Here is the full story- raw and unfiltered, for what has been going on with my personal life since 2024.

I used to be able to work for days at a time.

Not in a hustle-culture, burnout kind of way—but because I loved what I was building. My business started in 2020 as something small, something I cared about deeply, and over time it grew into something real. By early 2024, it finally felt like things were taking off.

February was busy in the best way. I was slammed with work, juggling projects, fulfilling orders, and even looking into adding another machine to keep up with demand. I had new contracts pending. I was starting to pitch to B2B clients. For the first time, I could see the next level clearly—and I was actively stepping into it.

I was tired, sure—but it was the kind of tired that comes with momentum. With purpose.

And then April hit.

I got the flu. Nothing unusual at first—I’ve been sick before, and I’ve always bounced back. But this time was different. Weeks passed, and instead of getting better, something shifted.

About four weeks later, the vertigo started.

Not the kind where the room spins for a second and you shake it off. I’m talking about not being able to stand without stumbling. Holding onto walls just to get from one room to another. Nausea that wouldn’t let up. Vomiting. The kind of dizziness that makes you feel completely disconnected from your own body.

I told myself it was temporary. This had happened before—after illnesses, my body sometimes took a little longer to reset. One or two months, and I’d be back to normal. Back to work. Back to building.

But this time… it didn’t go away. And somewhere in that realization, everything changed.

It got worse.

I became bedridden. I couldn’t even sit up without getting sick. Something as simple as lifting my head off the pillow would send my body into a spiral—dizziness, nausea, vomiting. The world didn’t just feel unsteady… it felt completely out of control.

I wasn’t living at that point. I was surviving minute to minute.

At first, I was told it was my ears. That made sense, right? Vertigo usually is. So I went down that path—appointment after appointment, specialist after specialist. ENTs. Tests. Waiting rooms. Hoping every time someone would finally say, “Here it is. We found it. We can fix it.”

But they didn’t.Everything kept coming back… normal. I had MRIs. Audiology testing. Exam after exam. And every time I walked out with the same answer: nothing is wrong. Or at least, nothing they could see. Which somehow felt worse.

Because if nothing was wrong… then why couldn’t I stand? Why couldn’t I function? Why had my entire life come to a halt?

Months passed. Eight of them. Eight months of not recognizing my own body. Eight months of trying to push through something that wouldn’t move. Eight months of watching the life I had been building just… sit there.

Eventually, I ended up in Boston for more specialized testing. At that point, I didn’t even know what I was hoping for anymore—answers, maybe. Or just validation that this wasn’t all in my head.

They ran VNG testing. More in-depth vestibular testing. Things that were supposed to catch what everything else had missed.

And again… nothing “abnormal.”

I remember sitting there, feeling completely defeated. Like I had reached the end of the road with no explanation and no way forward.

But somehow—finally—I got an answer.

I was diagnosed with Vestibular migraine and Persistent Postural-Perceptual Dizziness. Chronic. Triggered after the flu.

And it was strange… because it wasn’t relief in the way I expected.

There was no clear fix. No “take this and you’ll be better in two weeks.” Just a name. A direction. Something to work with. But after months of nothing… even that mattered.

I started medication—Effexor. I began looking into vestibular rehab. I started learning that this wasn’t something I could just wait out. This was something I was going to have to retrain my body to live with. And that realization… changed everything.

Looking back now, I can’t help but wonder if my body had been trying to warn me.

About five months before everything fully unraveled, I went through something else that didn’t quite make sense at the time. I had a tooth removed—along with a re-infected root canal—and not long after that, I started experiencing something I had never felt before.

Ocular migraines.

The first time it happened, I thought I was having a stroke.

My vision started disappearing—distorting, fading, breaking apart in a way that didn’t feel real. It wasn’t just a headache. It was like my brain and my eyes stopped communicating properly. I panicked. I went through all the testing—MRIs, multiple eye exams, everything they could think of. And just like what would happen later… everything came back clean. No stroke. No structural issue. Nothing visibly wrong.

Just migraines.

At the time, I tried to brush it off. Another weird thing my body was doing that I assumed would pass.

But now, looking back, it feels like the beginning of something I didn’t yet understand. Because a few months later, after the flu, everything escalated into something I couldn’t ignore anymore.

What I didn’t expect—what I really didn’t expect—was what came next.

When I finally met with my otoneurologist, he didn’t just look at what was happening now. He looked at everything. My history. The patterns. The things I had learned to live with and stopped questioning.

