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KELSEY YOUNG

@kelseyisgroovy

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🗣️ An open book about health + relationships
💔 Navigating multiple chronic illnesses
🕸️ Welcome to the raw + vulnerable side of the interwebs

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Can confirm this works. Dealing with chronic illnesses and battling with your body everyday, it’s easy to get sucked into the negativity of your thoughts. Expansion, positivity, and loving life comes from experiencing it, meeting new people, and getting out in nature. Put your phone down and go touch a treeeeee by @kelseyisgroovy

Is it ideal? Of course not. But is it doable? Yes.

And the alternative is what? Continuing to lock yourself in your house until it gets better? Continuing to press pause on living your life?

I didn’t think I could do this trip. I really didn’t. I was so insanely stressed and anxious leading up to it knowing I am not in a good state or comfortable AT ALL in my body. But the commitment and investment was made… so I was coming.

And now that I’m halfway through, I can confidently say I’m incredibly glad I did. I almost talked myself out of it (multiple times), but there’s a reason the universe brought me here. This trip has reminded me that there’s so much more to life than my little bubble at home sulking in the woe is me of my health issues. It has reminded me that I’m just a teensy tiny little life on this beautiful planet in this enormous universe filled with incredible nature and beautiful animals and people.

And there’s SO much more life to be lived, which I have been reenegerized to want to get better for. I enjoy experiencing the world, immersing myself in different cultures, meeting new people, and doing hard things. There’s an ember within me that is the old Kelsey, waiting to get fully reignited once I heal, and I was only just now reminded of her by being here.

So, let me please be your motivation to book the fkn trip or to just do something wildly uncomfortable, because your health does not define you. And it is only a chapter or a season. And one that doesn’t get to continue dictating your entire life.

🫶🏻 by @kelseyisgroovy

Bringing back @ryancabrera one South American mountain descent at a time by @kelseyisgroovy

The emotional battle is 100x harder than the physical.

#chronicillness #autoimmune #guthealth #healingjourney by @kelseyisgroovy

❤️‍🔥 🚀 by @kelseyisgroovy

Jokes on me. Apples and cherries it is I guess.

Bye bye kiwis, pears, plums, and oranges that were saving me. Anyone know where tf I can find cherries out of season?! #help

#autoimmune #chronicillness #gutprotocol #guthealing by @kelseyisgroovy

And putting the power back into your hands.

Switching gears to my gut healing journey. I took the KBMO test (food inflammation test) to determine what foods I’m allergic or sensitive to. Turns out, a fuck ton, so my diet is very restrictive right now. I’m avoiding a lot of foods to reverse the damage I’ve done to my gut lining for the past 34 years and to heal my IBS, leaky gut, and SIBO.

What this looks like is discipline to stick to a diet, to avoid the foods that I love (RIP coffee and pad Thai), and to avoid conveniences like Uber Eats and grabbing a quick bite out.

I also have to have the discipline to meal prep. Steak is something that I’m eating for breakfast, and I don’t love steak reheated, so I’m making steak almost every single day. Same thing with rice noodles. That takes a lot of planning and preparation to do all the things that I have to do and still have time to cook every single day, multiple times a day.

My meals consist of:
- steak
- ground beef and sweet potatoes (sometimes onion)
- ground beef and rice noodles (or brown rice)
- a lot of fruit (but only a few types)
- tuna

My snacks are:
- chickpeas
- applesauce
- seaweed
- bacon
- olives

“Sauces” have been:
- aminos
- sesame oil
- olive oil
- lemon

That’s pretty much it. I’m allowed to have matcha, so I’ve been drinking matcha every day with no milk or added sugar obv (even natural sugar I have to avoid like maple syrup and honey).

Fruit is saving me, though I almost cut that out too for my skin, but I couldn’t do it. I can eat some vegetables, but I haven’t really been snacking on a lot. I don’t know why. Just trying to keep it simple and easy. And I could experiment with making my own sauces but literally with WHAT TIME lol. So this is what I’ve been doing since August 29th.

