My life journey began September 23, 1962 in small-town Manitoba, Canada. Both my parents were of Ukrainian descent –born into families who came to the prairies in search of a better life. My health wasn’t that great, even from the beginning. Though involved in the usual sports of preteen and teenage girls (swimming, figure skating, basketball, volleyball, track…), I never had the stamina my friends seemed to possess. Most days, I would arrive home from school and need to sleep for two hours. On top of that, my gut never seemed to work properly. I frequently struggled with constipation and intestinal pain in the midst of a very stressful, traumatic, and unsupportive home life.
Ticks and Other Bites
My love of the outdoors meant that I was bitten by many different animals and bugs my entire life. I distinctly remember my mother pulling ticks off of me that had already become completely engorged. I was pulling them off of myself while gardening in Ontario, Canada as an adult. As a child, I loved to try and catch wild barn cats at my uncle’s farm. I was scratched many times by these and I remember painful swelling. At the age of 8, I was bitten by a squirrel while berry picking with my mother. Yes, I actually caught a squirrel! He decided he didn’t like this very much and bit my finger. It swelled so badly that I had to go to the hospital. I have been bitten by hamsters, dogs and fish while fishing. I have owned animals my entire life up until 2007. To this list, we can add mosquito bites, sand fleas, spiders, wasps, jellyfish in Canada, United States, Thailand, Costa Rica and Mexico. It is difficult to know exactly when I was infected with Lyme Disease and co-infections. I have been sick many times as a child but never really thought much about it. Obviously, neither did my parents.
Depression
By eighth grade, I was battling depression. I approached my Mother but her response was that I had “nothing to be depressed about.” I learned from that day forward to keep such issues to myself. I remember feeling very lost, alone, sad and confused. Daily tasks were incredibly difficult and I cried quietly in my room for months on end.
My diet growing up was considered healthy for its time. My mother was a wonderful cook and made most meals from scratch. My siblings and I were amply fed, but we were eating a lot of sugar, starchy foods and refined carbohydrates. I had trouble keeping my weight down the entire time that I lived at home. I loved toast, boxed cereals, sandwiches, pancakes, potatoes, pasta, pizza, french fries, perogies, cookies, muffins, pastries, and the occasional treat of a chocolate bar, potato chips and pop. Looking back, I was overfed and undernourished.
By the time I got to university, I learned to control my weight by calorie restriction, usually binging and then starving. I wasn’t overly concerned with the nutritional content of what I was eating. As long as I was thin, it didn’t matter how I got there. I was focused, hardworking and extremely ambitious.
After a failed first marriage and stressful career as a big city realtor, I decided to move to a small community in rural Ontario to raise my two and four-year-old daughters. I was thirty years old, exhausted, and hoped that a year away from the fast-paced demands of city living would be enough to regain my strength. In reality, I was completely burned out, nutritionally depleted, and had been running on empty for years. I was a single mom with a few friends, living off savings and waiting tables in the warm months, with two daughters in daycare, trying to keep ahead of the bills. It all came to a head a year after our move, and I suffered a complete nervous breakdown. A friend of mine from a nearby religious community came and lived with us for three weeks so that I could rest and get back on my feet. At this time, I was put on medication for major depression and referred to a psychiatrist. The medication made me feel temporarily better, but then much worse.
Medication and Side Effects
I would spend the next fourteen years as a psychiatric patient. These were the darkest years of my entire life. In a never ending attempt to stabilize my moods, I was moved from one prescription to the next. None were ever effective in alleviating my depression. The terrible side effects the drugs I was prescribed far outweighed any benefits they were supposed to provide. I was told by several psychiatrists that I would be on medications for the rest of my life.
Bright Spots Along the Way
There were many bright spots along the way. I met and married my best friend Tony, and we had a beautiful baby boy. The girls – a constant source of comfort to me – were growing and both in school.
Alcoholism
Alcohol would gradually become my best friend. It eased the depression and lowered the anxiety and loneliness. It was the best remedy for post-traumatic stress disorder. It would ease the pain of daily living that I found myself in. Once I took a drink I wanted more and more. I was a binge drinker my entire life. Things got worse and I gradually became a daily drinker over a three year period. I would start at supper time and pick up in the evening after the kids were in bed. We were making and bottling our own wine, which meant that we always had an inexpensive supply on hand. Tylenol and coffee were part of my morning ritual each day. I eventually realized I had a problem, and found a permanent seat in a recovery group. My last drink was on November 30th, 2000.
