Just three months into their relationship, a U.S. equestrian and her Polish boyfriend were tested beyond measure when the woman was hospitalized with mysterious, painful symptoms. Soon bed-bound and completely dependent, she was told by her doctors she would never ride again. In her pain, she asked her police officer boyfriend to leave, but he did not.
Eight years later, native Californian Kasia Bukowska has reclaimed her life. She is a horse trainer and pet portrait artist married to officer Kamil Bukowska, the man who never left her side. The couple lives in Dubiecko, Poland, with their six horses, ten cats, and a Labrador.
Kasia was thriving in Poland when she first fell ill, having left her life in Los Angeles to buy a horse. She was a Kozminski University business graduate, was competing as an equestrian, and had just met Kamil.
The Battle
Kasia was clocking in 15-plus hours of physical activity a week before she fell sick. To go from such an active lifestyle to having to be spoon-fed, she says, was something “hard to digest.”“When I landed in the hospital, it was due to a lupus flare,” she told The Epoch Times. “At the time I didn’t know it, and it took over nine months, four hospitals, and over 20 doctors across two countries to finally diagnose me. Kamil was there with me through it all.”
Kasia’s first symptoms were swollen hands, feet, and ankles. She was discharged from hospital after three days with negative blood test results and the reassurance that her symptoms were “probably an allergy” and “should go away on their own.” Days later, Kasia’s hands and feet resembled “swollen balloons,” and she was stiff and needed help walking. She spent three days at another hospital, where X-rays, an ultrasound, and extensive blood tests found nothing.
“My stay at this hospital was awful ... According to the doctors at this hospital, I was healthy. They treated me so horribly,” she said, adding that the hospital transferred her to yet another hospital in Warsaw for more tests.
“I remember calling Kamil, saying I would drag myself to the nearest bus stop if he didn’t pick me up,” she said. “Of course my knight in shining armor came in no time.”
‘I Felt He Deserved Better’
Beside Kasia’s lack of answers, there was another constant in her life: Kamil. Her new boyfriend took it upon himself to become her full-time carer.Kamil became Kasia’s “personal bodyguard and caretaker,” defending her description of her symptoms, supporting her through her phobia of needles, and easing the burden of her limitations.
Kasia said: “I was so embarrassed that the guy I was only dating for three months was spoon-feeding me, brushing my hair, washing me in the shower, and changing my clothes. At three months you want to show your best ... he fell for an active, happy-go-lucky, competitive, motivated, and ambitious girl ... I felt like I had nothing to offer him, only burden and turmoil.
“I tried breaking up with him, sometimes multiple times a day. I felt he deserved better. But he ignored me every time. I’d cry telling him to leave, and he’d lightly hold my hand or try to gently hug me.
“He stood outside my door and refused to leave the hospital. Security threatened to call the police, and he responded with, ‘I am the police!’ He kept me feeling safe ... He also kept me from trying to act on my own horrible thoughts—without his support, I don’t think I’d be here today.”
Before Kasia received a diagnosis, the couple navigated more setbacks including accusations of faking her symptoms, a doctor prescribing antipsychotics for her father to put into her food because she was “too crazy and unstable,” and the dwindling support of “fair weather” friends and family members.
A Bedtime Fairytale
Desperate, Kasia returned to her mother in L.A. without Kamil, who did not have a visa. She was admitted to a hospital where she finally got a diagnosis: lupus and fibromyalgia.“I was so excited! Now that I knew the diagnosis we could treat and cure it, right?” Kasia said. “Wrong. My doctor sat there with a concerned look on his face and explained to me what it was. I broke down crying; there was no cure.”
Kasia consulted multiple doctors and was told the same thing: she would never ride horses again. The tendons in her hands had shrunk and any sudden movement from a horse risked tearing them. After three months in the U.S., Kasia returned to Poland with a prescription for 20 pills a day and fell into a deep depression.
At the peak of her pain, she admitted to Kamil that she considered ending her life. Kamil comforted her by bringing photos of her beloved horse, her favorite foods and flowers, and stories of their eventual life in the country to her bedside.
Inseparable
The couple met before either had a grasp of the other’s language and were still learning to communicate throughout Kasia’s early illness. But when they met for the first time in 2014 at the stables where Kasia boarded her horse, and the Warsaw mounted police boarded theirs, the spark was instant.“I’d come in the morning between classes to eat a salad with my horse, and even at night before the barn closed ... no one else at the barn spent hours brushing their horse and just hanging out,” Kasia said. “This caught Kamil’s attention. He later told me it was rare to find someone so passionate about something in their life.”
Kamil left a chocolate bar and a note in Polish on Kasia’s car one evening, but she couldn’t decipher it. The mystery lasted a week before Kamil found the courage to talk to his crush. After a few mixed messages, Kasia finally gave Kamil her number and the pair became inseparable.
Despite having her man by her side as she contemplated life with lupus and fibromyalgia, Kasia claims her biggest challenge was staying positive.
“When I got upset, my pain increased what seemed like 100-fold,” Kasia said. “What became important to me was finding a way to minimize stress and negativity in my life.
“Getting to walk and make myself a meal one day gave me hope. It was the occasional one step forward, two steps back, for about a year and a half.”
After sampling the healing potential of meditation and hypnotherapy, Kasia integrated both into her recovery plan. When her mom brought acrylic paints and canvases to her bedside, she also found an outlet for her emotions in painting.
Kasia used a watery “drip” technique as a metaphor for her tears, saying, “My physical recovery from my lupus flare started with a paintbrush ... holding a brush was a painful workout for me, but getting to paint my emotions on canvas relieved me of some of the torment of not getting to see my horse, or any horse for that matter, for months on end.”
Kasia moved through darker colors into warmer colors and bold brush strokes as her physical and mental health improved. She started tutoring English to save up for something she knew would propel her recovery further; Kasia wanted a shire horse and, with her own money and Kamil’s support, she made it happen.
“It was a snowball effect where I felt more and more empowered,” Kasia said. “Once I saved up and bought my dream shire, whom I named Lilly, my physical state, hands down, left my doctors speechless ... from 20 pills a day I completely stopped all pain killers, anti-anxiety meds, and antidepressants. Doctors were happy for me, but flabbergasted. It was the horses!
Be Grateful
Today, Kasia lives in her dream barn behind Kamil’s family home in the Polish countryside with her shire and five additional horses, two rescued. She is now a professional equine and pet portrait artist but, after much research, has also found a way to work with horses from her wheelchair.
She said: “In the beginning, training my young horses looked like me sitting and observing them, touching them only when they came. I had to rely on body language, communication, emotions, energy, and trust to get my horse to do anything. Without lupus forcing me to take things slow, I never would’ve figured out this new way of working with horses.”
Kasia also discovered that love meant sharing her best and worst self with the man who never left her side. On Nov. 20, 2016, Kasia and Kamil tied the knot in a courthouse ceremony. The couple invested their money in building their backyard barn but hope to have an “official wedding” in their riding arena and hay shed with close family and friends in the summer of 2024.
After turning her life around, Kasia encourages others to stay positive even when problems seem insurmountable.
“It may be months or years later that you realize why the universe tested you in this way,” she said. “I see that my severe lupus flare brought so many good things into my life. It taught me perspective, I learned how to appreciate and take care of my body, I realized how lucky I was, I was excited about life.
“I learned that the quote, ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way’ really was true. I surprised myself with just how resilient I was physically and how strong I was emotionally. I found ’the one,' and married the man of my dreams.”
