I am so sorry. My story is not as severe as yours, but I also had a life changing medical situation. Sorry in advance for the wall of text, but this topic is really near and dear to my heart.
In 2014 I started getting really weird dizzy spells at work, which progressed to near constant headaches. If I moved my head too quickly, turned too quickly, etc I would get strange vision changes. It was very frightening, especially since I know a couple people who died from brain cancer. I had to undergo an MRI to make sure I didn’t have a brain tumor. Waiting for those results was freaking scary. Thankfully, the scan was fine and it was determined that I had serious migraines. My male neurologist thought it was just my female hormones adjusting coming off the bc pill. My female neurologist scoffed at that- she was extremely suspicious of my stress levels. I had a very stressful job with about 3 hours of commuting every day. My massage therapist was convinced it was my stress too, and thought my headaches were caused or at least exacerbated by chronic muscle tension. She said my shoulders and neck muscles were so tight they felt like bone, despite her repeated attempts to loosen them. I was 26 years old and otherwise very healthy.
You would think that this would be enough to prompt a lifestyle change, but it wasn’t. I had spent years working to get to where I was, and I had huge student loans to pay off. We had just bought a house a couple years prior, and we just felt like there was nothing to do except pay for routine massages and try to relax outside of work. This helped reduce the frequency of the migraines, but I was still getting them way too often. But then we started trying for a baby and despite otherwise perfect fertility, I had repeat miscarriages. The obs and midwives couldn’t tell me why. All of my tests came back perfect, or better than perfect in some cases. They too talked seriously about my stress levels. One particularly brash but awesome fertility specialist ob simply said “I tell women like you, do you want your busy important life, or do you want a baby? You pick.”
After my last loss, I locked myself in my house for a week and cried. We decided enough was enough, and that we would make it work on a reduced income. I went in the following week and asked to drop to part time. Within 6 weeks I had cut my total work/commuting life from 60 hours a week to 25-30 hours per week. I kid you not, the headaches went away and I successfully conceived a healthy baby almost immediately afterwards. Of course it could be all coincidence, but I really don’t think so.
I also should mention my blood pressure since it can be applicable to stroke risk. When I was working full time, I would occasionally get bp readings at my routine med appointments of 130-135/80. We always assumed this was because I was always rushing to my doc appointments in traffic after a workday, so I was often stressed/anxious by the time I got there. My typical readings were usually in the healthy range of 115-120/mid 70s, so given my age and very healthy weight/eating habits, no one was ever worried. After dropping to part time, my readings plummeted to be consistently <110/mid 70s….even when I was massively pregnant in my 3rd trimester. The highest bp reading I ever got when pregnant with my baby was at 36 weeks pregnant and even then it was 118! That was my typical bp reading when I was 25lbs lighter, non pregnant, and working full time. So while I was working in my stressful job, my bp was technically healthy by all medical standards. But it was clearly higher than what it could have and should have been. I think this is an area that we do not study enough. We set these healthy ranges and assume if someone has a bp around 120 then it is perfectly healthy and fine for them. But what if they would normally be 105 if they were living a healthier life? A consistent reduction in bp by 10pts might be really significant for health even if the original, higher reading was technically still in the safe range. We seem to focus on the numbers and not the variation for a particular individual. Clearly with my miscarriages, migraines, and elevated bp my body was trying to tell me something but because I was considered low risk (female, mid 20s, slim, healthy eating habits, non smoker, non drinker) I possibly suffered for far longer than was necessary because I appeared fine by technical standards.
The drop in income did delay our student loan payoff by a little while, but we still got it done in record time. I will say that my reduced hours did not impact us nearly as much as I thought they would. It gave us all the more reason to optimize expenses and get even more motivated and goal oriented. In some ways, my health issues really improved our lives because it gave us the kick in the pants we needed to become laser focused on what really mattered. I am now a SAHM and I work a few hours a week part time from home. It is the perfect arrangement for us, and even though we won't reach FIRE as quickly, our family is so much happier and healthier with this lifestyle.
I cannot tell you what is best for your situation, but I wanted to share to let you know that you are not alone in this experience. Sometimes our health and what is best for us forces us to change our path to FIRE. That’s okay. FIRE after all is all about living a healthy, happy life. Do not discount the impact that the rat race and stress can have on your health. If you feel strongly that your current lifestyle is hurting you, listen to that intuition. Does your company offer health coverage to part time workers (20+ hours per week)? If so, that might be a possible option combined with some serious cost cutting measures on the home front.
