autoimmune disease – Two Travelin' Chicas…

Wings Clipped

As a few of you know, I have been having some digestive disorders for almost a year. A friend of mine reminded me that it’s probably been much longer than that. The difference is the severity. Living as a nomad has been a lot of fun, except when an illness creeps in and knocks us down.

Not all illness has a physical cause, as I have come to understand all too well. Our world is so full of stresses, some from outside stimuli, others from within our own body and mind. To understand the role stress has on our mental and physical beings, has become a goal of mine since I have stopped working. It’s been a chance for me to step back and really “feel” my body and mind. It’s not just work or a job that causes “stress dis-ease”. It can be relationships with oneself and others, physical limitations (real or imagined), dis-order and dis-ease inside the mind and body, environmental influences such as smoke, weather, amount of daylight, extremes in temperatures and diet.

This setback in my health not only affects me but also Chris. There have been days on end that I have not been well enough to do anything. Constant stomach pain, not being able to eat, nausea and a squeezing sensation in my diaphragm that takes my breath away, have all become part of my daily life for at least the last four or five months. I don’t know anyone who can live with this and try to stay chipper and act as if nothing is wrong. I try so hard tho.

So here we sit in Rapid City, South Dakota. Many may ask…”why South Dakota? October 22, 2019, we sold everything we owned; our house, furniture, toys, tools, artwork, nick-knacks…everything but our van, which was to be our home. But…the Patriot Act states that we had to have a US domicile, in order to maintain banking in the US, including our retirement accounts. Now this is actually kinda fun, except when you need medical care, since you can look at different states and their laws and cost of living. How easy is it to get residency, register a car without being physically present, taxation of income, capital gains, etc. South Dakota checked off all the boxes.

Now, here we sit, going through the messed up medical system of the USA. Doctors think only inside the boxes that the insurance companies set up for them to work within. That system has high deductibles that are easily consumed by the amount of testing they do to find a physical cause to the symptoms presented. My DR won’t even talk to me until all tests are completed and five other DRs look at and interpret the results, which can take up to 3 weeks we are being told. You can’t speak to anyone that doesn’t have an extended arm and hand in your face telling you to wait. I am not one to sit idly by and wait. There is no empathy, just f#%€d up rules. My point is with all these deductibles, it makes it hard to spend out of pocket $$ to see alternative Drs, like chiropractors, naturopaths, yoga instructors, acupuncture, meditation centers, on-line classes, etc., these practitioners often address the energy or dis-order inside the mind and body pathways, rather than pacifying symptoms.

So why then, am I still sitting here? Although this is not where I’d like to be, stress caused by not feeling well can exasperate the dis-ease. Also not being able to stop for any length of time to heal, can be a problem when living as a nomad. There are other things besides surgery and invasive chemical medications that can soothe the symptoms and possibly correct the dis-ease or imbalance occurring in my body right now. These blocks and dis-order can be resolved, returning the body to a state of stasis. Stasis equals a dissolution of symptoms at their source.

My main focus of my exploration is the vagus nerve, which is part of the parasympathetic nervous system. I also have had bouts with Ataxia in the past caused by reaction to an auto-immune inflammation in the body. While the DRs here twiddle their thumbs, I am attacking, perhaps, the root cause of this uncomfortable physical condition I find myself in. Regardless, our wings are clipped and we have hunkered down with a commitment to my health.

A Small Tear on my Heart

It’s been a month since we said farewell to Gandaulf. I still have moments in the day when my eyes fill with tears and the words get stuck in throat. Times when all I want is to feel his thick, soft fur between my fingers, and smell his musky odor. At night I swear sometimes he is still there at the bottom of the bed snoring. Of course I sit with the feelings, let the tears fall and, like the clouds in a blue sky, it passes and I am left in the present moment…to move on.

Playing in the water was a favorite past time

We continue to sell off all our possessions and donated 4 big boxes of women’s clothing to the women’s shelter and odds and ends to the DI. Our shed is becoming more and more vacant everyday. Getting rid of “stuff” is fun, freeing and terrifying all at the same time. What I want to get rid of, Chris thinks we might need someday and sometime visa versa. No matter we settle and the item stays or goes and we move on to the next.

We have started our trial packs. It takes almost as many clothes to be gone for a week long vacation as it does to pack for a year. Save a nice outfit for the occasional fancy dinner or cafe hopping, a few more necessities for hiking or swimming, and an extra pair of shoes…they make a thing called a washer and dryer, so…just like at home, you still need to stop for a domestic goddess day.

The farewells continue almost daily. I have hooked up with some healers that are concocting some plant medicines for me to continue my journey of good mental health and a balance of mind and body. It’s been almost six months since I went cold turkey on anti-depressants and entered the world of good, wholesome plant based medicines. The journey has had its ups and downs, but I am a whole new person, not better, just changed and more energized and grounded.

Between this change and my spiritual endeavors, I have broken through the ancient fortress built around my heart and mind, and found a strong, safe foundation to build a new life on. Yes I have many small tears left on my heart, but I am free from this old baggage and free to build a new adventure in loving kindness and peace.

The Breaking Point

I woke up this morning

Tears in my eyes

The dream was so real

But was it a dream?

We are living in a time

Where close physical contact

Can be deadly

A hug… a handshake…

A kiss… could seal your fate.