And then he said something that completely shifted how I understood my own body.

He believes this wasn’t new.That I’ve likely had this—these vestibular and migraine-related issues—for years… I just didn’t know what they were. And suddenly, things I had never connected before started lining up.

The car sickness I’ve always had. Not just mild—enough that I noticed it, adapted to it, worked around it. Since I started driving. Since I can remember being in cars. The strange visual mismatch—where things just felt slightly off, like my eyes and my brain weren’t always in sync. The way crowds and noise overwhelmed me. The sensitivity to light. The moments where I felt overstimulated, off-balance, or just… not right. I was told, over and over again, that it was anxiety.

And I believed that.

Because when every test comes back normal, and nothing “serious” is found, anxiety becomes the easy explanation. The catch-all. But sitting there, hearing him explain it—it wasn’t anxiety. It was my nervous system. My vestibular system. My brain processing movement, light, and environment differently than it should.

They weren’t random quirks. They were episodes. They were signs.

And for the first time, I wasn’t looking at my past as a series of disconnected experiences—I was seeing a pattern that had been there all along.

The flu didn’t create this. It made it chronic.

What had likely been happening in episodes—things I pushed through, adapted to, or explained away—suddenly became constant. Louder. Stronger. Impossible to ignore.

It wasn’t something that came and went anymore. It was there all the time.

That’s when I started vestibular rehab.

At that point, I had already gone through months of testing with no answers, so I didn’t know what to expect. But this felt different. It wasn’t just another scan or another “let’s see what shows up.” It was someone actually watching how my body functioned in real time.

And almost immediately, things started to make sense.

My specialist ruled out Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo—which, at that point, I had been half-expecting. But that wasn’t it. Instead, he noticed something I had never even considered.

My eyes weren’t tracking properly. They were undershooting. When I tried to focus or shift my gaze, my vision didn’t move smoothly from point A to point B. It staggered. It corrected itself in small jumps, instead of one clean motion. And the strangest part?

It wasn’t actually an eye problem. Which is why every single eye exam I had came back normal. My eyes were physically fine. The issue was the connection between my brain and my eyes—how my brain was processing movement, position, and visual input. And suddenly, so much of what I had been experiencing made sense.

Why things felt off even when they looked normal. Why movement felt overwhelming. Why I could be sitting still, but feel like I wasn’t grounded. It wasn’t in my head in the way people imply. But it was in my brain—in the way it was interpreting the world around me.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I decided to try and take some control back.

I started a workout routine—nothing extreme, just daily cardio. Something consistent. Something I could show up for, even when everything else felt unpredictable.

And slowly… something shifted.

Within a matter of weeks, the constant spinning started to ease. It didn’t disappear, but it changed. It became more episodic instead of this relentless, 24/7 state. I could tune it down. I started to feel stronger. Healthier. More like myself again—at least in pieces.

For the first time in a long time, I felt a little bit of hope.

And this is where my personal life intertwined with all of it in a way I never expected.

Right in the middle of being newly diagnosed—when I had absolutely no idea what was happening to my body, when things were unstable and uncertain—I met my now fiancé, Travis. He met me in the middle of all of this.

Not before it. Not after I had things figured out. But right in the thick of it—when I was still trying to understand what my life even looked like anymore. And he stayed.

He was patient. He was steady. He didn’t need me to have answers. He didn’t expect me to be “better.” He just… showed up. From the very beginning. And because of that, I kept going.

I stayed consistent with rehab. I kept moving. I stayed positive—even when it was hard. It felt like maybe I was finding a rhythm again. A new version of normal.

But recovery, I’ve learned, isn’t linear.

About six months after starting vestibular rehab, things shifted again.

I had to come off Effexor. It was helping in some ways, but it was also triggering more migraines and causing severe dry mouth that I couldn’t ignore anymore.

So I was transitioned onto Amitriptyline. And within a month… my body changed again. I started gaining weight rapidly. Bloating. Retaining. Feeling uncomfortable in my own skin in a completely different way. Between the two medications, I gained 34 pounds in less than a year.

And at the same time, my progress stalled.

Vestibular rehab, which had been helping, suddenly felt like it wasn’t moving forward anymore. I plateaued. Exercises that once felt productive started to feel frustrating. Like I was stuck.

Or worse—like I was slipping backwards.

