falling face first into the mire

 June 2018 marked a significant shift in my life.

We had just returned from teaching overseas for a year in Morocco. 

 I had taken on a full time art teaching job.  

We had bought our first home and worked whenever we could to renovate it.

My dad had died from cancer while we were living in Morocco.

We had moved every year for the last 6 years from different states or countries (Kuwait to Oregon.  Oregon to Arizona.  Arizona to Morocco.  Morocco to Arizona)

I thought God would give me the strength to supernaturally continue to push my body to accomplish all of these things and keep serving, hosting, traveling, pouring my life into others, etc.  I thrived on being in relationships, investing in students, hosting bible studies, hosting neighbors for tea and coffee times, organizing trips to spend time with others, etc.

The first day I arrived in Arizona I landed, looked at a house and spent the night doing the paperwork with my realtor to bid for what became our home.  My husband and son were still in Oregon.  The following day I started my teaching job.

Looking back I gave myself no time to decompress, to unpack all of the changes and traumas that we had walked through in the last years.  I didn't know how to grieve well.  Loosing my dad to cancer was something unlike anything else I had experienced before and I didn't know how to put in words what I needed.  I think I just shoved it all down and kept going...because I thought that was what I was suppost to do.

I'm thankful that I did get to see my dad before he died.  He called us while we were living in Morocco and told us the doctors said his cancer was terminal.  Within the week of hearing that my son Phoenix and I were on a plane back to the states to spend 3 weeks with him.  I decided it was better to spend time with him while he was alive and clear minded then to be able to be there for the funeral.  When he died I watched the funeral over skype.  I'm glad for that, but I'll admit I wish I could have been there in person to hear peoples thoughts and to grieve with others.  I was sad that I received no sympathy cards.  I'm sure my mom received them for our family, but I didn't get to see them, read them and allow my body to process the grief and the support others offered in our time of grief.  That was hard.

Towards the end of our time in Morocco we went to the beach with another teacher to enjoy the shoreline and just sit.  While we were there we witnessed a man drown.  Several people tried to save him, but he pushed them away.  At one point he even put his thumbs up like he was saying "everything is just how I want it to be".  Then he went under and never came up.  For a long time that thought kept ruminating in my mind...I couldn't understand why anyone would want to commit suicide....why anyone would refuse help.  In working through this with my christian counselor recently I had this beautiful image of Christ standing beside me and saying "it's okay, I'm with you.  This is part of my story for you, for him, for Phoenix and all the others watching this". 

 I was the art teacher and yearbook advisor for two campuses...over 500 students. It took a lot of mental energy to learn the students and all of the staff's name,engaging both campus situations well, as well as keeping things sorted at each spot.  I also wanted to do a "good job", so I pushed myself to excel.  My body didn't have time to recover on the weekend as we kept working hard to fix our "fixer upper" home.

In that year of teaching I had 3 panic attacks.  One at the beginning of the school year, all of them while I was driving on the interstate.  When if first happened I didn't understand what it was.  I kept repeating "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love and of sound mind".  Towards the end of the year the stress of it all was starting to catch up with me.  I remember thinking that I wasn't handling stress as well as I use to be able to.  The last 2 panic attacks hit while I was driving home from teaching, so I asked a teaching friend if I could carpool with her and she would drive me.  The last week of school I barely made it.  My brain was in such a fog and I had a sense of terror of not understanding what was going on with my body, and why I couldn't fix it.  School ended and we traipsed off to Indiana to spend a month with my mom in Indiana, and a month with Hamlet's mom in Oregon (as was our custom between school years).  I thought I just needed to rest and recover, that I was just burnt out.  I slept and rested a lot that summer.  As the school year was approaching I was concerned as I still didn't feel well enough to teach again.  I took "family medical leave" from teaching hoping that I would recover quickly.  I worked with my natropath, doing everything she recommended to me as I thought I would get better fast.  I believed I had "adrenal fatigue".  Here's a list of what I documented my symptoms as... severe fatigue, mood issues, headaches, muscle tension, shakiness in the AM, inability to focus. My doc put me on the True Cellular Detox supplement plan ($3,000).  She told me that it didn't matter what I was "diagnosed with" and that she wanted to heal my cells and that healing my cells would fix everything else.  I did the detox program for probably 9 months.  I did infrared saunas as often as possible.  I did 20 chelation treatments for heavy metal (as my lead levels were really high) ($3000).  I did about 10 sessions of Ondamed biofeedback ($450).  I tried to fast for most of the day (eating between 11am-6pm).  I watched a ton of Dr. Pompa cellular healing TV.  It took 2 years, but I was slowly seeing improvement.  I was able to teach piano/violin lessons again and was driving again (although as little as possible).

