Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Karly Stein. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Karly , appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I have always been someone who had to learn things the hard way. I can remember early on in my life that I was always testing the waters a bit and couldn’t quite take the easy road. Once I graduated High School and failed my first quarter of college my parents sent me to therapy where we discovered I had ADHD. This made my need for learning things the hard way make a lot of sense, Little did I know the hardest test of my life would come about 20 years later.
July 15th, 2018 I woke around 2am feeling absolutely miserable, thinking I had food poisoning, the difference is as it started to move through my system I was feeling worse and not better, unlike food poisoning typically works. I reached out to a friend who is very intuitive and she said ”get to the ER and get there now”. They tested me and sent me home. On the way home I learned I had C. Difficile and Salmonella Poisoning. I didn’t know it then but I was in for a long journey. I went through about 6 weeks of treatment then and everything was fine.
Then in January of 2019 I found myself at work, bent over in pain with stomach cramps waiting for someone to relieve me so I could go back to the ER. A 2nd Diagnosis, C. Difficile with Norovirus this time. My GI doc asked me “Why do you always have two things at once?” I said “I’m an overachiever like that” That time it was a little harder to clear. I was on antibiotics for 60 days, we finally cleared it up and we thought it was over. I finished 2019 and 2020 free of infection, I even started a new business as an artist in December of 2020 that was taking off like I couldn’t believe. WOOHOO!!
Then in March of 2021 I took a friend to the ER and a week later my stomach blew up like a balloon and I found myself having symptoms again. I went to urgent care for testing and sure enough a 3rd positive C. Diff diagnosis. I had 3 positive diagnoses that year and the symptoms never went away. December of that year I was having conversations with my therapist around death. I remember saying to him ”My life was finally starting to get good and now I’m going to die” Of course he called me out for that being a limiting belief life a good therapist does. But the reality that I was facing a deadly infection and may not beat it was starting to set in.
In December of 2020 I didn’t qualify for an FMT (Fecal microbial transplant) because I was testing negative but I still felt sick and looked sick. My doctor pulled some strings and got me into a study at U.C. Health for FMT’s–that was life changing (so I thought). The FMT happened January 13th, 2022 and for 5 months I had my life back.
During that time, I won the Westword’s People’s choice Best Art Class in Denver. I was selling out Art Classes and life was amazing! Then June 13th I got food poisoning and that led to a series of events which led to the 6th and final C. Diff diagnosis in late October 2022. At that point I had become antibiotic resistant. They tried one of the strongest drugs on the market and it didn’t work. They tried an antibody infusion and that didn’t work either. The scary factor was getting REAL!! We were in December of 2022 and this was turning into a month I was starting to hate. The lab at the hospital screwed up my tests 6 times–SIX TIMES!!! I spent the holidays that year alone scared and facing the real possibility that they could be my last. Finally on January 2nd the lab got it right and I qualified for a FMT done via colonoscopy.
I am happy to say that I just celebrated 14 months healthy! Life has put me through a lot but I always come out better on the other side. I learned from this experience to lean on faith. There were months when I was too sick to pay my bills and I had to ask my community for help. Once I went through the physical healing I had a lot of spiritual healing to do next. I learned that there were hidden beliefs in my consciousness that led me to getting sick in the first place. I had a friend say to me during this ” You inspire me, no matter what is thrown at you in life you just keep on moving through it and you never give up.”
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am multi-passionate entrepreneur. My first passion is my art, K.Stein Creations and www.paintpouringdenver.com. I combine intuition with science and color to create fun abstract art. We also offer team building events and have brought on new offering such as Bad Art Parties for Adults and Intuitive Painting Experiences. We love helping people step into this would and be able to surrender into a creative space.
My 2nd Business is Senior Living Markets. We bring joy filled shopping events to senior living communities. This came unexpectedly after I did all the healing work last year. We have a group of over 100 vendors. We serve Senior living Communities all over the Denver Metro area, Longmont and Boulder and we are growing.
I’m also the Creative Director and Event Lead for Make Mental Health Matter, formerly known as BCC Evolution, a non-profit that educates people on the warning signs of suicide to help save lives. I had a close family member die by suicide in 2011 and I want to help other families avoid the pain my family has faced.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
- Entrepreneurship is probably the biggest journey into self discovery there is. I would have never even considered that when I started my first business. My first piece of advice would be to lean in–you are going to learn more about you than you ever thought. You’re going to learn how tenacious you are, how much faith you have, how much you believe in yourself, how much you trust yourself. Be fully open to discovering YOU!!
- When the level gets harder you’re about to level up. That is something I always have to remind myself. Back at the end of September I was sitting in a parking lot after a networking event crying because I was ready to give up. I was done, it was too hard. Sure enough a week later, I had started getting response to the Senior Living Markets, We booked 15 events in 2 months. I had a whole new business and everything is different now.
- Take aligned action, follow your intuition because that is what can change your entire life.
Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?
I am going to be vulnerable here… which is a little hard. As I told my story in the first question–what I have faced over the last few years? Well I was just getting back on my feet, financially, at the end of last year, my car’s transmission went out on Christmas day–of all days. So I have been working towards saving to buy a new car (though Q1 is typically the slowest for me). It’s definitely put a road block on the momentum of the new business, Senior Living Markets.
Contact Info:
- Website:
- Instagram: ksteincreates
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/karlystein
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlystein/
- Other: www.makementalhealthmatter.org
Image Credits
Professional Photos were taken by Lisa Craig Photography. The photo of me with Blue Hair was take right before my 6th Diagnosis… photo to illustrate how sick I was. Taken on my phone. Gallery Photos were taken by Karly Stein