And that feeling… that is one of the hardest parts. Because when you’ve fought so hard to get somewhere, even small progress feels huge. So when it stops—or starts to reverse—it doesn’t just feel physical.

It feels defeating.

At that point, I needed to understand what was mine—what my body was doing on its own, without anything influencing it.

So I came off everything. No medications. No buffers. Just me and whatever baseline my body had settled into.

I also tried changing how I was eating. I gave keto a shot, hoping maybe it would help calm things down—reduce inflammation, ease the migraines, give me some control back. And in some ways, it did. The bloating improved. The migraines weren’t as intense. But the vertigo?

Still there. And I was exhausted.

Not just tired—deep exhaustion. The kind that sits in your bones. The kind where even when you’re trying to do the “right” things, your body just doesn’t have anything left to give.

But I kept trying anyway. Because at that point, what else do you do?

And then October came. And everything unraveled again. I got sick. Then again in December. And again in January. Three viral illnesses, back to back. And with each one, I felt myself slipping further away from the progress I had fought so hard for.

By the end of it, I had regressed significantly.

I was back in bed. The spinning came back stronger. My ears wouldn’t drain. My neck throbbed constantly.

I was barely functioning.

It felt like I had been pushed all the way back to the beginning.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this—while everything felt like it was breaking down—some really important things still happened.

Life didn’t stop.

On August 15th, 2025, Travis proposed to me.

And it wasn’t some perfectly timed, “everything is going great” moment. It happened in the middle of uncertainty. In the middle of me not having answers. In the middle of me trying to figure out how to exist in a body that didn’t feel stable anymore.

And he still chose me. That matters more than I can even explain.

Around that same time, I had been waiting nearly a year to get into a migraine clinic. By February 2026, I finally got in. By that point, I was also in the process of moving forward with a disability application—because the truth was, I wasn’t functioning the way I used to.

Not even close.

My small business—the thing I built from the ground up—was put on hold.

My part-time job… I was struggling to keep up with, especially with driving. My boss has been incredibly understanding, and I don’t take that for granted. But the reality is, I’m working at a fraction of the capacity I used to have. Even screen work—something that used to be second nature to me—is hard now.

And that’s a hard thing to admit.

When I met with my new doctor at the migraine clinic this past Feb 2026, she went through my history. Every test. Every report. Every medication I had been put on over the years.

And she was shocked. Not because nothing had been done—but because so much of it had been pointed in the wrong direction. I had been put on antidepressants. Multiple ones. Over and over again. But I wasn’t depressed.

I was struggling—but not in the way it had been labeled. For years, what I was experiencing had been called anxiety.But it wasn’t anxiety. My otoneurologist had even had me track my heart rate during episodes. If it were anxiety, it should have spiked. It didn’t.

What I was feeling—those waves of dizziness, that disorientation, that overwhelm—it wasn’t panic. It was Vestibular migraine and Persistent Postural-Perceptual Dizziness all along.

I trialed over 12 different medications since 2008, primarily for migraines and “anxiety” as they thought.

But for the first time in a long time, my new doctor said something that stuck with me:

There are still options. A lot of options. And that mattered. Because even though I can handle pain—I can push through migraines if I have to—the one thing I couldn’t handle was the constant spinning.

The vertigo. That’s the thing that takes everything from you. The independence. The stability. The ability to trust your own body. It got to the point where simple, everyday things would set it off.

Putting wood away. Walking through a grocery store. I would feel it hit, suddenly, and I’d have to catch myself so I didn’t fall or drop whatever I was holding. And it’s frustrating in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it. Because from the outside, it doesn’t always look like anything is wrong. But inside, everything feels unstable.

And some days… it’s just overwhelming.

More recently, things have shifted again—but not in a clean, “this fixed everything” kind of way. More like… we’re still peeling back layers.

My triptan was adjusted, and I was given a device called Nerivio to try—something different, something targeted more specifically for migraines. At the same time, because my neck pain had become impossible to ignore, I had additional imaging done.

And for the first time in a while, something actually did show up. Issues in my cervical spine—C5/C6 and C6/C7. Stenosis. Bulging. Not answers to everything—but something tangible. Something that could be contributing. Something that could be worked on.

I’ll be starting specialized cervical rehab soon to address that piece of it.

And then there’s the visual side of things. One of the strangest patterns I’ve noticed through all of this is that when I close one eye… I stabilize more. Things feel less chaotic. Less overwhelming. More grounded. So I got tested and checked for BVD- and surprise! I have that too and will need prisms and specialized visual rehab now. 

