Jenn Kaye

My health story is a little like my life story. I'm stubborn, strong-willed, vibrant, (a little silly at times) and seem to have been hard wired for overcoming obstacles. I have a knack of seeing the very best in people & situations, & take every experience as an opportunity for learning.

Which came first? The chicken or the egg? It's an important questions because growing up my mom was pretty 'holistic.' In my family growing up, when you had a stomach ache - you got peppermint tea & a stomach rub. If you had a headache, you got chamomile tea & a neck rub. I knew about massage, reflexology & nutritional eating at a super young age (& way back then, we were the 'kooky' ones!)

The chicken, (or the egg) whichever way you look at it, is important, because with all that, eating healthy, being active & a relatively typical teenager, it did not help when one day I went to our family doctor with a backache that had been plaguing me for days, only to have him ask me 2 questions, leave the room, then come back & tell me to go straight to the emergency room - & that they were expecting me there.

After hours of being poked, prodded, x-rayed & sonogrammed, the final prognosis was that I had an infected cyst on my kidney, which led to an official diagnosis of PKD.

The Dr. then proceeded to tell me what my life was going to be like based on his diagnosis, & what I could expect my quality of life to be. And frankly, at 18 years old, I was not very good at someone else deciding what my life was going to be like. Dialysis did not sound any fun, & a transplant? Nope, don't think so. So I started researching every aspect of my diagnosis, and looking at different medical models that might help me make sense of all this in a way that worked for ME.

What I found was that in more holistic medical models (Chinese, Ayurvedic, Native American), they acknowledged an inherent connection between our feelings/our emotions & our physical being. I learned that anger often affected the liver, & that blame, shame, guilt & resentment affected the kidneys. Really?!

Because I had pretty much prided myself on being the 'Queen of Resentment' up to that point in my life. But I had a choice to make. Walk the path I'd been going down or stop in the clearing & lighten the load to choose a new direction.

Jumping way ahead in the story, the short version is that I healed myself from PKD. I learned how to deal with my emotions in a healthier way, how to communicate with people more clearly, & make decisions in my life that feed my spirit, not drain them. I learned that there is a deeply rooted connection between our bodies, our minds & our spirits...& that to attempt to separate them is silly talk indeed.

That was merely the foundation of my health story. Years later I was in a head-on collision & the Dr. told me I'd never walk or dance again. (Sigh. Never tell a dancer they'll never dance again. It's not only silly. It's foolish.) Just because I had shattered my right leg, broken my left foot, cracked a vertebra in my neck along with a bunch of ribs, spent 10 weeks in a wheelchair & would have to LEARN how to walk again?

He clearly did not understand the power of our bodies to create miracles. He did not understand women. And he did not know me. But that...is another story.

I look forward to hearing yours, to sharing ours, & learning & growing together in the process.