This is a positive I’m taking away from this process: learning discipline with food - and not treating it as a coping mechanism.

Discipline = healing. by @kelseyisgroovy

Controlled by both the body and mind in this chapter of life.

#chronicillness #livingwithchronicillness #guthealthjourney #autoimmunedisease #healingjourney by @kelseyisgroovy

I’m in hands down the most challenging season of my life.

I don’t feel like myself. I am uncomfortable in my body. I am exhausted from having to show up as a normal human when my body is fighting against me in more ways than one.

I try so many things with little to no success.

Finding motivation for the simplest things feels impossible when you don’t feel like yourself.

And it's rough. Sadly this is not the first time I’ve been here either.

Chronic illnesses are not for the faint of heart. It takes discipline. Grit. Effort. Fight. Mental strength. Patience.

But truthfully, it will still fuck with you. It fucks with your mental space, your soul, your entire being. And sometimes it doesn’t feel possible to keep going.

But this man has stood by me in all of my worst seasons, and truly makes life worth living for. He is my rock. My stability. My strength when I don’t have it. My positive light. And my happiness when everything else in the world feels impossible.

Though life isn’t the most fun right now, Chris grounds me and makes the mundane things feel better. He makes me laugh when I need it. And he makes everything better.

If you are going through something similar to me, please lean on your army. They will pull you out of it on your worst days. Don’t try to navigate this alone. It’s a long battle and you need your people behind you 🫶🏻 by @kelseyisgroovy

TLDR: My Dupixent is arriving tomorrow. Thank fucking God.

I say healthcare is a scam at the end of this video, and it isssss. But I’m grateful for this outcome.

The hours and energy it took for me to get to this place has been WEEKS now. Everything takes 24 -72 business hours on a good day, 1 week on a normal day, and even in desperation, the escalation is MINOR. You get tossed around from company to company, phone call to phone call, put on hold, etc.

So much of my time has been spent trying to get this medication and not having to pay for it, since I just back paid a lot of money for insurance for months I wasn’t even covered lolol.

It’s also wild to think that Dupixent offers more financial aid options because what that says to me is that they know their medication is so goddamn expensive. Hello, $5,000 to $6,000 out of pocket. That is CRAZY for something that helps people not live in a debilitating state.

When you’re feeling this way, it feels like life isn’t worth living, and I know that’s depressing to hear, but I’m not sure I can fully describe how it feels to want to itch your skin off, feeling your open wounds all over and not wanting to put on clothes, etc. I just can’t fully explain the discomfort levels.

I’ve been wrapping myself in band aids and bandages, but the bandages get gross, or they slip and fall. You have to redo them. It’s a constant awareness of every inch of your body, 24/7.

BUT this Dupixent story is now a win.

I’m sad that I have to continue to be on this medication, but I’m grateful that I was able to talk to the right people at Blue Cross Blue Shield. Carol, my girl. Sean, at Dupixent. And able to get this Western medication that temporarily relieves my skin symptoms, though the battle of getting to the root cause is still something I’m going to be fighting. At least I can soon live in my body a little bit more comfortably and give my time and energy to figuring this out rather than focusing on the discomfort levels of my body. by @kelseyisgroovy

I asked for her personal # so I could say thank you personally (💰) but I don’t think she was allowed to. I’m gonna keep working on her thouhh because we love Carol. Carol is my angel by @kelseyisgroovy

Gut and skin are likely correlated in some way, but are 2 major debilitating issues that I cannot focus on fully healing at the same time amongst everything else I have going on and dealing with the mental load.

Filmed this Saturday. Still unable to order Dupixent. Having to get an authorization form approved (?) from MUSC. The saga never ends.

If you make it to the end you get to see a lil feminine vulnerable side come out, welcomeeeee. She’s been out hard these days. Been tough out hereee

#chronicillness #healingchronicillness by @kelseyisgroovy