What Are We Missing??

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! 

Enjoying life: feeding the dolphins at Sea World