The Everyday Battles That No One Sees

The unseen moments that define what it means to keep going.

At one point in my journey, my whole life felt ruled by lab results. Every other day, sometimes daily, I went in for blood draws to see if my electrolytes were holding steady or if everything was crashing again.

My potassium levels were like a roller coaster, swinging from too high to too low with no middle ground.

Potassium was always the stubborn one, and the pills were the worst of it. They weren’t just “big.” They were rectangular, thick, and intimidating.

Each one held 20 mEq of potassium.My daily dose? 180 mEq...that’s nine of those monsters every single day, three pills, three times a day.

And even with all that effort, my potassium still refused to cooperate. No matter how many pills I managed to choke down, my body just couldn’t find balance.

One day it dropped too low, the next it spiked too high. Every lab draw brought a new number and a new adjustment, up the dose, down the dose, change the timing, try again.

It became a constant cycle of worry and recalibration, always walking that fine line between too little and too much.

What made it harder? During my open-heart surgery, I had a stroke that paralyzed my left vocal cord. Something most people never think about suddenly became a daily battle.

Swallowing wasn’t simple anymore. Liquids went down the wrong way, food caught in my throat, and those potassium tablets? They were the biggest gamble of all.

Every pill came with the same question: Would this one go down, or get stuck halfway?

But I didn’t have the luxury of skipping them. My balance was too fragile. Missing even one dose wasn’t an option. So day after day, I braced myself and pushed through.

Here’s the part people don’t talk about the everyday fights that look small from the outside.

Here’s what most never see—the unseen moments that define what it means to keep going.

A pill is just a pill until it isn’t. Until it feels like climbing a mountain every single time.

I learned that survival isn’t a single event, it’s every hard thing you do when no one’s watching.

It’s built out of a thousand unglamorous acts of persistence, like choking down a pill that feels too big.

And it left me with this truth:I can do hard things.Not always gracefully and definitely not without fear, but I can.

So if you’ve had your own “potassium pill” moment, whether it’s a literal pill or something else that feels too big for you please know this: you’re not alone.

Sometimes the hardest battles are the ones no one else sees.And they matter just as much as the big ones.

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