The Cure is You: Dealing with Chronic Illness Part 2
Friday, January 16, 2015 0:25
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Picking up where we left off….
We all need a Little Understanding
Understanding your condition is personal and is, without a doubt, a personal journey. You can opt not to go, but understand that a cure and remission won’t be attainable unless you embark. I admit that the idea of research, for your condition and for treatment, is all a lot of legwork most people don’t want to do. It’s easier to go to the doctor and to pop a pill. or try to find some “miracle cure” online. Plunking down money is guaranteed to get results, right? Sorry, but that’s not how it works. Remember from last time,
“Perfect health is not possible: beware of persons and products that promise it. Health is a dynamic and temporary state of equilibrium destined to break down as conditions change… healing is an automatic process activated by any breakdown in health” (Weil, 12).
If you take nothing else away from this discussion, beware of snake oil peddlers. Nothing with a TM after its name will cure you. No wonder shakes that your Facebook friends “swear by” and no complex proprietary blend of herbs.
There are a few things I will recommend that are in those magic shakes and proprietary blends. However, I am recommending whole herbs in dosages that are safe and effective. Those blends are a complete crap shoot and most of them, like the Diabetex line from Webber naturals are using some ingredients that are linked to improvement in diabetic complications and blood glucose levels. HOWEVER the dosages are so low as to be ineffectual and many of the blends contain ingredients that I call fillers: ingredients that aren’t necessary.
If you’re one of those people like my husband and I, people who don’t respond well to conventional treatments, people who don’t respond well to being given a grim diagnosis or limited options, then going to the doctor and popping a pill isn’t the only option. It can’t be.
Please understand: I’m not advocating any boycott of conventional Western Medicine. It has its place and is a necessity. But, the problem I have with it is the one-size-fits all mentality. Western Medicine
is also not centered on healing, but eradicating illness like an enemy army invading the homeland. Conventional treatments don’t speak to the underlying causes of disease and often treat symptoms—not the root of the problem.
On top of that, I don’t trust many doctors. Even those few that I’ve come to know personally, I still don’t trust 100%. That’s partly my own fault, partly really horrible experiences. When you’re told something by your healthcare provider, it is your responsibility to verify, research, dissect and understand what your doctors are telling you. And then if you are able, financially or otherwise, get a second opinion or even a third. If you can’t or won’t, then I really doubt you’re reading this right now because it isn’t your cup of tea.
Before going further, the cornerstone of the treatments that I will discuss, for Anthony’s diabetes and for my issues, are centered on herbal remedies, in tea and supplement form. If you’re not a tea drinker then either adapt and try something new, or the other elements may not work for you. Ditto for herbal supplements. AND, above all– research your own condition relative to these supplements. I would NOT recommend any of these treatments for people with high blood pressure, heart disease or other heart condition, kidney disease or elevated kidney function, liver disease, or pretty much anything that you’re taking meds for. Do not combine the supplements with any OTC or prescription medications. And, SPEAK WITH YOUR DOCTOR about embarking on new treatments. If your doctor is unreceptive, FIND A NEW DOCTOR.
After Anthony was diagnosed with diabetes, because of my experiences with my father (which I’ll get to in a moment), I knew an endocrinologist was necessary. It was fortuitous that we got an appointment with one of our area’s leading endocrinologists, who just happened to be the same doctor who treated my parents, within 2 weeks of his diagnosis. They trusted her, so I wanted someone trustworthy for my husband. She poo-pooed away any “alternative treatments” as pure hoodoo and hogwash, according to her. And she handed us a coupon along with a free sample for some amazing anti-diabetic lozenge that reminded me of those Airborne thingies. When I saw the laundry list of ingredients that I couldn’t pronounce and the hokey website for the product, that I’ve forgotten the name of, I threw it and the coupon away. That “free sample” had a price tag on the website of something like $25. That lozenge wasn’t the only thing she handed us. She handed Anthony no less than 3 prescriptions, something for high cholesterol– which he doesn’t have, another script for Metformin but triple the dose of what he was originally prescribed by our GP, and a script for a third diabetes control medication. ON TOP of that she insisted that he begin taking insulin. She said, and this is an exact quote, “If you don’t start taking insulin you will be dead in a year.”
