My Story

Mothers Day 2019, I got very sick all of a sudden. I was with my family having a picnic at a park. My stomach started feeling uneasy and I started feeling very anxious, which at the time never happened to me. When it came time to leave we started back on the walk to our car, I made it about 10 feet and couldn't walk any more. I sat down on a rock, my heart was racing so I took my pulse and it was in the 160’s.We made it to the car and I was still feeling horrible. My shoulder felt like it had a knife in it and my jaw was aching. I did a google search of my symptoms which resulted in me thinking I was having a heart attack. My husband drove me to the ER. All the tests came back clear, so they pumped me full of Ativan, told me it was just a panic attack and sent me home with a prescription for anxiety medication.

I was relieved to hear it wasn't anything ‘serious’ and that I’d be feeling normal in the morning. Unfortunately, that wasn't that case. The following three months, my heart rate hung out at 100-130 while resting, and shot up to 150+ when I would stand. In addition to that I became dizzy all the time, light headed, was constantly nauseous, couldn't eat, was losing weight, had intense random pain, couldn't handle any stimulus- light, sound, motion, smell. All I could do was lay in a dark room. I had to use a wheelchair to get around due to my heart rate skyrocketing when I would stand up and the extreme dizziness. The hardest part was not being able to care for, or be around my one year old son. He would come visit me in bed for a couple minutes before it would become too much for me and I would need to rest again. My life Went from being active, out and about every day to being bedridden. I thought I was dying.

I went to dozens of doctors searching for answers. The only answers I ever got were “I don't know” or “it's just anxiety/depression, take these medications”. But I knew myself, and I knew that I wasn't depressed/anxious. It was so frustrating and discouraging being told it was all in my head when I knew something was not right in my body.

The next 6 months I saw dozens of doctors, none of them could offer me any help. Most just told me it was all in my head, or that it was outside their scope and to find yet another specialist. I wasn't going to accept that this was just my life now, that the best options were to take handfuls of prescriptions that only made me feel worse. Through reaching out to whoever would listen to me, I was introduced to the first doctor who actually listened to me, and agreed there was something very wrong. He said he would do his best to help me get my life back. I was so relieved I cried. Just to be believed and validated was huge.

He diagnosed me with POTS and Dysautonomia, and also referred me to a Integrative Medicine Lyme Doctor, who then added on the Lyme diagnosis. I began to make some progress- I could eat a little, had some good days where I could be around my family, but was still struggling to just exist. I was then recommended to see another naturopathic doctor who could give me ozone IV therapy. I received several IV treatments- ozone as well as a couple others. After my first day of treatment with him I went home and was able to play in the garden with my son- my first time being able to be outside and play with my son in a year. It felt like a miracle.

Unfortunately, the symptoms crept back in days following. I was getting IVs on a weekly basis, but the progress was not sticking. With each IV session being over $1,000 it wasn't sustainable.

But, I had hope. I had hope in having a diagnosis to my symptoms- rather than being constantly dismissed and told it was all in my head. I also had hope in seeing some positive response, even though it didn't last. Just seeing the needle move for a bit was all I needed to know there was a way out. This set me on my mission to figuring out how to heal myself. Still bed bound 90% of the time, every moment I felt well enough I spent researching, reading hundreds of studies, reaching out to doctors who specialized in these areas, reaching out to people who had been through similar journeys that I was on who had made it to the other side.

Throughout the course of the following year, I dived deep into holistic and integrative healing. I was peeling back the layers one by one, while still struggling with all my symptoms. I was addressing the lyme, mold and viral components with supplements. Trying to manage SIBO through diet. Seeing a TMJ doctor with the hopes to calm down my nervous system (a story for another day, but this was a definite success). And scheduled to have my IUD removed after learning the effect birth control can have on the body.

After my iud wouldn't come out during the office visit, I learned that it had become embedded in my uterus and would require a surgery to remove. I was discouraged at this news, especially after being let down by the western medical system so many times- I was nervous to be entrusting this to them. The removal went well, but then led to the worst flare of symptoms I have ever experienced. All the old symptoms persisted with a vengeance, in addition to having multiple panic attacks everyday, dissociation and depersonalization. I was terrified to be in my body.

I was so unfunctional at this point that my husband reached out to a new naturopathic doctor, who turned out to be one of my angels (and now a mentor). My first appointment with her was over video. I just laid in the bed crying and shaking while my husband talked to her. She agreed with the lyme diagnosis and also suspected parasites as the main issues, plus the added imbalance of hormones caused by birth control- which was confirmed when my lab work came back with my progesterone being nonexistent. Working with her I began to see results and started to feel like myself again for the first time in over a year.

However, I began to notice my symptoms would creep back in with even the smallest amount of stress in my life. This pattern followed for the next year. 1-3 months of feeling ok, and then I would come crashing down again for the next 1-2 months. It was an exhausting cycle. It took me a while, but I realized that my body needed more than just the physical healing work that I was doing- my nervous system was totally fried. My body was begging me to start healing on a whole new level.