Bipolar Disorder
The meds prescribed for my depression never really worked for me. In the course of my treatment, I had seven different psychiatrists and was put on almost every anti-depressant available. In 2003, I was put on a new anti-depressant and began having manic and depressive episodes. I believe this new medication led to a chemically induced bipolar disorder. To counteract this, I was then prescribed mood stabilizers combined with another anti-depressant. The side effects caused suicidal ideation that would not go away. Not long after that, I began having auditory and visual hallucinations – something I had never experienced before. I began to see or hear the devil on an almost daily basis. The terror and hopelessness brought on by this psychological torture was absolutely the worst experience of my life. I fully understand why people take their lives when the suffering gets to this level. It is a despair beyond comprehension.
Anxiety and Panic Attacks
Crippling anxiety and panic attacks were some of the worst side-effects of the medications I was given. Intense social anxiety was my constant companion, and I was often unable to leave the house. There were times when I did go out, only to be suddenly paralyzed with panic, barely able to breathe, feeling as though I were having a heart attack. As the years on various medications progressed, so did these two side-effects. I am so grateful to this day that I was never encouraged to use benzodiazepines for extended periods of time. Benzos are very addictive, and after a taste of them during a very stressful period, I wanted more. I am most grateful to my family doctor at the time, who discouraged me from using them. I began researching natural remedies, found some combinations which helped greatly with the anxiety and panic.
Side-effects
There are so many other side-effects that I experienced while taking these drugs. These included unexplained anger, impaired sexual function, weight gain, increased constipation, depression, drowsiness, dry mouth, headaches, liver problems, mania, slow speech, memory problems, long uncontrolled periods of crying and a zombie-like demeanour. These side effects are what caused me to quit so many of these drugs and search for a better solution in a new prescription.
Withdrawal
Every time the drugs were changed I would suffer through withdrawals that would last from days to weeks and sometimes months. Most of the doctors at that time were convinced there was no withdrawal from these meds. With perhaps one exception, they seemed to show little concern for the effects that stopping cold turkey and starting on another med would have on me. This was horrible beyond belief, and over a fourteen year period, it happened more times than I can remember. When dosages were missed or reduced, I would start going through the hellish symptoms of withdrawal.
These included electric-shock-like experiences – “brain zaps”, increased anxiety, shaking, sweating, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, debilitating migraines and severe depression.
Disability
In the midst of all this, I returned to work as a realtor. However, after a seven-week hospitalization, I was encouraged to apply for a disability. I applied and it was granted immediately. I loved my career and my dream was to open my own brokerage. This was a very dark time for me. It was a loss that hit me with incredible force. I was no longer able to work, and we moved out of our beautiful riverfront dream home in the country. We decided that I needed to be closer to urban services and the acute mental health unit at the local hospital.
On top of the bipolar disorder, I was beyond exhausted. I had terrible body pain, chronic migraines, dangerously low blood pressure, dizziness and constant flu-like symptoms. Every time I went to the doctor’s office it was dismissed as a side effect of my meds or I was told I was depressed and this was the way it was going to be. Anemia was a constant problem but doctors didn’t really seem concerned and just blamed it on my menses. I was five years sober at this time so I knew that it wasn’t caused by the alcohol. I was getting sicker and sicker and barely leaving the new house once we moved in.
When Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes
In the fall of 2007, I hit my bottom with the mental illness. I knew I had to do something differently. I had been reading on the internet about how Dr Abram Hoffer and Dr Carl Pfeiffer were treating and claiming to cure patients with psychiatric conditions using nutrients instead of drugs. For the first time in many years, I felt a glimmer of hope, knowing that it wasn’t possible to feel any worse than I already did. I had nothing to lose and possibly everything to gain from trying their approach.
