18 Feb She beat disease, offers to help others
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[/imageframe]Angela Gaffney has celebrated two milestones in the past year: Starting a health-coaching business and surviving to her 40th birthday.
The founder of Essential Health & Wellness, a downtown Colorado Springs business where she works to improve the emotional and nutritional health of clients, was diagnosed nearly four years ago with mitochondrial myopathy, an autoimmune disease that can lead to blindness, deafness, muscle failure, paralysis and death.
“I decided one day that I better figure out out to live,” says Angela Gaffney, a certified health counselor.
Today, the certified health counselor and former pharmaceutical-sales manager feels strong, loves life and is drawing on her experiences to help the 35 or so clients that visit her office at 13 S. Tejon St., inside the Carlton Building.
“I decided one day that I better figure out how to live,” she said. “Because my thoughts were all going toward how do I die gracefully, which is a really, really hard thing to think about.”
In April 2007, Gaffney, mother of two, began suffering from severe joint pain. She was taking aerobics classes as part of a pact she made with her sister-in-law to get fit before bikini season.
“Leaving these classes, I might feel a tweak in my elbow,” she said. “And then next class, it was my knee that was hurting. And I kept thinking, ‘Gosh, why am I getting injured over and over again?’ And it progressed from those little things happening to debilitating joint pain by winter where I would have to hold onto the railings to get up my stairs.”
Changing her son’s diapers became a struggle. Her mind would go blank mid-conversation, and a 10-minute walk would lay her up in bed for hours.
In June 2008, the disease bared its teeth while the still-undiagnosed Gaffney was making dinner.
“My legs started just getting so weak that I couldn’t hold myself up,” she said. “So I had to use my arms on the countertop and drag myself to the phone and tell my husband to come home from work — that something was really, really wrong.”
Something was indeed wrong. But it wasn’t until visiting with a Pueblo neurologist in 2008 that Gaffney learned it was mitochondrial myopathy. She finally knew her condition — but the outlook was dismal.
“I could hardly see the road, the drive home, not because it was raining but because I was crying so hard,” she said. “And I was headed home to celebrate my son’s birthday.”
For a while, the prospect of death dominated. She thought, for example, about what she’d want her daughter to know on her wedding day. Gaffney considered writing letters to her son and daughter, now 5 and 9, so they could have something from their mother on birthdays.
But then her mindset changed. Gaffney scoured the Web for foods known to alleviate joint paint, started meditating and in 2010 saw a doctor who reduced high levels of metal in her system, something she said is linked to the disease. And after several unsuccessful stints with personal trainers who pushed her too hard, she found one who was a good match — and still works out with him today.
Gaffney, an Institute for Integrative Nutrition graduate, started her practice in October 2011 because she realized how much revamping her diet and lifestyle had improved her well-being and wanted to share that with others. Gaffney also wanted to show people that a negative medical diagnosis isn’t the end. Her philosophy is to intertwine emotional and physical health.
“I think that is a unique approach,” client Teresa Abell said. At Essential Health & Wellness, which Gaffney started in October, Abell feels as if she’s visiting a nutritionist, life coach and trainer at the same time, she said. She’d been working with a nutritionist for two years before signing on with Gaffney but said that person didn’t integrate what Gaffney calls the “primary foods” — relationships, career and other factors that underscore healthiness.
Articulating that multifaceted approach has been one of her challenges, Gaffney said. Some think she’s going to hand them a diet plan and not much else, she said.
To spread the word, she takes her passion for public speaking to women’s groups and other networking events. That’s how she has gained most of her clients, she said.
Nutrition, though, is a key part of the program. Gaffney leverages the changes she has made in her diet to help clients. A self-proclaimed Diet Coke and sugar addict before she was diagnosed, she hasn’t had soda in nearly six years and starts every day with a shake full of berries and kale. Of course, there’s still a place for treats. Last summer, Gaffney and her children, Sean and Tori, rode bikes to 7-Eleven to get popsicles. It was the first time they’d been on a bike ride in months — and for Gaffney, it was exhausting.
For her trainer, Jeff Jimeson, it was monumental.
“She does give me a lot of credit, but it’s her tenacity” that has gotten her this far, Jimeson said.
ANDREW GIBSON • Updated: September 4, 2012 at 12:00 am The Gazette