. Chronic kidney disease. Chronic edema. Autoimmune urticaria \u2014 untreatable, constant, itchy beyond description. Degenerative Disc Disease. A sleep disorder that has introduced me to my floor, my dresser, and one memorable wall. Brain fog affecting memory and concentration in ways that still catch me off guard. Two micro hemorrhages in my left cerebellum, monitored, cause unknown, nobody seems overly concerned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I call them my dome\u2019s slow leak. We\u2019ve made peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And driving the entire enterprise: a seronegative autoimmune process. Cause unknown. Type unidentified. My immune system is attacking something \u2014 we just don\u2019t know what yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Figures, lol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before all of this I was a senior administrative assistant. Sharp, organized, the person who held complex operations together and was known for it. That version of me didn\u2019t see this coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
None of us do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tethered and Free is for people who know what it\u2019s like to cancel plans they were already lying down for. Who have a favorite waiting room. Who have explained their condition so many times they\u2019ve started leaving parts out because it\u2019s exhausting. Who have done the shower math \u2014 because hot water and a malfunctioning autonomic nervous system are not friends, and \u201cI haven\u2019t showered\u201d is not laziness. It\u2019s a medical calculation. Who were told as children, as teenagers, as adults, that it was in their head \u2014 and who turned out to be right all along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s for spoonies, dysautonomia patients, chronic pain survivors who hate being called warriors, invisible illness sufferers who are tired of being invisible, gastroparesis patients who have a complicated relationship with food, SFN patients whose nerves are on fire in ways nobody can see, seronegative autoimmune patients sitting with a stack of normal labs and a body that clearly did not get the memo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s for the person who in 2019 was googling symptoms at 2am wondering if they were losing their mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019re not. You never were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The humor here is real. So is the grief. So is the rage at a medical system that told too many of us, for too long, that we were imagining it. I\u2019m not going to tell you to think positive. I\u2019m going to sit with you in the waiting room, make you laugh about the intake form, and tell you everything I figured out the hard way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Honest writing about what chronic illness actually looks like. No inspirational spin, no toxic positivity, no ribbon-and-flowers aesthetic. Hard-won knowledge about living with conditions the medical system hands you without instructions. Dark humor, because sometimes it\u2019s the only reasonable response to completely unreasonable circumstances. Specific content about Dysautonomia, POTS, gastroparesis, Small Fiber Neuropathy, seronegative autoimmune disease, chronic kidney disease, autoimmune urticaria, and the particular joy of having all of them simultaneously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tales of woe. And how to survive them anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Uncomfortable in my own skin. Welcome to my new normal.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n No judgement here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \ud83d\udc9c Lyn <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi, I\u2019m Lyn. I\u2019m 54, chronically ill, occasionally hilarious, and the proud owner of a medical history that makes doctors blink twice. My labs said I was fine. My body strongly disagreed. It took 46 years to get answers that made sense. By the time the diagnoses finally arrived \u2014 dysautonomia, small fiber neuropathy, gastroparesis,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-25","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n