In Feb. of 2020 I had oral surgery to remove "cavitations", believing that this was an important step towards fully healing.  This was something I heard multiple times to do.  The thought is that many people have "caverns" in their jaw bone from when their wisdom teeth were removed...and how often it's not removed properly and so the bone doesn't regrow and the spot fills with nasty things (parasites, viruses, bacteria) and becomes a low grade infection...you don't feel any pain, it just pulls from your immune system.  I don't have a lot of experience with surgery so I went into it with no medicine to calm my brain.  As I heard them drill into my bone I realized that my body was in very high alert.  My fingers were clawing the chair and my muscles were so tight.  Ugh!  If I ever do oral surgery again I'm for sure going to take medicine so I'm not awake and can't remember the sounds and feelings of it all!  After the surgery I felt okay overall.  The next morning I woke up to prepare breakfast for the boys (we were hosting a Japanese International student at the time as well).  My teeth were very "sweatery" because I couldn't brush my teeth the day of the surgery...so I went in the bathroom to brush my teeth.  It didn't occur to me not to use my battery operated toothbrush.  I had read all the instructions well and nothing was mentioned about this...but as soon as I placed that toothbrush on the bone and turned it on my brain started spinning.  I knew I was going to pass out.  I tried to make it to the bedroom before I collapsed, but I remember only making it a few steps.  I woke up on the floor, half on/off the tile floor.  Hamlet said he heard my shoes hit the door when I fell.  I probably wasn't out for long.  I woke up sweating, and exhausted.  Hamlet took the day off to take care of me.  I struggled to recover for about a week and a half.  About 10 days after the surgery I started to feel markedly better, so I remember trimming the bougainvillea bush and hosting my friend for a visit.  The next day we went to church as usual.  Half way through the service I started feeling really off.  I didn't get out of the bed the rest of the day.  We were suppose to host a gal from church for lunch that day and we had to cancel.  The rest of March is a blur.  I spent most of my time sleeping or trying to sleep.  I could barely get out of bed.  I had to hold the wall to get to the bathroom and taking a shower or even getting up to eat would be exhausting.  I felt awful.  Sometimes I wondered if I was dying.  Sometimes the only relief I had was when I was sleeping.  We had paid for a week at a resort by Disneyland so we decided to go ahead and drive there.  I was exhausted and struggling with anxiety.  The boys went to Disneyland for just about 5 hours or so before they came back to check on me.  I was a mess.  We stayed one night and then drove home.  I was barely eating.  I lost about 20 pounds in March.  My stomach started to sink in (which in a healthy body would be great, but in this one I knew it was a bad sign)  Once we got back we went to the natropath and asked for a full panel of bloodwork to be done so we could figure out what's going on with me. Initially she told me she thought I had ovarian cancer based on my high C4A level. (thankfully that was later ruled out after multiple visits to my OBGYN and a biopsy. (It's hard to have times where your brain has to process the possibility of cancer and potentially worse sickness when you are already sick to begin with.) She started giving me "ozone therapy" ($150 each time) where they pull your blood out, pass it through a machine, expose it to ozone, and then push it back into your body.  She also tried "meyers push" vitamin injections.  My natropath though that giving me daily meyers pushes for 10 days would help put whatever I had into remission.  I passed out during one of the injections as it was a new tech person and she had to try 3 times to find the vein (and each time it really hurt!)  I also hadn't eaten that day and later I was told injections like that are strong so you have to eat before you do it. (I thought that fasting was suppost to help me heal).  I felt terrible all day.  I was exhausted and scared by how I felt.

After the passing out experience I decided I needed to try working with a new doctor as I wanted to feel safe with whoever was going to give me the injections.  I started seeing a functional doctor.  He ordered bloodwork and discovered I had mold poisoning (ocratoxin A).  Toxic levels of mold have taken up residency in my body.  Mold can cause scary symptoms...many of which I have.  He also discovered I had a systemic yeast infection. My lyme bloodwork from Igenix showed positive bands but not enough to be officially "diagnosed" with lyme by him.  I worked with him for several months before starting to see my nutritionist.

