Full Transcript

Welcome back to Being Missunderstood. This is Kyazia, your host, and friendly neighborhood health enthusiast who has been on an unnecessary hiatus.

I am so happy to be here sharing with you all. Instead of trying to give some sort of explanation as to why this took so long, I’m just going to sit here, tell you about the journey I’ve been on, and leave it where it’s at. With that being said-

Season 1, Episode 1,

We’ve Got a Lot of Catching Up To Do

When I launched this trailer back in 2020, there were many new exciting movements happening on my end. But I really didn’t take into account how complicated it was going to be to find a new balance on life. -Side note- Word of advice. If you enter a point in your life where seemingly well-aligned opportunities are popping up, please hesitate to say “yes”. Wait until AFTER you have a clear vision of what your present commitments to are going to require of you.

To take that further, if you can wait until you have a clear picture of how those commitments may occupy more or less of your focus as time goes on. Because when you say yes, you’re not just saying yes to now, you’re committing to continual yesses in the future for as long as it takes to bring that opportunity to completion.

Back to where I’ve been. Where I’ve been is actually tied very closely to why the heart behind Being MissUnderstood is so important to me. You all deserve an experience of realness regarding the things that impact your ability to thrive. I just didn’t anticipate that the realness was going to start with some of my own story.

Around 2-3 years ago, I started a new health journey. During this time, I was working in the background to produce content for you guys. And for some reason, I had it in my head that the way to go about it was within this box, this Vision that I had planned out. But unfortunately, my ability, due to some health circumstances, did not allow me to execute that Vision the way that I originally planned.

Over time, I realized that my plans didn’t matter because as long as the topics that we go over together are meaningful to you, I’ll be happy regardless.

And if you don’t feel that it’s relevant, as long as we are able to communicate effectively, I’ll still be happy because our team will adjust to whatever works best for you.

Speaking of which, thank you to everyone who did our topic survey. we’ve got those top picks organized and we’re definitely going to focus content on those things.

But In the spirit of prioritizing getting something out, I’m going to start a bit more sporadically.

To be honest, the past couple of years have been a mess! I am blessed and stressed and that’s okay because I have access to the resources I need to keep me stable and fulfilled.

The start of 2021 is when I officially received my diagnosis of polycystic ovarian syndrome or PCOS. If you’re less familiar with me, you should know that for years and years, I have been going to the doctor concerned about my overall health. Concerned about changes happening with my body.

Many of y’all know exactly what I’m talking about because you know your body! Meaning You KNOW when things aren’t right.

I come from a dancing and powerlifting background, so I had experience with thinking through taking care of myself and making adjustments based on changing circumstances. For some reason, I hit a point where those adjustments weren’t working anymore.

Also, the way I was putting on the weight did not make sense to me. Again, some of y’all that have taken out the time to really observe and get to know your body know exactly what I’m talking about.

You start to recognize patterns of where you tend to show your weight gain. For some people, it’s the stomach area, others in their hips, and some see it in their faces really easily. Me?? the way I was carrying the weight wasn’t typical of how my body fluctuates. It was very concerning.

But more than concerning, it was straight-up confusing to look at yourself in the mirror, know mentally that it’s you looking back, but feel as if something foreign is happening.

The more that I pushed and communicated about how off I felt, the more Health Care Professionals were just telling me, “Oh, you just need to eat better”, “You know, you’re getting older, this is when the metabolism starts to slow down”, and this “You need to be more active” and so on.

I would try to convince them that I knew all these things, but I also knew that what was going on with me was beyond just needing to step it up and make better lifestyle choices.

Things got so bad, that they reached a point where I gained 30 lbs in one month without eating more or working out any less than usual. Once that happened, I decided enough was enough.

I am grateful to the healthcare professionals that DID listen but I still feel the things they did do were limiting. They did general blood workups and monitored my sugar, cholesterol, and thyroid functions. But when nothing abnormal popped up, that’s where the exploration stopped. That wasn’t good enough for me. I didn’t want to spend any more time and money on what wasn’t working.

It was more important to me to teach myself about the various tests that were available and what they could reveal to me about my areas of concern I no longer wanted to be dependent on another person’s opinion of what they feel is worth looking into. Especially someone who does not know my body, does not know my day-to-day reality, and potentially does not know how to listen to me, a Black woman, explaining how I want to be believed and treated appropriately when I say something is wrong with my health.

I’m not trying to say my racial presentation is the reason I had these poor experiences, but I can say it played a factor. Another factor to consider is the way our healthcare and insurance system is set up. Doctors are trained to be mindful of this and to tailor decisions on how to administer care to be practical for their patient’s circumstances. If they don’t see anything in your blood work that makes them believe something alarming is going on, why send their patient off to argue with their insurance company about why a grocery list length of further tests are needed? It’s seen as wasteful.

Regardless of what the reasons were, I didn’t care. Being MissUnderstood or Being dismissed was no longer an option.

So in 2020, I began to document my weight changes and other symptoms on a weekly basis. I used an app called Natural Cycles to track changes. If you’re looking to get pregnant or avoid pregnancies, I can go into detail about Natural cycles and temperature-based cycle, and fertility tracking in another episode. But I will give some quick background on how it works. The female reproductive system is amazing. As the body prepares to potentially grow a human, the day-to-day- body temperature rises and lowers in a pattern. You can track and predict when cycles will come and what days have the highest chances of getting pregnant by understanding these patterns.

