The last few years have been quite a journey for me. I just assumed that because I was getting ‘older’, being extremely tired and having less and less energy was normal. I was eating healthy and exercising. But I felt awful and felt like I was dying, despite doing all the things I thought were supposed to help you feel good, have energy and function normal.
What I feel maybe some contributing factors to my overall health:
*Genetics – My father had a low thyroid. My maternal grandmother had a goiter.
*Mercury Fillings – As a child, I had eight fillings in my back teeth that were filled with the old amalgam fillings. Amalgam is on the average about 50% mercury. For me Mercury = Heavy Metal Poisoning.
*Antibiotics – As a child I had antibiotics a few times, but in the early 1990’s I got pneumonia and pleurisy, and then shortly after that I got strep throat. So I was on a lot of antibiotics a lot in a short time.
*Traumatic Painful Injury – November 2004. I slid down three steps on black ice and landed hard on cement. I fractured my sacrum and sacroiliac joints, compressed two discs in my lower back pinching the sciatic nerve on the left side and spinal column, and arthritis in the three vertebra around the two compressed discs.
*Extreme Stress – Over several years because of various circumstances.
Through the years, we’ve had a lot of very stressful things happen. I know stress is part of life, but for me little did I know that it was one of the underlying things brewing other problems. Besides the normal scrapes, falls, and broken bones, we’ve had a few big events happen that have been more than the normal stress situations. Like when our little 2 1/2 month old baby went into anaphylactic shock, and finding out he was severely allergic to milk. Then when he was 20 months old he fell about 10 feet, was unconscious for over 14 hours, had a slight skull fracture and TBI. Another son burned his foot when he was 6, and had to have surgery with a skin graft and therapy. We had fertility problems and tried to get pregnant for over a year with our fourth son. With both him and our fifth son, I was on bed-rest the last half of my pregnancies because if I got up my body would start into contractions.
About a week before Christmas of 2001, my husband was suddenly let go at his work. Several months later that he decided to start his own business. So we’ve had the ride of ups and downs associated with owning your own business, which has been really stressful when we’re on a down.
November 2004, was my back injury. The pain I experienced was beyond description. I couldn’t sit or stand, and spent most of my time in bed even though it still hurt, that was the best position to relieve some pain. I had a lot of nerve damage, and I couldn’t even touch my lower back without it feeling like millions of hot burning needles. The doctors told me I needed to exercise or I would be paralyzed if I didn’t keep moving. We got a treadmill and I started walking holding on with everything I had. I had to gradually increase the time, starting at only 2 minutes because that’s all the longer I could walk without being in excruciating pain. In therapy, they taught me some exercises to strengthen my core. After about 2 1/2 years, I was finally up to 30 minutes of walking a day. At this time I also found healthy chocolate, which is an anti-inflammatory, and that helped a lot.
In 2006, I was told that I had a slightly low thyroid and my doctor started me on Armour Thyroid. The doctor told me to eat healthy, try to limit sugar and keep exercising. But even faithfully doing these things, I seemed to lose more energy every day.
September 2009, I had my old amalgam filling (#19) replaced by a regular dentist. I was having a lot of pain in that tooth, and even though he couldn’t see more decay, he felt that maybe replacing it would help. I still had pain in that tooth even after that. Little did I know that procedure would probably enhance the toxic overload (heavy metal poisoning) my body was already dealing with.
In the summer of 2011, I got up one morning and everything was spinning. Lasting several days, I finally went to my doctor. They told me I most likely had vertigo, and it would eventually go away. After several weeks, it did ease up a bit, but the dizziness continued. Then my ears started ringing really loud. It sounded like cicadas all the time and I thought I was going to go crazy between being dizzy and the loud ringing in my ears. I went to an ENT and they couldn’t find anything wrong. They said I probably had an inner ear infection that they couldn’t see. Then suddenly my ears started hurting so bad, I thought I was going to die. It was the worst earache I could even imagine. I tried everything I could think of to ease the pain. Nothing helped. I prayed for answers and something to bring relief. Then the thought came… maybe it’s a food allergy. I started noticing when the pain would come on stronger, and sure enough it was milk and anything I ate that had milk in it. It caused so much pain, and would get worse each time I ate it. So I eliminated all milk and the pain subsided. However, the dizziness and ringing continued on, but at least I didn’t have the extreme pain.
For years, I always had a slightly irritated throat. My doctor would always mention that when I had checkups, and we just assumed it was allergies. I was having a really hard time sleeping. I was waking up all night long, which was strange because I was so tired. I tried everything I could think of to sleep better, but nothing seemed to help.