Wow, lady? Really.
Then she tried writing a script for a high blood pressure medication. He doesn’t have HBP. That’s when I had had enough. Anthony was a bit in shock. Usually when he disagrees with a doctor, he can get a bit ornery. He asked her to explain why he needed insulin on top of the other meds. She said that the Metformin would only bring his a1c down by one or 2 points. She said the other drug would bring it down another one or 2. At best he could hope for getting it down to maybe a 9 or 10, but the insulin would prevent him dying from diabetic complications. He asked her about diet and exercise. She rummaged around on a massive bookcase set into the wall, full of pamphlets and samples. She handed him a pamphlet on portion control, a pamphlet discussing some gimmicky diabetic portion control plate that reminded me of a dish for a frozen TV dinner, and finally a pamphlet discussing how diet and exercise didn’t have much bearing on diabetes in the long term. The third one was old, stained and sponsored by a diabetes medication that I don’t think is on the market any longer.
Needless to say, we left her office and never went back. Her prescriptions went in the trash. We continued researching and I came up with a game plan.
Acceptance as a Road to a Cure
The first part of that game plan is actually the second major step I will recommend to you in this whole journey to find a cure to what ails you. That step is acceptance. This is now a part of your life. Please don’t understand me. I don’t mean this in a mystical now you’re going to lay down and die and shame on you for getting sick kind of way either. I mean accepting the reality of the situation is important in understanding and dealing with the issue. This is something I do still struggle with, and I know my husband does. But, there’s only so depressed, so woe-is-me you can get before you do something about it. If you deny that it’s happening, you aren’t in a position to really help heal yourself, and you’re more likely to pretend it’s not happening and do what the doctor tells you to do
and pop a pill which will enable you to continue to pretend. What I personally struggle with is when I have a seizure, I try to stop it from happening by telling myself, this is all in your head. But it’s not. I was an undiagnosed epileptic my whole life. Now I know what I have and I have, for the most part, accepted it in order to heal. Anthony went through weeks and weeks of anger and depression. That gradually abated, especially after he got off the prescription medications which had wonderfully nebulous side-effects like “mood changes,” and “headache.” Anthony seemed to get angrier as the side-effects got worse and the thought was, “Am I going to have to do this for the rest of my life?”
I hated seeing him go through this because of my father. Diabetes has been my father’s bag since the mid 1980’s and after a partial amputation and two strokes, he’s only now at 72 contemplating a life of diabetic remission. And that’s only because a doctor mentioned him “getting off insulin.” My father, though, is open to alternative treatments, but to a point. He never wanted to consider treating his diabetes with anything other than insulin, but when he began to lose his vision because of diabetic retinopathy, he asked me for advice on alternative remedies. Both my parents call me “Doctor Burke” as a family joke because of how I’ve educated myself, about disease, about wellness, about lifestyle changes, herbalism, and so on.
I immediately went to work, researching and investigating and after a few weeks came up with a tea blend designed to help reduce overall diabetic complications but also targeting eye health. My father has been on this remedy for 2 years and even though he hasn’t been cured of the degenerative retinopathy—he no longer has to suffer the painful traditional treatments, which included steroid shots into his eyeballs. He had the fortitude to find a doctor who was willing to listen to him and not treat him like a 70 year old child and he enhances the tea remedy with daily herbal supplements he can mentally handle. Furthermore, he is convinced that when he runs out of the tea—mainly because he forgets to tell me when he’s running low so I can make him a new batch—his vision worsens. His eyesight will never be 20/20. It was always poor before becoming diabetic more than 25 years ago. But, if he wasn’t using a complimentary nontraditional remedy, his eyesight would have been radically diminished, possibly to the point of blindness. Ontop of that, since he’s been taking the tea, some of his other diabetic complications were somewhat relieved. However, since his second stroke this past summer, some of those issues returned. He has had a reduction in extremely high blood glucose readings; so that’s a plus.