Jane is a nutritionist that helped my college roomate "Sib" go from being bedridden and having seizures to fully functional and out and about in the world in about 2 years time.  I started seeing here in July 2020.  She has an Asyra machine that scans your body systems and is shockingly accurate at diagnosing things.   Here is what I discovered I had according to the machine...

my central nervous system was shot! (I've been in fight or flight for many years), I wasn't getting REM sleep, I was very deficient in Thiamine, I have a parasite, I have mold toxicitiy, I have liver issues, I have low testosterone, a virus that causes boils, I have Lyme and the levels were really high, I need iodine, I have exhausted adrenals, I have toxic radiation levels, my red blood cells are too small, I have heavy metal poisoning, oxidative stress, I have toxic levels of pesticides, insecticides, I have histamine issues.  UFTAH!  I had paid thousands for testing up to this point and seeing here cost a mere $90 dollars and she could see all those things!  From that point forward she has been my point person to direct my care.  I love that she can test supplements directly to my body.  I took all the supplements in that my doctors had prescribed to me and about 75% of them were actually harmful for my body and not helping me heal at all! (and had cost a ton of money too!)

After a few months on her supplements here what the machine said...I had severe fatigue, my hypothalamus looked much better, I had blood flukes in the liver, yeast was showing, my cortisol levels were down, my allergens (mold/yeast) worse than before, my lyme levels were 62/100 (improving! as 50 is a good level),  I had polarity disturbances in my cells,  I had molybdenum shortage.

I saw here again in December and she said there was significant improvement!  My total numbers that came up were 112 (and she said a "normal" person show about 100.  I'm having digestion issues, the fatigue and exhaustion is still there, my liver is at a great number 59/100, there some issues with my veins/arteries/heart.  I'm low in electrolytes,

I am scheduled to see her again in April.  In between visits it feels like forever sometimes as my health comes and goes...

An answer to prayer is that I've started working with a christian counselor.  She has done EMDR with me for several traumatic memories.  First with the drowning incident in Morocco, and just this week with a traumatic driving memory (driving 6 hours in the mountains of Oregon on black ice).  I think EMDR has been really helpful and I'm super thankful to get the opportunity to go!

Something I'm looking into is also the possibility of neurofeedback.  I had my brain scan on Tuesday and will see the doctor next week to see if it's something that can help me.

I was introduced to DNRS (Dynamic Neuro Retraining System) from a friend who's been diagnosed with chronic lyme and has been sick like me as well.  Basically the gist of it is that a traumatic event caused the body to fall sick, but that the lymbic system in the brain is keeping the body sick, telling it that I'm still in attack mode so I'm constantly inf lammed instead of resting and digesting.  DNRS has specific exercises to do for your brain for an hour daily to help retrain your brain.  I was faithful for a while, but it's been difficult to stick with it so I have fallen away from daily exercises.

My biggest disturbing symptom is the "weird brain" I've had often.  It's as if my brain glitches.  I can tell when my brain is clear and when it's in the "weird brain" state.  It's both frustrating and scary as I can't stop or redirect it...I just have to wait for it to pass.  Hence the reason I don't do much away from home or alone as I never know when it's going to hit.  I also don't drive (unless it's in the neighborhood) as I don't know if the "weird brain" will hit while I'm driving and I don't want to hurt myself, my family or anyone else so I don't trust myself to drive most days.

I have almost daily lower back pain.  I don't know what causes it, though I also know I'm not very active at this point.  On my good days I'll take a walk for about a half an hour but that's it.  Sometimes I'll get super sleepy, almost like I'm drugged.  I wake up feeling groggy and out of it.

Some mornings before I'm fully awake I feel oppressed with dark and heavy thoughts that cycle in my brain.  Once I'm awake enough I can take those thoughts captive...but what a yucky way to wake up.

I struggle to have joy in my life.  I has to be a very conscious choice.  What brought me so much joy before in my life is now too much effort.  I've stopped making art, I've stopped playing the guitar.  I've stopped journalling (which I hope this blog will remedy).  It hurts so much to be ill like this for so long that I've tried to just stop feeling...blocking out both the good and the bad. My counselor has encouraged me to try my hand at art again, but I don't want to push myself...art has always been an outlet and a joy and forcing it doesn't seem right.  It's been a long time since I've felt inspired.  Everything just feels dried up.

I'm keeping this blog so that I can allow myself to process and journal the events and possibly encourage another sojourner who's walking in the mire themselves.