| My New Friends |
My life for the past three years has encompassed the quote, "Rainy with a chance of clouds", or even "Cloudy with a chance of sun". Until recently I have been trying to just keep my head above water. Today, most days, I am doing better than existing. It's been a long awaited step in the right direction. Yippie!
My last post promised an update on my new adventures in
Crohns conquering. I haven’t been so good at fulfilling that promise, and it's been long in coming; but now I have a greater experience on which to draw!
My life in the past few years has essentially been a shell of
what my former life was. My personality became a boring, cynical version of
what was once a happy, bubbly, “otter” as my parents liked to call it. I have
been through, and understand the despair of what it feels like to lack hope
(see previous post on hope).
I keep hearing Winston Churchill say, “if you are going through
hell, keep going.” When finally, earlier this year, I decided that God never wants us to give up
hope, I could find the strength reach outside my comfort zone and explore new options. Romans 5:3-4 says “Not only so, but we also rejoice in our
sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance,
character; and character, hope.” I was certainly not rejoicing at the
time, but I have come to see how my perseverance of hope during total agony was only
because God allowed it, and finally I saw the sliver of hope.
We have all come to think of
some forms of bacteria as our friends. When we take antibiotics, or as females when
we get those nasty yeast infections; that good bacteria needs to replaced.
Massive doses of yogurt or probiotics should help! This idea of bacteria being
good was revolutionary!
Fast forward to my life, and
the present. I was doing all these things to try to correct the landslide
backwards that was happening to my body. The things I was doing were all good.
Unfortunately my body needed to be pushed the other direction. The pendulum was
swinging the WRONG way. What if, just like good bacteria, we need good
parasites too?! Some people call this “helminthic induced immune imodulation” After
the initial shock of the idea, collect your thoughts, and remember that some
bacteria is nasty, dangerous stuff. MRSA
is NO joke! And people with C Diff are not healthy, happy folks. BUT, we NEED
the good stuff too! In fact, without the good, the bad take over. The pendulum needed
a push toward healing. I had to correct the autoimmune function, instead of
mask it. Can that even happen??? The idea is that is gives our immune system
something other than itself to attack…
So, I booked a flight to
California, to see the great people I met through www.wormtherapy.com. After
months of research, and even a quick panic attack at the crazy idea I was about
to follow through with, I arrived in January in San Diego, CA.
When I got there, we took a
quick trip across the border, to a doctor’s office in Tijuana, Mexico. They
spent hours looking at labs, talking about my specific situation, and making recommendations.
We (myself, and my in-laws that accompanied me) worried about it being dangerous to cross the border, that the trip would take
hours to get back across the border, and that I would have reactions to the
treatment to deal with. After initial discussion, we decided on treatment and dosage, then placed some clear liquid
on a band-aid:
I put
it on my arm, and waited the 11 minutes to feel the 15 pinches as each one made
its way into my arm. Their journey, and mine, had begun.
God was so good! It went
without a glitch. Nothing happened out of the ordinary, we breezed through the
border without problems (in less than 1.5 hours, which was a miracle!), and the
reactions were only minor itching.
We had dinner with the provider,
and discussed the work he was doing with autoimmune diseases. Wonderful to
hear, when these people are left with so few options! Then we spent the night
in the hotel, and flew back home.
We waited…and waited…and
patiently waited. I’ve never prayed for patience, for fear that God might try
to teach me some. Whether I liked it or not, I was learning it. For 12 weeks, I
waited for the process to happen. For these little guys to get established,
they travel through my arm, into my lungs, coughed into mucus, swallowed, and
finally through my stomach into the intestines; where they start to set up
shop. My little babies made it to their destination, and started to grow into
adults.
People ask me now if I think
they are helping or working. My answer has become some version of the following
“last year I was in the hospital three times, and spent $18,000 –with insurance-
on health care, this year I have yet to be hospitalized, and have spent –
including my Mexico trip, less than $4,000, and I’m on about 1/3 of the
medication”. The year isn’t over yet, of
course. It took 12 weeks to start seeing any benefit, and at the 6 month mark,
I am pretty sure my overactive intestines killed them off; so I had to replace
them. It’s a never ending process of establishing the right dose. I hope to get
off all medication, and into a healthy place. I still take one step forward and
two back. The process is far from perfect.
My body had been in such bad
shape, for so long, that it will take time to repair, and reverse the pendulum.
Could it be, though, that I’ve found a way to jump start the process?? Could it
be that God created a way for our bodies to keep autoimmune diseases at bay,
and our clean living accidentally got rid of what we needed? I sure HOPE so!
Now that I've seen this working in my own life, I've started reading this book to better understand:
Keep Hoping,
Rachel
P.S. I'd like if everyone would weigh in on what they'd like to hear more about!
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| Enjoying life: feeding the dolphins at Sea World |
