Starting Life 5 Weeks Early…

The Unbreakable Warrior: K’s Battle Against Chronic Pain

Damn, this one is a fighter. And he’s had to be—because life didn’t exactly roll out a welcome mat when he arrived. K decided to jump into this world five weeks before his lungs were ready, and the doctors just couldn’t get his tiny little body off oxygen. It wasn’t until his mom took matters into her own hands, demanding a transfer to a bigger city hospital, that he started to bounce back. Was mold exposure already in play? Maybe. Did his mom have mold exposure? Probably. Can mold cross the placenta? It sure does.

K’s early years were marked by relentless infections—RSV landing him in the hospital multiple times, more than his older sister. Then came the allergies, more severe than anyone else in the family. Are allergies a sign of early mold exposure? Absolutely. Is asthma? You bet your ass it is—childhood asthma is mold exposure until proven otherwise. But for all his early struggles, K seemed healthy. Strong. Thriving.

That is, until the concussions started.

K was a natural athlete, excelling in both baseball and football. But his junior year changed everything. A major concussion took him out. Something wasn’t right—he couldn’t process the plays, had to rely on teammates just to make it through the game. No major headache. No vomiting. Just a slow unraveling of the sharpness that had always been second nature to him. And then came Thanksgiving.

After a hunting trip, things spiraled. Was it Lyme disease? Maybe. All we know is that by Thanksgiving, his future had shifted. He couldn’t even come down to eat. When his parents went Black Friday shopping, he took a hot shower—and his world fell apart. He slipped, fell, hit his head—not once, but twice—trying to get back to his bed. And from that moment on, the chronic headache set in. A dull ache, 3-4/10, every single day, from wake until sleep.

His warrior parents fought like hell for answers—primary care, neurology, concussion specialists, physical therapy, chiropractors, cardiology, pain management. They left no stone unturned. Two pain specialists later, they tried a nerve ablation in his cervicals. That’s when things went from bad to worse. The dull ache skyrocketed to a 7-8/10 and never let up.

Still, they pushed on. Optometry—was it his eyes? A pair of prism glasses gave him a fleeting moment of relief, but when the real glasses arrived weeks later, they triggered a brutal vertigo attack. Another dead end. Defeated but not broken, K pressed on.

Then came hyperbaric oxygen therapy. He was determined to heal, to get back on the field for his senior year. But fate had other plans. After a few sessions, he was in a car accident—a driver slammed into them at 50 mph. Just like that, he was back where he started, trapped in the relentless pain. That was the moment he let go of the dream of playing again.

Desperate for relief, his parents took him to Cook’s Children’s Hospital, refusing to leave until they had answers. They tried IV DHE for 48 hours—a drug so toxic it burned through his IV lines. Nothing. Then IV lidocaine—another 48 hours. Still nothing. The weekend doctors wanted to discharge him, but his parents wouldn’t back down. When the real staff returned, they prescribed gabapentin and muscle relaxers. He left, drugged up and hopeless.

Scrolling through TikTok one night, his mom found a new lead—a concussion specialist chiropractor in Minnesota. Dr. Schmoe knew his stuff. He worked with K, improved the concussive symptoms, but the pain? Unmoved. That’s when he realized—this was bigger than a concussion. He ran more tests, peeling back the layers of this medical mystery, and sent K to TLC for the next phase of treatment.

And through it all, K never stopped showing up. Even with his pain raging at 7-8/10, he never missed a day of work. But now, his cardiovascular system is failing him—vascular ulcers forming on his legs, his blood pressure spiking to a dangerous 200/120. A vascular surgeon is on the schedule, but if his warrior parents have anything to do with it, they’ll have him healing long before that appointment arrives.

And here’s the kicker—his mom and grandma have Raynaud’s. Raynaud’s is 100% tied to that damn defective mold-processing gene. Fix the mold, heal the vascular system. It’s that simple.

So will K make it back to being a normal 19-year-old? You bet your ass he will. And when he does, he’ll have a story—a hell of a story—to tell for the next 80 years.