I took a lot of time off from writing (too much time.)  At first it wasn’t really intentional.  Life was happening and it was chaotic and busy and I wasn’t checking in. I was more focused on living my life for the first time in years than I was about “documenting” and “sharing” my journey and struggles.  Then I thought, “should I even bother anymore?” Which turned into “I’ll do an update 9 months after my discharge date from St. Georg.”  Now here I am almost 10 months later and finally getting to it.  I feel compelled to share what’s been going on and what I’ve done and hopefully it will reach someone whom it may help.

My life has changed so dramatically since I walked into Klink St. Georg on January 2, 2019.  I am still not fully healed but I am healing.  My health has improved so much.  No more passing out.  No more stopping breathing.  My heart hasn’t stopped beating.  My pain is minimal for the most part.  I’m thinking more clearly. I’m not trapped in bed for days and weeks.  I’m starting to feel like me again.  The path to recovery hasn’t been easy, but it has been worth it. I’m grateful everyday for my life, to wake up breathing and in an overall good place.

In the last 9 months so much has happened.  Here’s the short version: my husband had another neck reconstruction, he fought and survived osteomyelitis in his cervical spine (almost killed him); I had a miscarriage; my husband relapsed and went to inpatient treatment; I tapped into my spirituality, took some classes and discovered my own gifts; my husband had hernia surgery; I started seeing a Psychiatrist again (I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder – which makes so much sense to me after learning about it); I had my own neck surgery (triple level fusion); and turned a year older.

I was doing so well after the Klinik.  When I came home I was fully dedicated to my recovery and nothing else was more important until my husband’s life was on the line.  Being the kind of person I am, I became more concerned about his well being than my own (old habits die hard.)  I started letting my own recovery be compromised.  I wasn’t eating well, I was spending long hours and sometimes nights at the hospital.  My health started to slip.  I was frustrated.  I was angry that I didn’t get the time I needed to devote to my own health and recovery.  But’s that’s life.  Things happened beyond my control and I did the best I could at the time.  Without my treatment at the Klinik I would have never been able to do be there for the things that happened.  Before it would have killed me with all certainty.

In May I was introduced to the Medical Medium Anthony William.  It’s funny how people/things appear just when you need them.  (You can say God or Spirit or Life or Karma or whatever belief you subscribe to does this.)  I have always been a firm believer in the healing powers of food.  This is has been tested and proven to me on multiple occasions, not just for myself but many others I know as well.  So when I heard about Anthony William, I thought I would look into it and see what he was about.  I am beyond grateful that I did.

I devoured Anthony William’s first book “The Medical Medium”  and I told everyone I talked to about it.  I started drinking celery juice (16 ounces) every morning on an empty stomach.  Let me say, I HATE CELERY! So the idea of drinking straight celery juice first thing in the morning was gross and disgusting to me.  But I thought, “don’t knock it until you try it.” In just a few days I was already seeing major changes for me.  I got my mom on the juice train too.  I would get up at 5:30 every morning to make juice for her and I so she could get it on her way to work in the morning. (I ended up getting a slow masticating juicer and gave my mom my first juicer.)  Then I got my husband on board after a dare. We all started noticing a lot of positive changes.  My mom liked it right off the bat (she also likes celery) but my husband was like me, he hated the taste.  It took a little while to get used to.  In the beginning both my husband and I would just chug it to get it done and over with, we both looked at it as medicine.  Both of us are still juicing 5 months later.  If we skip a day, we just don’t feel as good.  My husband quit drinking coffee for a while.  He was someone who could drink 2 pots a day and never think twice about it.  He said, that having celery juice in the morning just made him feel better.  Even now that he has started drinking coffee again, it’s rare and he can only handle one cup (2 at max.)

Seeing the wonderful benefits of celery juice wasn’t enough for me.  I thought “if just doing juice makes me feel this good, let’s try the rest of his advice.” I haven’t done everything, but I’ve done a lot.  I juice daily.  Celery juice is a must.  I combined the liver rescue smoothie and the heavy metal detox smoothie and love it! I’ve changed my diet to mostly plant based.  I still enjoy animal products once in a while, but it’s a treat, not the norm anymore and I am more aware now than ever of where it comes from.  I used to eat butter like it was going out of style (I enjoyed chunks of straight butter.) I haven’t bought butter in over 2 months.

I didn’t make the out right choice to become plant based, I just started incorporating more fresh fruits and veggies and my tastes began to change with that.  I noticed that when I didn’t eat “well” I didn’t feel “well”. If I wasn’t eating healthy my body started to feel deprived of nutrients and that’s when I became hungry and started mindlessly eating to try to satiate that “need”.

I started adding supplements back in, again largely based on the Medical Medium’s recommendations.  They worked better than anything I had every tried.

Now, for the pill that was really hard to swallow for me.  Anthony William says that Lyme (what we call Lyme) is viral and not bacterial as we’ve all been told.  It’s Esptein-Barr or Shingles or Herpes or a combination as well as toxins.  (For a more in depth explantation see the book “The Medical Medium” by Anthony William.)

As someone who has suffered with Lyme, Bartonella, Babesia and mycoplasma; someone who put myself through hell and back with nightmarish treatments; someone who tried so much just to get well and be healthy.  I’ll admit I had a hard time believing that he could be right about it.  How could the medical community be so wrong? How could we have been lied to about something so major?  Antibiotics not working and doing more harm than good? It took me a long time to really believe that Anthony William might be right.

I took a long hard look at all the treatments that I had been through and how long I had been sick and how much I lost from being sick and all that I had done in the hopes of being well one day.  What’s my verdict? Well for now, based on trying all the things I have, I believe him.  Before anyone gets upset and stops reading, just hear me out.