Doing this method well takes time and a LOT of research, but the folks at natural cycles make it easy and understandable. So much, so that they are actually an FDA-approved birth control method. I’ll link information about them on the info page of this podcast post. Let me know if you’d like a separate episode on them made!

What I learned from taking tracking in natural cycles was that my body was NOT following a healthy pattern of temperature changes. For me, this meant that my hormone levels were changing in an abnormal way. After reading about the abnormalities and talking to health professionals I trusted for advice, I decided to order my own labs.

Yes, You heard that right.

By this time, I had ideas of what issues MIGHT be going on. I was able to look up what tests doctors typically use to check for the symptoms of those conditions. And Instead of convincing someone to order tests on my behalf, I did it on my own through a Labcorp service called Pixel by Labcorp. These days I believe it’s called Labcorp on demand.
I’ll also drop links with information on this service on the website. If you all want to know more about it, let us know in the comments or send us an email and we’ll put together a more detailed episode about it as well.

Through this service, I was able to choose what tests I wanted to run, go to a LabCorp to get my blood drawn, and receive the results. Because I was working with a budget, I focused only on the tests doctors did not run during my previous visits. I’m so happy that even with those years of frustration and no answers that I didn’t give up. Because When I got my lab work back, there were multiple areas of abnormalities.

I literally printed out a copy of my test results, printed screenshots from the natural cycles app, and brought them with me to an intake appointment with a new doctor. I told her, “look at my documents. Do whatever it is you need to do to get whatever confirmation you need to get, but I can’t go on like this. Let’s work together to figure out how to get me back into balance because it’s got to stop here.”

Shortly after, I received my PCOS diagnosis. And now? We’re working together to get me back to a healthy weight, get me back to a healthy hormonal balance, and it’s going to be hard work, regardless.

Now we’re treating the root cause instead of pointing fingers at the symptoms.

To any of you out there who feel like you’re currently going through something similar, learn how to be your own advocate. Learn how to demand for people to be their best selves in your presence, to take care of you according to your standards. You’re only going to have one body in this life. Make sure that the quality of time you spend in it can be optimized as much as possible. Don’t accept less than simply because other people refuse to change their expectations of who you are and what you deserve out of your life. Set that standard and keep the people around who show you they’re willing to adjust to meet you there.

And with that energy, riding the wave of that success, I took out more time to pay attention to other areas of my life that had been neglected. I’m not talking about direct physical health issues alone. The other factors that impact my life or the social determinants of my health too. These are things like stress, financial well-being, and my physical environment. (To give an example of physical environment, I’m currently based out of the New Orleans area. Hurricane Ida affected me and my loved ones in ways we are still recovering from.) These sorts of things deserve to be recognized and treated accordingly. I won’t go into too much detail about what that process looked like because I’m certain those stories will be of better service in future episodes.

There were mental walls I had to break down to understand how to manage my conditions instead of allowing them to manage me. I had to rework my understanding of what it meant to be a community member, an employee, a sister, a friend. Through it all, my focus was on making sure I was prioritizing being someone I could be proud of. Someone who lives life every day excited to fight through and manage these circumstances because it means I’m living another day where I get to do the things that I love.

Just like me, your health journeys are not going to be about pure, physical well-being. They are going to be mental, spiritual, environmental, emotional, and so many other things. At Being MissUnderstood, we want to be side-by-side with you as you go through these changes. We want to not only share what we’ve learned but want to learn from you and with you. So do not hesitate to write to us your thoughts and ideas. They mean so much more than you know. I’m excited to be back to listen and share with you all.

You can connect with us on social media via Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook @bnmsunderstood. That the letter’s BNMS understood. Our website is BeingMiss(Miss)Understood.com. On the website, you’ll be able to find the transcript for this and other episodes. There will also be some extra content that is only accessible on the website. Also, join our email list and subscribe to stay updated whenever new things drop!

I want to end by saying thank you to everybody who’s been supporting because the love is very much so felt. In addition, I want to set a certain standard on what you can expect from us in the future. Our episodes will be a blend of facts, tutorials, interviews, and more. One thing you can ALWAYS expect from us, is to do our best to accurately communicate what we know, recognize what we don’t know, and lean on the expertise of others to fill in the gaps. And experts don’t mean degrees or the head person in a field. We consider you all to be experts as well.

That’s the beauty of human diversity; we don’t all have to be wonderful at everything. We just have to know when to default to others people’s areas of greatness.

SO. If you notice in future episodes that certain things presented as facts weren’t… quite right, or you believe some things could use increased depth or perspective. Let Us Know! Consider yourself a part of a community that is growing to be better together.

So thank you again for all your support. I am so happy to have figured out a balance that allows me to have the capacity to make this happen. This episode was dense so I’ll leave you with this. If you take away anything, please remember that You don’t have to have it all together right now. If the only thing you do today is be willing to learn something new and apply it to become a better version of yourself, then it’s a day worth being proud of. All right, y’all, take care. See you on the next one!

Music: August 24, 90 bpm - zōkami

zōkami Soundcloud

Natural Cycles

https://www.naturalcycles.com/

How to get NC° for free through your insurance

https://www.naturalcycles.com/insurance/

LabCorp On Demand/ Pixel by LabCorp

https://www.ondemand.labcorp.com/