Spring of 2012, I was so fatigued. I would sleep or lay around all day. It was hard to find the energy to take care of my family. Driving was really scary. I would pray the whole time that I would stay alert and be safe. It was an awful feeling, beyond just being tired, it was an extreme fatigue that is hard to describe unless someone has experienced it. I had brain fog and couldn’t think clear. My body ached everywhere, but I blamed that on my back accident.
I couldn’t go on like this, so I went into my doctor for help. I have always tried to be a positive person, eat well and exercise, but I told her I felt like crap. She ran several tests and found that I have Hashimotos Disease, an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks the thyroid. She increased my Armour Thyroid and told me to limit sugar and try to eat whole foods; nothing processed. I’m grateful that I have a doctor that is not only a certified doctor, but also is a homeopathic doctor. She recommended that I do the Computerized Health Screening to find out for sure what foods I was allergic to and which foods I had a sensitivity to. I was determined right then to adhere to everything very strictly because I wanted to feel better and be able to live my life fully.
December 2013, my hands and feet were extremely ice-cold, and my fingers started going white and were really painful. I did some research and thought it was Raynauds. The doctor confirmed this and told me to just try to keep my fingers and toes warm. I had been ‘cold’ for several years and always dressed warmer than most people, and was already wearing double socks in the winter. But even that doesn’t help. I’ve also had a hard time swimming because I’m always so cold, but couldn’t figure out why the water bothered me so much more than other people. This cold feeling is beyond just saying “I’m cold”. It’s a cold to the bone feeling, like there is no way to get warm. When I touch something cold, it hurts so bad that it feels like I’m being burned.
After carefully watching what I ate and walking every day for over a year and a half, I still felt like I was going downhill quickly, like I was sinking and couldn’t pull myself out of it. I was searching and searching for more answers to help me. In September 2014, I decided it was time to go to an Endocrinologist, see what they recommended and get a Thyroid Scan to at least have a baseline. They found two small growths that we’re keeping an eye on. I’m really glad I have that baseline to go from. But, the doctor really couldn’t explain why I couldn’t get feeling better. I was on the right amount of Armour Thyroid, eating basically an AIP diet and exercising. I was walking for my exercise every day. The doctor recommended that I start doing some weight-bearing exercises to help build strength, and recommended I start with ‘The Bar Method’.
I went home and continued praying and searching for answers. One morning I came across an article about Heavy Metal Poisoning. It led me to a couple other articles about it, and the symptoms were very similar to what I was going through. I had a feeling resonate with me that this was my underlying problem as to why I couldn’t get better despite doing everything I could think of to do. Ironically my husband found another article about Heavy Metal Poisoning that very evening, and as we talked about it we both knew we were led to this answer.
In October 2014, I found a natural dentist that could remove my old amalgam fillings safely. Before he would do that though, he did x-rays and tests and found out that not only did I have the mercury fillings, but when they had removed my wisdom teeth when I was a teenager, they had done a poor job and left a lot of the root in the bone. I had infection and a socket of mush in all four areas where my wisdom teeth had been. Through one of the tests, it was determined that I in fact did have Heavy Metal Poisoning. My body was so toxic that no matter how healthy I ate, the cells couldn’t absorb the nutrition. By the time I went in for surgery in March of 2015, I was down to 87 lbs. I’m short, being only 5’1″, but it was scary to keep watching the scales go down even though I was eating. I had surgery to remove the fillings and replaced with new composite, clean out the sockets of infection and have my own blood spun and put into those areas to help form new bone. They found that under several of the teeth surrounding tooth #19 (that tooth I’d been having problems with for several years), had infection under and around each of them in the bone area. In cleaning it out, they accidentally got close to the nerve (which there was no way to avoid because of the extent of the infection) and that left the bottom side of my lip and chin area numb. It’s not a fun feeling, and it has come out of some of the numbness now, but I’ll take that over what I was going through before. I did several things to detox from all the toxins my body was dealing with, and I’ll talk more about those on my blog posts.
I found that although after asking several doctors how I could feel better, it wasn’t until I took my own health into my own hands to study and learn all about health and wellness with an autoimmune disease and heavy metal poisoning. Everyone is different and reacts differently to protocols. I’m grateful that I have been inspired and led to things that can help me. I have a really supportive husband who has always been there for me and helps me. I know I have more healing and learning to do, but at least I feel like there is some hope now. This blog is like a journal for me to record things I’m learning, where I’ve been and where I’m going. I hope that something I share will help someone else on this journey of health and wellness.