My Body Got Hijacked at 14

When you’re 14, your biggest concerns are usually things like school, friends, or what to wear to the dance.

I was more concerned with ripping around on my dirtbike, quad, or snowmobile.

Parasites weren’t exactly on my radar.

But then my body completely crashed.

One day I was a pretty normal ninth grader. The next, I couldn’t eat. I was exhausted. I was missing weeks of school. And no one could tell me why.

Test after test came back with nothing. I was sick, I was weak, and I wasn’t getting better.

Weeks later, they figured it out: I had a parasite in my small intestine. A nasty one. The same one that killed the baby calf I’d been bottle-feeding a few weeks earlier.

And apparently, this thing was in it for the long haul.

The doctor’s words?

“It’ll never leave. It eats first. You get the scraps.”

Cool.

So there I was, 14, barely functioning, being force-fed Gatorade like it was medicine.

Four giant bottles a day. Neon-colored, sugar-packed, chemical soup.

Because apparently: electrolytes.

No one talked to me about long-term health.

No one explained what my body had just gone through.

And no one warned me about the ripple effects this would have, not just in my gut, but in how I’d feel in my body for the next 20 years.

The Calf, the Farm, and the Beginning

I’ve always loved animals. Still do.

My best friend lived on a hobby farm, and we’d help out wherever we were needed.

But baby animals? That was the sweet spot.

That winter, one of the calves was sick. Fragile. Fighting.

We poured love into him, bundled up in the freezing cold, bottle-feeding him and hoping he’d make it.

He didn’t.

And a few weeks later, I got sick too.

Turns out I’d taken in the same parasite that killed him.

When You Can’t Eat for 30 Days

My body rejected everything.

I ate two meals in 30 days—both ended in me being sick.

The only thing that kept me out of the hospital was hydration.

And hydration meant four Gatorades a day.

I haven’t touched one since.

I made it through the 2000s without a drop of Gatorade or Powerade to “cure” teenage hangovers. Go me.

Looking back now, I can see how wild that was.

My body was in full crisis, and my lifeline was blue-dyed sugar water.

It’s no wonder my digestive system went into survival mode and stayed there.

Trying to Be “Fine”

Going back to school was brutal.

I wanted to be normal. I wanted to feel normal.

But I wasn’t.

My digestion was wrecked. My energy was tanked.

I was living in a constant state of anxiety, terrified my body would just collapse again.

And that fear stuck.

It got deep.

I didn’t understand trauma back then.

I didn’t know that bodies hold onto stress like that.

I just figured I was being sensitive. Or dramatic. Or lazy.

But now I know better.

My Body Got Confused

That parasite didn’t just attack my body. It rewired how my system understood safety.

It taught my body that food was dangerous.

That nourishment couldn’t be trusted.

That chemicals were safer than nutrients because they didn’t immediately make me sick.

That survival mattered more than anything else.

And those lessons? My body clung to them. For years.

What Healing Actually Looked Like

I didn’t heal overnight.

I still haven’t fully.

But at some point, I started choosing something different.

BodyTalk helped me peel back the layers.

To address the fear, the stress, the confusion my body had been holding since that ninth grade winter.

I’ve had sessions specifically around the parasite. Around my gut. Around how my body responds to food.

I haven’t done a test to prove anything, but I know in my bones: the parasite is gone.

What’s left is repair.

Re-learning.

The slow, soft process of showing my body it’s safe now.

Some foods still don’t work for me. And that’s okay.

My body’s allowed to keep healing.

If You’ve Been There…

If you’ve ever been told you’d never get better, I see you.

If you’ve ever been force-fed a solution that made you sicker, I see you.

If your healing has been slow, winding, and full of second guesses—same.

But you don’t have to settle.

You don’t have to live by a story someone else wrote for your body.

You can listen.

You can learn.

You can choose again.

That’s what I did.

That’s what I’m still doing.

And every time I do, my gut and my whole being feel a little more settled.

A little safer.