In my dream

I went away

Traveled to distant lands

But all the while…

my heart ached

Never again was there to be human contact

Never again could I lay my head on shoulders and weep

Never again could I connect in a hug

Never again could I gather with friends and laugh

In my dream

Fear runs the world

Man afraid of man

No matter where I went

It was all the same

How can such a world exist?

How can people continue to exist?

People cry heavy tears

A woman holds her dead child

Children hold their dead parents

Hundreds burned like logs

The apocalypse?

A sinister unseen death hangs over the land

It randomly chooses its next victims

It is uncaring and doesn’t discriminate

Old, young, teens and anyone in between

It has robbed us of our freedoms

How can we live without touch?

How can new love begin?

Babies born that lie in plastic boxes

Not able to feel human touch

Mankind cries silently in their protected spaces

Fear gripping their very souls

I fear we are near the breaking point.

The Mind Body Connection: How Real It Is?

It’s been two weeks since I got home from my retreat. It’s been a very rough two weeks. I came home and immediately got sick, physically, bad enough to be taken to the hospital by ambulance. It was a culmination of bad food, emotional outpouring when I saw my girlfriend, the many feelings I had had been reacquainted with on retreat, a 180 degree change in my diet and several unknowns at work in my brain. Let’s just say the end result was not pretty.

I spent the night and half the next day in the hospital being prodded, poked and asked a battery of questions. According to the doctors, nothing was wrong with me but a bad reaction from food poisoning. Somewhere deep inside I knew they were dead wrong. My body felt like I had been plugged into a wall socket and was vibrating, buzzing and my head was pounding. I wrote it off as little sleep and my migraine, that was now on its third day.

Each day got progressively worse. My hands and legs began to cramp and shake, my head and heart pounded like it was trying to escape from my chest, and I had the feeling of being on a boat, a kind of swaying in my head that made me dizzy. Next came the involuntary and not so pleasant movements and jerks that would tire me out that I had to stop and lie down. I began to get a bit worried to say the least. I went to my chiropractor and message therapist trying to get some relief. I joked that I was impersonating MJ Fox so I could remain in a positive state of mind. I meditated everyday trying to calm the ever growing panic I was starting to feel. What the hell was wrong with me?!

My practice allowed me to remain relatively calm and I tried to find the root cause of this “dis-ease” in my body and mind. By Friday the movements became so bad I reached a breaking point emotionally and broke down. If there was nothing wrong with me I must be loosing my mind! I reached out to my Holistic Functional Medicine doc, who is also my chiropractor. He got me right in, I could see and feel the alarm when he saw me verses three days before. He did some energy work and found some trigger point that created a wave over my body and stopped the movement, I cried as the release came over me. I explained to him what I was feeling and he listened intently. He gave me some homeopathic serums and explained that I had created a perfect storm. From the diet change, food poisoning, emotional stress and other things that culminated all at the same time, that my body was full of toxins causing inflammation and effecting my brain. He strongly suggested I get an MRI at once.

Herein lies the turmoil, my neurologist was a month out and she wasn’t even going to be in the office for two more weeks. I took the serums/medicine and by Friday night I was exhausted, both mentally and physically. My head wouldn’t stop pounding, my body wouldn’t stop moving, my hands would not do what I asked of them, I felt like my core was a lightening rod and it would build up energy then zap the muscles in my shoulders or my legs and cause wild spasms.

I slept almost all day Saturday. I had learned a reset and it was lying down and sleeping. I slept deeply for around 28 hours and when I awoke, I felt calm and just the tingling. I sat quietly with Chris and watched a show until the wave of exhaustion hit me again and off to bed. I thought to myself, yay it’s over, I just needed to sleep.

Sunday came. I woke up and took an assessment of how I was feeling. I did my practice, had a cup of coffee and sat outside in the warm summer morning. My arms, hands, legs and feet were doing the jerky thing again and I was swaying. A new motion had started in my head and neck and I began to think this is really serious. I took it easy, napped and meditated off and on all day until I lost the ability to speak. My throat and face would spasm into this horribly painful positions, like someone with cerebral palsy. I couldn’t chew or swallow and I was totally out of my mind with fear. Off to the ER again…

I checked my ego at the door, which was leading to my embarrassment, and with help, walked into the ER. I was scared out of my mind but had a sense of calm at the same time. All through this, my practice has afforded me a safe place I could go when this flared up. I finally got my MRI. Clear… they said I had Dystonia probably caused by a severe allergic reaction from my antidepressant. They gave me Benadryl and told me to stop taking the meds and go see my neurologist.

Monday came, no change. Chris had taken a video of me at the worst and sent it off to my Holistic Functional Medicine doc. He had other ideas. Since they ruled out MS, Parkinson and a lesion, and the regular docs wouldn’t think outside the box and gave me Benadryl, he began aggressively treating the inflammation in my body and my brain. He strongly suggested that I change my diet since he was pretty sure it was an autoimmune dis-ease that was mimicking all these nasty diseases.

Fast forward to today. For the first time in weeks, my hands are my own, the buzzing my body feels more like touching your tongue to both terminals on a 9V battery. My body is still, my mind feels like I’ve been on a month long cruise and never got off the boat, my eyes are focusing better, my voice is not strained though my throat still feels a little tight, only mild tremors in my hands and an occasional random spasm in my face. My whole body aches as if I’ve done a triathlon. My mind is clear and quiet and my heart is feeling joy, optimism and relief. I am full of gratitude and compassion for the only doc that listened, gave a damn, and never gave up thinking outside the box to the mind body connection.