Fort St. John, B.C. - For years, Grace Alton says living with a chronic illness meant never knowing how her health might change from one day to the next.
“It put me in a position of being terrified all the time. Not knowing, you know, tomorrow morning, am I gonna wake up and be totally fine? Is this all gonna go away?” Alton says.
The 26-year-old lives with Behçet’s disease, which she describes as a type of neurological vasculitis affecting blood vessels, particularly in her brain.
Alton says her symptoms began at 12 with debilitating migraines. By 18, the condition had progressed into a full-blown autoimmune disease.
“I have up to 25 migraine days a month, so for most of the month, I’ve lived with a migraine,” she says.
Alton says her illness left her unable to work for a time and forced her to put her university degree on hold because she couldn’t manage school and her health at the same time.
Accessing specialized care added another challenge. She says Fort St. John’s rotating specialists, including a rheumatologist, visit only two or three times a year, and appointments are not always available.
“It involved many, many trips, hundreds of kilometres away, whether it was to Edmonton or Calgary or Vancouver,” she says.
She travelled to Edmonton every six weeks to see a rheumatologist and gastroenterologist, and to Vancouver every few months for nerve blocks and faster access to specialized testing.
Alton says the Treaty 8 Tribal Association helped fund her medical transportation, but she estimates losing tens of thousands of dollars in wages from time away from work.
In July, Alton visited Fort St. John chiropractor Dr. Elena Warkentin for an unrelated sports injury. During the assessment, they also discussed her chronic migraines and Behçet’s disease.
“I had my first adjustment in July, and I haven’t experienced a migraine since,” Alton says.
Warkentin says she has noticed a difference in Alton’s daily life, including “a lot more freedom to tackle the day.”
Alton says she had been off medication for about a year before seeing Warkentin, but continued receiving occipital nerve blocks until September.
“I’m not saying that traditional medicine didn’t work, and that chiropractic care did. I think they go hand in hand,” Alton says.
Warkentin says she does not believe the treatment changed Alton’s underlying Behçet’s disease, but believes it was directly linked to the improvement in her migraines.
Alton also hopes to pursue chiropractic studies at the University of Western States in Oregon, drawing on her own experience as a patient.
“I know what it’s like to be scared and frustrated and desperate for answers,” she says. “And I want to take those experiences that I went through and use them to become the kind of health-care professional that I needed during those moments.”
“A diagnosis doesn’t mean that your dreams have to disappear,” she says. “It just means the path’s gonna look a bit different.”