Because that’s been the theme of all of this:

Individually, everything looks “fine.”
But together… something isn’t syncing correctly.

And that’s where I’m at right now. In between answers. In between treatments. In between progress and setbacks.

Everything still feels a little up in the air.

It’s not over.

That’s something I’ve had to come to terms with. My body feels permanently changed by all of this.

The weight gain. The bloating. The way medications shifted things in ways I didn’t expect. The migraines themselves—they don’t even feel predictable anymore. The symptoms change. They evolve. Just when I think I understand what’s happening, something new gets added to the mix.

And then there are all the little workarounds. The constant adjusting. Things I never had to think about before—how I move, how I look at something, how long I can focus, when I should stop before I push too far.

It’s exhausting in a way that’s hard to explain. But at the same time… there has been some progress.

My triptan was switched to Naratriptan, and between that and using Nerivio, I’ve noticed a difference. It’s not instant. It takes longer to kick in. But it does help.

I can have a migraine hit at 1am, take the medication, use the device, and by noon… I can be downstairs. I can function. I can try to work. That matters. Because before, that wouldn’t have been possible.

The vertigo is still there. That hasn’t gone away. But now, I work with it instead of waiting for it to disappear.

I work when I can. I take advantage of the windows when my body allows it. And I rest when it doesn’t—whether I want to or not. Because this isn’t something I can push through anymore. This is something I have to work around.

Migraine has taken a lot from me.

But the vertigo… that’s the part that’s taken the most.

There have been moments in public where I’ve been asked if I’ve had too much to drink. I haven’t. I’m just trying to stay upright.

Ironically, alcohol is one of the only things that actually stabilizes me. It quiets the spinning. It gives me a sense of normal for a little while. But it’s not a solution—it’s not something I can rely on, and I know that.

So I don’t. I just keep navigating it the best I can.

My small business—the one I built from nothing—I’ve had to scale back significantly.

And the hardest part?

I know I’ve become unreliable. I know it. And it destroys me inside. Because that’s never who I was.

I was the person who showed up. Who got things done. Who pushed through. Who built something from the ground up and kept it moving forward.

And now… I can’t always do that.

When I started the disability process last year, I broke.

I sat there and cried, because putting that into motion felt like admitting something I’m still not ready to accept. That this could be permanent. That this could be my “normal.” And I’m not okay with that.

I’m just… not.

Travis and I want a family after our wedding this year. That’s something I hold onto tightly. And I am doing everything in my power to get this under control before that chapter of our lives begins.

Doctor after doctor. Treatment after treatment. Trying things. Adjusting. Starting over.

It’s exhausting.

I’ve tried so many things already. And the reality is, I don’t even qualify for a lot of options—because of my lower blood pressure, a genetic clotting disorder, and the fact that we want kids in the next couple of years.

So even my options have limits. And yet… I’m still here trying.

This is why I’m inconsistent.

Not because I don’t care. Not because I’m not committed. Not because I’ve given up. But because I’m navigating something that changes day to day, hour to hour.

Some days, I can show up and work and create and feel like myself again. Other days, I’m just trying to stay upright. And I’m learning—slowly, painfully—that consistency for me doesn’t look like it used to.

It looks like adapting. It looks like taking the good days when they come. It looks like continuing forward, even when it doesn’t feel linear.

I am still here. I am still building. Just… differently than I ever expected.

This has also taken a toll on something that’s always been a part of me—my art.

There were months where I couldn’t even look down long enough to draw.

Something as simple as tilting my head or focusing on a page would trigger the vertigo. So the thing I used to turn to—the thing that grounded me, that brought me joy—suddenly wasn’t accessible in the same way.

And that… was its own kind of loss. So I adapted.

And I know this might not sit right with everyone—but I’m going to be honest about it.

I tried training AI to learn my art style (spoiler- it didnt work haha).

Not to replace what I do. Not to pass anything off as fully my own. But because I needed something. I needed a way to still create when I physically couldn’t do it the way I used to.

And in a strange way… it gave me a little bit of hope. It reminded me that creativity doesn’t just disappear—it just changes shape.

I know some people might see that and think it makes me less of an artist. But if you’ve made it this far into my story, then you know—that was never the intention.

I don’t take credit for AI-generated work as if it’s fully hand-drawn by me. I use it as a tool.

To brainstorm. To explore ideas. To take something I’ve started and build on it—adding textures, refining lines, pushing concepts further.

