MaKayla Denton Story audio 5.17.22
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MaKayla: [00:00:00] Hi, this is MaKayla and this is my pandemic story. When the Coronavirus hit Kentucky in the world, it changed everything in life as we knew it. It's like the world stopped and hit the brakes and everything started to shut down, and at first it was for two weeks, and then it turned into two years. It was a scary situation where life as you know it, it changed in the instant, but it's even scarier when you have a chronic illness.

I have multiple chronic illnesses including gastroparesis, which basically means stomach paralysis. So in other words, my stomach is slow or is too slow or does not digest food in a normal rate as a normal person would, which results in severe stomach pain, bloating, nausea, and other symptoms that are partially individualized for each gastroparesis patient.

But for me, those are my main symptoms. I also have an autoimmune disorder, which means I have no immune system whatsoever, and I also have multiple different kinds of autoimmune disorders. , right before the pandemic hit, I was just starting to see [00:01:00] a specialist of who I waited months and months to get into and got diagnosed with all these conditions all at once.

I was also trying to get approved from my insurance to start an at-home treatment that would better my life and overall health and wellness. But when Covid hit, it changed everything. As I said before, life stopped and including my in-person visits to my doctor. So did procedures along with the approval process for my treatment.

It created such a hardship and stress on me, especially with my health, because I had no access to procedures in doctor's offices in which I needed, but only virtually. At this time. My health started to rapidly decline and I was forced to be placed on a central line to supply nutrition I needed, as well as fluids and medicine to keep me functioning.

It was a lot, and not only that, me being high risk, that meant I had to isolate myself from my friends, family and society. I didn't go out into public much. I didn't go out into public for almost a year. This included work. I worked at home for a full year until I was called back into my previous office job [00:02:00] when things started to calm back down. The only way I would go, go to things would be if it was outside or my immediate family of which I lived with was there only.

It was very isolating and scary at this time. Then I also started to struggle again with my mental health, which has been an issue with me ever since I was young. There's been some good things that came out for this pandemic, though. Those were, I learned to love myself a lot more. I have been struggling with mental health and body image issues all my life, and during the pandemic I did a lot of soul searching to learn to be happy and content with myself for who I am.

I also reconnected with my love of the outdoors. I started to get back in the camping. For now it's my calm and happy place. Another thing that is rekindled was my love of photography. I let that go on the background right before Covid hit because I was overwhelmed and did not have time for it. But when the pandemic shut everything down, it allowed me more time to work on and with my photography, especially what got me into the field itself, nature and equine photography. I also started to dig down into what made me happy, and that included my [00:03:00] faith that I became really more closer to God at this time.

Overall, a lesson I learned was to be intent with what I have in my life and not to take for granted everything that I had that I thought was my normal day today, which I already have af after I got sick. That's one thing I had to learn with, is to be content that I am going to be sick for the rest of my life cause I have a chronic illness, but to make the best of it and live life every day.

Just that was as if it was your last, but one lesson that I, that should come out of all this in the pandemic and the chronic illness is to find happiness in the little things for that's most important in life. Thank you for listening to my pandemic story, and I hope this inspires you to go ahead and share yours.