2018 Life Update

Well, here it is...March has finally arrived. How did it get to the third month of 2018 already? I feel like so much has happened in such a short amount of time, that’s why I decided to do a different blog post than my usual recipe style posts. For the sake of full transparency, things have not been all sunshine and rainbows. This is what we’ve come to expect, usually thanks to social media being the place where everyone usually sticks to sharing their “highlight reels”.

Not to say things have been all bad either, but I wanted to share exactly what has been going on in my world. Perhaps you can relate in some way or if nothing else you’ll know a little bit more about the Natasha behind the food adventures.

First up, let me just say that the end of 2017 was absolutely amazing. If you follow me on Instagram then you saw my trip to Maui in December where Jarod and I celebrated our five year anniversary and….we got engaged! Or as we’ve been joking “We’re getting Maui’d!”. Sorry, I just can’t resist a good pun.

I can honestly say that after spending the past 5+ years with Jarod I cannot imagine a better man to be my husband. He even recently (and unexpectedly) had to have a trial run with the whole “in sickness and health” side of marriage. This right here is the part where the sunshine disappears and the storm rolls in.

On February 14th, Valentine’s Day, I woke up incredibly sick. The next day I ended up in Urgent Care because my asthma had started acting up and I wasn’t breathing properly. They gave me some steroids, tamiflu and a breathing treatment and I thought I would be good as new. Sadly the next day I didn’t feel any better. By Saturday my breathing had gotten so bad I ended up back in Urgent Care where they had to rush me to the hospital via ambulance. I was unable to breath on my own for over 24 hours.

I had suffered from a total respiratory failure. I was at the hospital the whole weekend which included Jarod’s Birthday which was February 18th. This was the scariest thing I have ever experienced in my entire life. I’m lucky I didn’t end up in a coma, or worse….die. Thankfully the doctors and nurses took great care of me to make sure that didn’t happen and Jarod stuck by my side throughout it all.

I’ve had asthma since I was a teenager, but not once has it ever landed me in Urgent Care let alone the hospital. How things got to this point they’re still not entirely sure because I didn’t have the flu or pneumonia. But I do know that I have to take several new medications for asthma and allergies, most likely for the rest of my life, as I work on preventing issues like this in the future.

The other update? I want to focus not just on recipes but also mostly healthy eats that are easy to prepare. As someone who works a regular 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, I understand first hand the struggles of getting dinner on the table without relying on unhealthy takeout and disgusting frozen dinners.

At the age of 33 I was not prepared for my health to get so bad that I would be hospitalized. Was this problem linked to my eating habits? Not from what I can tell, but I understand now more than ever that everything is connected. If you’re not fueling your body with proper nutrients, yo-yo dieting, or binging on junk food left and right, guaranteed your body will respond at some point in an unpleasant way.