It was the summer of 2005, I just came back from a 4 week vacation in Surinam ( South America) and immediately went to Spain for a week with friends. I remember my friend ( my bestie for 16 years now) one day in the hotel told me I had a lot of hair loss and became very thin. I had noticed the hairloss but I thought it was because I ate a lot of junk food and almost no vegetables and fruits at all. So I didn’t pay attention to these symptoms.
Year 2005 was a travel year cause after Spain I again went to Surinam for the Christmas Holidays and my birthday ( December 26th). At that time my weight was 43 kg ( normally it was around 53 kg) and I had eating problems, my lust for eating became more less ( and I love food!!!) so that was a little bit strange, everyone knows how I love food so they were like: what’s wrong with you, you are so thin and you don’t eat…what is it??? And I had no answers. It was when I was playing with my nephew that he saw an ulcer in my throat, it was very painful to eat and drink so I went to see a doctor. She prescribed some kind of ointment but it didn’t help. When I was back home in January 2006 ( Netherlands) I went to the hospital for research and they didn’t find anything ( even a Professor didn’t know what it was!). They gave me some strong pills and slowly it was getting better.
But then, February 2006, I got a job opportunity at the Police Academy in Amsterdam, it was a very good chance for me to have a great career. The second day I was there I started to get painful joints, it started at my wrists, then my knees, ankles, shoulders, the pain was like jumping around my body and I was extremely tired. I just couldn’t go on any longer. My knees were hurting like hell if I was running for 1 minute and it was than when I realized there was something wrong. I was in sports my whole life, from running, to playing basketball, swimming, kickboxing and so on….So there were signs that there is something going on inside my body, something wrong………will be continued…