What I am currently taking, and what I've tried:Currently using Helminthic therapy, Omega 3 fish oil, enzymes, probiocics, Vitamin D 5,000 MG (due to blood work),
IV vitamins or iron in an emergancy, Prednisone taper, and Humira ( when I was in the hospital). Tried fecal transplant.
Trying to fix some hormone/cortisol problems w/ melatonin, progesterone, and few other supplements. Oh, and I've been gluten free for about 6 years. Some things helped, others hurt.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

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:
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

Monday, January 23, 2012

Rethink the Unthinkable










Historic Subterranean Missile Launch Command Capsule (Oscar One)

My husband and I recently visited Whiteman Air Force Base. On the base you can go down underground and see where they used to have a secret launching pad for the nuclear missiles. They were set up in such a way that it took two separate people to turn a key at once in order to detonate them. They had all sorts of security and secret codes, with needed presidential authorization.  Currently, this particular location has been closed for military operations but open for tours.

What struck me most, though, was the escape hatch. In case war did break out, and these people ended up stuck down there, they were provided a means of escape. They were each given tiny shovels that looked something like this:

After opening a hatch, which weighed enough to crush several men, and is set in a precarious angle. To get out, the must allow several tons of sand to flow into the tiny room in which they would be sitting. In the case they made it through that, they would be lucky if the sand didn't first fill the room, or that the sand did not become a large glass bubble (from the nuclear blast) in which they could only see through - and hope for escape. BUT, let's say that they are lucky. Then they must dig through many feet of gravel, followed by layers of road ties, then six feet again of dirt. They would finally make it to a nice thick asphalt.  You see, because the location of this place was secret, even many military people did not know its location. So, they ended up covering the escape area with a parking lot!
When they shut down the site (which was reopened for viewing purposes) some of the personnel wanted to try the escape...just to see if it would have worked. But they didn't let them.  Want to know why??? Because the escape wasn't necessarily meant to work. It was put there to keep people mentally hopeful, and not thinking about what might happen, should they really have a need to follow through with this. Since there are still similar "exit strategies" around our nation, what would happen should our escape route be nonviable? The people working there would lose hope! That is how precious our hope is! The idea that it is possible, though highly improbable,  can keep us mentally sane. The military knew this force to be true. The idea that one has to dig with a tiny, very sturdy looking (ha ha) shovel, after the narrow escape of being squashed, through sand, glass, gravel, railroad ties, soil and asphalt, seems pretty improbable.  But there is a chance. And that chance creates hope.
So....what does all this have to do with Crohn's? HOPE! I am convinced that we nearly lose our minds when we lose hope. I can say, I have been there. I am not saying this to be unrealistic, by any means. But, find something in your life to give you hope. And here follows my next blog...
I just found my next "hope" for my disease. I've been though many things, hoping they would help but here I go again. I've learned it's not a bad thing.

Wormtherapy.com...look it up. I am in week one, so I don't see any difference really (good or bad). But...there is an invisible difference. And maybe, just maybe, it's the most important one anyway.
More on my treatment to come!


Romans 15:13  May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

Rachel