And sometimes, yes—I generate something from scratch. But I call it out. I’m honest about it. Because at the end of the day, this isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about finding a way to keep creating… when creating was almost taken from me.

As I slowly started to get back into drawing, things began to shift again. Not all at once. Not perfectly. But little by little, I found my way back. And as that happened, I naturally stopped relying on AI as much.

Because the goal was never to replace what I do—it was to bridge a gap when I couldn’t do it.

Now, the way I use it looks very different.

It’s not for commercial work. It’s not for anything I sell. It’s not something I would ever include in my portfolio and present as my own.

That’s just not me.

If I use it now, it’s for personal or supportive purposes—things like digitizing photos, creating consistent motifs for my own use, experimenting with style conversions, or helping visualize ideas when I’m not physically able to execute them yet. Its using my lyrics and turning them into songs. It’s bringing my worlds to life in ways I could never do.

It’s a tool. Nothing more.

And I’m very intentional about that.

If anything I’ve made involves AI in any way, I say so. I add disclaimers. I’m transparent about it—because that matters to me as an artist, and it always will. Heck, even files I buy I always credit the artist.

Because even though my process has had to change… my standards haven’t. My work—what I sell, what I put my name on—that will always be mine.

And getting back to that, even slowly, has meant more to me than I can really put into words.

Because at the end of the day, what I do—my style, my line work, the way I think through designs—that’s mine. And it turns out, it’s not that easy to replicate.

But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t useful in other ways.

What I did use it for was expanding into areas I don’t normally work in. Creating visual renditions of places in my novel.Seeing more realistic versions of my characters.
Exploring scenes and environments in a way I don’t typically draw.

Because I’m not a realism artist. I’m not a 3D designer.

I’m an illustrator. A cartoonist. And instead of trying to force myself into something I’m not, I used it as a way to support my creativity—not replace it.

It gave me a way to visualize things I couldn’t physically create at the time… and honestly, things I probably wouldn’t create in that style anyway.

So in a weird way, it didn’t take away from my art.It just gave me another lens to look through.

Through all of this, I’ve learned more about myself than I ever expected to.

Not in a “lesson learned” kind of way—but in a this is how I have to live now kind of way.

I can’t work the way I used to. I can’t push for days on end. I can’t rely on consistency the way I once did. I have more limitations now—more workarounds, more planning, more adjusting.

And the hardest part is… those plans can change at any moment. So I’ve had to build my life differently.

I have “digital days”—the days where I’m stuck in bed, dealing with migraines or vertigo, where all I can manage is screen work in short bursts.

And then I have “workshop days”—the days where my body allows me to move, to stand, to create physically, to actually be in my space and make things again.

It’s not predictable. It’s not structured in a clean, productive, perfectly scheduled way.

But it’s what I have. And I’m learning to work with it instead of against it.

Social media is something I’ve struggled with through all of this.

I know I’ve been inconsistent. I know I don’t show up the way I used to. But the truth is—when I do have good days, I don’t spend them posting. I spend them working. Creating. Catching up on the things I haven’t been able to do.

So while it might look quiet from the outside… there is still so much happening behind the scenes. Just at a different pace. In a different way.

And eventually—when I’m able—I’d love to get my online shop fully up and running again.

That’s still there. That goal didn’t go away. It just… looks a little different now.

I’m starting this series for a reason.

Everything I’ve shared here—this is the lead-up to today. This is what my life has looked like since 2024. The parts people don’t always see. The parts that don’t show up in a finished product, a post, or a quick update.

This is the reality behind it.

And in a strange way… all of this also brought me back to something I hadn’t touched in years.

My novel.

Some of my older art friends might remember The Last Survivor from way back in 2004 (yes… it’s been that long 😅). And somehow, through all of this—through being stuck, through needing a different kind of creative outlet—that world found its way back to me.

That part of the journey, especially the role AI played in helping me visualize and rebuild that story, is something I’ll dive deeper into in a separate post. Because that’s its own conversation.

But for now, I just want to say this:

The future is still uncertain.

I don’t have everything figured out. I don’t know what will fully work, what will stick, or what “normal” will eventually look like for me.

But I’m trying.

I’m adapting the best that I can. I’m showing up when I’m able to. And I’m holding onto the hope—and the faith—that eventually, something will click.

That I’ll find a rhythm again. Maybe not the same hustle I had before…

But something that still feels like me.