I believe that my Lyme doctor saved my life with the treatment I started there. I am incredibly thankful for all my Lyme doctor did for me.  I still believe he was my best option in the U.S.  I was so sick that I needed rapid intervention and treatment.  I did see progress when I was with him and I did get better than I was.  Then I started to regress a lot which quickly which leads me to…

Going to Klink St George was my next step and ramped up my treatment as well as my success.  I got so much better than I had been, and in a very short period of time.  I believe I was successful in my treatment there and do not regret it at all.  I was at my lowest point when I started treatment there.  I think Germany was really important to my recovery.  I am beyond blessed to have had the opportunity to go there.  The hyperthermia did kill a lot of things.  I was clean eating and gluten free while I was there and I didn’t have to worry about food since everything was taken care of for me.  Chelation and plasmapheresis did wonders for me! They made me feel amazing and were my favorite treatments.  Doing IV vitamins and antibiotics was great. The Klinik was a fantastic, well rounded treatment. I wish I had found them sooner.  The treatment there was more inclusive and extensive than anything you can find here in the United States.

But finding the Medical Medium was my next step.  I went Paleo in 2014 after I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and the meds were just making me sicker and sicker.  I did it to try to heal myself.  It was my first real attempt at healing myself with food. It was incredible for me.  I now know that I never had MS! For years I believed in Paleo based on my personal success with it.  I learned quickly that when I was eating right my health was better. But going mostly plant based has been key for me.

Like most things in life, we learn through trial and error.  We continue to evolve and learn and grow.  We are introduced to new things, new tools and information that help us in the transformation process.  This is why, as a community, we HAVE to talk to each other and share.  What’s right for one, may or may not work for another.  But food is key! Food is the one thing throughout all of my health struggles that has been and remains the absolute most critical part of health, treatment and wellness. It is the basis for any and all success that I have had.  Food is the fuel for our bodies to go through life.  You wouldn’t put corn syrup in your car and expect to get very far.

I am by NO means perfect with my food.  I still “cheat” if you will but it’s my treat to myself.  I haven’t given up everything that I used to eat all the time. Oddly enough, when I do treat myself to things that I don’t normally eat, I more often than not find that I don’t like the stuff I used to love.  The memory of it is better than the reality of it now.  I know that if I do treat myself I may end up paying for it.  I have made decisions to eliminate certain things from my diet but they may not be forever.  I cut things out so that I can create the right environment for my body to heal itself.  I’m rebuilding myself from the inside out.

I still have far to go.  After decades of the wrong stuff my body was in horrendous shape.  When I was thin I wasn’t healthy, I just looked it.  Add in some makeup and I actually looked like a normal person.  When I stopped the antibiotics and was in bed for months on end, I gained weight and a lot of it.  It was incredibly hard for me.  In my late teens, I struggled with bulimia and was laxative junkie.  I felt the need to fit in and have the perfect body.  Gaining all the weight remains a massive struggle for me.  There are days that I am frustrated, days where I can’t stand to look at myself and cry from the weight.  There are days where I want to restrict, starve myself or purge whatever I consume. I don’t though.  I have lost weight, albeit not nearly as much as I want.  I wish it was coming off faster but I didn’t put it on overnight and it’s not going to come off overnight.  I remind myself that this time, I’m doing it the right way and that’s a process.  I tell myself I am still healing because I really am.  I’m not just healing from sickness and disease but I am healing from the damage of the treatments that I have been through.

I can look back at all I’ve been through and the first thing that comes to mind is that I am a warrior.  I am a survivor.  Each step in my journey has brought me to where I am now.  My health is vastly improving.  My marriage is healing and is in a good place right now.  I’m connected to people in a way I never have been.  My faith and spirituality are stronger and more deeply rooted than ever.

Will I be sick forever? No.  I don’t for one minute believe that I will.  I have been sick for a long time and recovery takes a long time but it is worth it.  As for my journey there is not a single part of it that I would change because again it’s brought me to where I am at this very moment.  If someone else was going through what I went through, my hope has always been that my journey could some how help them to navigate their journey more easily.  I can say that had I done this or that sooner or known what I know now I could have saved myself a lot of pain and suffering but this is the hand that I’ve been dealt in life.  Do I think that I could have healed myself completely through food? No.  Surgeries were needed and by the time that I found out exactly what was wrong with me, I was in crisis mode.  I needed medicine to keep me alive.  Had I known about food and the true extent of its  healing powers a decade ago, I absolutely believe that most of what I’ve gone through (physical trauma excluded) I could have healed myself from.  Had I truly known the importance of food (specifically the right food) my treatments would have been much more successful.

While I believe food is probably the most integral part of my healing it is not the only aspect of it.  I needed to heal my mind and my soul as well as my body.  Events from my past were keeping me sick as much as the physical disease. I feel like I’m getting a handle on things and working on obtaining balance and finding happiness and coming to a place of peace.  I’m not there yet, but I’m on my way.

This is my life, my journey.  It will never be finished, not until I’m dead and gone and even then I hope that I will have given to the world something that will continue even if my name is forgotten.  I continue to set new goals for myself, to find new aspirations, and dream bigger.  I strive each day to be a better person.  I’m not even close to perfect.  I have let friendships fade that I miss.  I got lost in my own sorrows and struggles and have nearly drowned in a pool of self pity. I haven’t been “present” for others when I should have been.  There are times I feel great shame for my shortcomings.  I feel we often need to lose ourselves before we can really find ourselves and know who we really are.  For me this has been the case.  I had to fall apart to rebuild myself.  After all that I have been through, not just my disease, but in life, for the first time I feel like I’m truly on the path that is right for me to become my best and healthiest self.