I discovered a company offering a nutritional supplement and telephone support to persons who had purchased their product and were discontinuing their use of prescription drugs. With the support of my husband and the owner of my favourite health food store, I took the chance. Within a month of beginning on this new supplement and weaning myself off the prescription meds, was encouraged to discontinue the drugs completely. After I was completely off everything, I went through severe acute withdrawals that lasted for weeks. What I noticed almost immediately was that my anxiety levels and depressive mood had dropped about eighty percent, and my panic attacks were completely gone. It was one of the most hopeful times of my life.
“The doctor of the future will give no medicine but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease. ~ ”
― Thomas Edison
After three months on the supplements, my constant fatigue and body pain was not improving. I was housebound at the time and extremely weak. I was told about a doctor who was prescribing nutritional therapy and dietary supplements rather than drugs when at all possible, and decided to give him a try.
At my first appointment, I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. I was so relieved to find this doctor whom I believe saved my life and set me on a new path toward healing. He recommended several natural supplements to rebuild my vitamin and mineral deficiencies and began testing for food allergies. I tested positive for gluten and cow’s dairy sensitivities and was strongly encouraged to bring my eating habits in line with Elaine Gottschall’s Specific Carbohydrate Diet. Changing my diet was such a steep learning curve. Many times, I stood in the middle of our kitchen not knowing what the heck I was going to eat. In time, it got easier but I wasn’t sure how I was going to survive without all of my addictive high carb foods.
My health began to improve slightly after about 2 months. I only had one final depressive episode. I went back to my new doctor and told him about this recurrence of depression. He asked which supplements I was taking and what I was eating. Then he asked what I was putting on my skin. I had been using a lot of moisturizers and was advised to use olive or coconut oil instead. He advised me not to put anything on my skin that I wasn’t willing to eat. That was the last time I have been depressed. Such an incredible miracle.
Amalgam Removal
I still wasn’t regaining my energy, despite being on the Specific Carb Diet for almost a year. I was referred to a biological dentist who was well versed in the safest methods for removing amalgam (mercury) fillings and replacing them with composite fillings. I had my fillings replaced, but didn’t really notice much of an improvement. At the same time, I was testing very high for mercury toxicity and was encouraged to have DMPS chelation treatments. Unfortunately, these left me bedridden twice and I refused to do them again. Some people cannot handle DMPS and I was one of them.
Tried many different things!
I was still very, very weak and sick, trying various cleanses, diet changes and supplements. In August 2012, I was finally diagnosed with Lyme Disease and several other Lyme co-infections. Here is an article that describes what my daily life was like for many years. I was referred to an LLMD (Lyme Literate Medical Doctor) for treatments, which were very expensive – thousands and thousands of dollars for years of treatment. Many of these were treating chronic Lyme with long-term antibiotics and other drugs. This just didn’t feel right to me so I settled on ozone treatments in Mexico. These worked temporarily but I relapsed within weeks of returning to Canada. In June, 2014 I was very sick with a kidney infection and terrible flu-like symptoms that never went away. I was again exhausted, discouraged and very weak. At this time, I was barely leaving my bed and I thought the end was close. I picked out my casket and planned my funeral. I prayed to God and begged Him to either take or heal me. I was in constant pain and did not have the core strength to even sit up anymore. Within a day of this prayer, I heard about the American herbalist, Stephen Buhner who had developed an herbal protocol for Lyme. I decided to give it a try.
Thank You, Hulda Clark, Stephen Buhner and Dr. Terry Wahls!
My success came after intensive parasite cleansing, Buhner protocols for Lyme and co-infections and Wahl’s Paleo Diet. I stopped taking anything that would kill the good intestinal flora. This focus on digestion, nutrient-dense diet and restoring gut flora, proved to be the answer to all of the health issues that I have had in my life. I also spent several months in Mexico sweating, swimming in the sea, walking barefoot and lots of sunbathing. I am currently in complete remission and have no Lyme or co-infection symptoms since November 2014. I have lots of energy and have returned to regular exercise and normal everyday household tasks that most people take for granted. My mood is stable and I feel calm and grounded. I have been completely medication free since October 2007.
This has been an unbelievable 20 year battle for my life. I am so grateful for this second chance and will spend the rest of my days helping others with chronic illness. Everything that I have done is available for free on my blog. If you are looking for additional support I am available for coaching. Please go to my contact page for details on fees and to book an appointment.
Blessings and Best of Health!
Brenda♥