Bulu Box: If you're healthy and you know it, clap your hands

The concept of "health" is a fickle thing when you have a chronic illness. Am I healthy? What defines health? Does this disorder that I had no hand in developing count against me being "healthy"? Or is "healthy" only determined by those factors which you have at least a modicum of control over? And why am I getting so philosophical in a $5 subscription box review?

Bulu Box is a sample box of health and fitness vitamins/supplements/lifestyle/stuff that usually costs $10 a box. You can pick the "weight loss" themed box or just get a "general fitness" one (I picked weight loss for some reason, even though I don't actually need to lose weight). I used the discount code MYSUB5 from MySubscriptionAddiction which gives $5 off the subscription forever, so my boxes cost $5 a month. Which is good, because really it isn't worth $10. They only promise you sample sizes, not even deluxe samples, but you will occasionally get full sized products. I've heard that the full size products they send are often ones that are only a few months until their expiration date, but that doesn't bother me as Bulu Box is intended for sampling purposes.

What sold me on subscribing to Bulu is that you don't really lose your $5 even if you hate all the samples that month. With each box you get, you can go online and fill out a very quick survey for the products and earn 10 points to spend in their store. 10 points = $1. So if you had 6 products in your Bulu Box, that is $6 you get back after filling out the surveys. Just for having a subscription you get points each month (I believe you get 5 points per $1 you spend, so my $5 subscription box gives me 25 points a month). Their store has a wide enough variety of stuff that generally there is going to be something you want in it. You also get 50 points for referring friends to join, and if you're interested in joining after reading this review, I will have my referral link at the end (clearly marked as such so you don't click it if you don't want to!).

Pretty box, messy floor

My hopes for this subscription are:

1. Find products that I can use for energy due to my narcolepsy
2. Find healthy snacks that are easy to grab when I'm having a rough day
3. Find products that don't interact with one of my many medications (big one!)

I have a chronic illness or two, this is how it all started.

You never think when you wake up that this might be your last day feeling "normal". When being sick becomes the new normal, when doctors diagnose and re-diagnose you, and some have to google your diagnosis because they've never heard of it before.

Some illnesses are slow building, and you can look back and see the evidence of it coming on for years prior. Narcolepsy was like that with me. I was the sleepy one, the lazy one, the one taking all the naps.  It was all I could do to not nod-off while sitting up in High School (even though I adored school) and in university I scheduled my classes so that I could take naps in between them. Lunch breaks at work were always a battle between my hunger and my exhaustion, where usually the exhaustion won out.

I thought this was how everyone felt, and I was just not strong enough to fight off the need for sleep. I thought that every morning when people woke up, everyone felt as un-rested and drained as I do. Everyone said I was lazy, so I just figured maybe I was. Sadly, these were the good days. Around August of 2012, it got worse.