Acceptance of the condition is also willingness to find a way to surmount the illness, to find a way to move past the illness to a point of wellness. If you can accept what’s happening, then you can start moving forward. There is a lot of stuff written out there about how illness is a state of mind, how you craft your own diseases, and pretty much shaming and blaming the chronically ill for their illnesses. I cry utter bullshit. I know some pretty foul tempered, nasty people who live perfectly healthy long lives and have known sweet natured, truly wonderful people either struggle with illness on a daily basis or die unnaturally short lives due to illness. Those people who proscribe to this “blame the ill for the illness” aren’t so quick to explain why there are babies who suffer strokes in utero or why children are dying of hideous diseases all the time. I don’t believe for a moment that a 2 year old with brain cancer somehow crafted her own disease. It’s callous and cruel to say so. And anyone claiming to just stop thinking about the disease and you’re cured, is also a bullshit thrower. My mother recently bought a book, for me—not her—called The Back Pain Cure. It was some cockamamey nonsense she saw on Fox News and basically involved this guy who had back pain chronic enough for surgery apparently able to cure himself of aforementioned backpain by simply not thinking about it anymore. It was an insulting concept and even more insulting that she was going to give the book to me, instead of read and attempt to apply the “solutions” to her own chronic back pain.
Anything that seeks to blame the ill for illness is just trying to cash in. Anything that proclaims to have a magic bullet cure is also trying to cash in. And both claims are complete bullshit.
Sometimes there is just no why to a situation. I’m not here to shame or blame. But, sometimes the entire illness is because there was a why that was preventable. If you want to investigate the more philosophical aspects of illness, to look at some of the reasons with a mind toward preventing a relapse or preventing new illness, then I cannot recommend the work of Dr. Christiane Northrup highly enough. Others to consider are Dr. Andrew Weil, his earlier work especially, and the auyurvedic writings of Bri Mayah Tiwari and you wouldn’t do any harm in seeking out the knowledge of BKS Iyengar.
Our Road to Health
My own health issues have been pretty much life long and have included respiratory issues (from bronchitis to pneumonia to asthma), skin ailments (the big A and E, Acne and Eczema), arthritis, fibromyalgia, internal cysts, and even a mini-stroke. I’ve also caused some illness via a 20 year struggle with anorexia/bulimia. Other long term issues that were never properly diagnosed—and were misdiagnosed as literally everything from diabetes to multiple sclerosis—were just diagnosed in 2013 as epilepsy. Despite that litany of health issues, until that diagnosis of epilepsy, I had never really considered myself someone with health problems. I never fretted about being ill, but when I was a kid I do remember not being able to keep up with the other kids, spending more time sitting down during recess, and having more medical tests done than my brothers ever had. As an adult, I also have had to struggle with the same things, not being able to keep up, having way more down time than any 40-year-old should require, and going to the doctors more way more than I care to.
My husband Anthony was pretty much the opposite. He was always healthy and physically active, although he was prone to excess in terms of food and drink. Where my health issues really were chronic and for the most part a mystery to me, despite my attempts to figure out the why, his have been more recent, inevitable, and preventable—but also curable. Last June, after several months of not feeling well and utterly ignoring wifey when she told him to see the doctor—falling back on the old habit of dealing without medical assistance because of so often not having medical insurance—Anthony was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. He had an a1c of 14, which was equivalent to a daily blood glucose of over 300, and pretty much off the charts. One doctor even told us that for his sugar to go that high, his daily glucose had to be closer to 400 for the 2-3 months just prior to the blood-work. For those unfamiliar, an a1c is a blood test that measures the blood glucose for a 2-3 month period. It’s a relatively newer test to measure diabetes and pre-diabetes and has quickly become the standard. Normal a1c levels are range from about 4-5.7, which reflect daily glucose readings of about 90-120.
Looking back on his last physical before in the 2 years before being diagnosed, his a1c tested at just under 6.5—and 6.5 is considered pre-diabetes. Our doctor did tell him that if things didn’t change, diabetes was the logical next step—which is why I say his health issues were inevitable and preventable.
Instead of clean up and fly right, we both spiraled downward. We did start a regimen after that initial pre-diabetes diagnosis, but those were abandoned because of my lingering health issues that grew to include a shadowy mass found on a CT scan in my abdomen. I knew we were in trouble when I was clearing up the kitchen and preparing the recyclables when I saw fully half the bag—a massive contractor bag was full of empties, not including the new dozen and a half 40 ounce beer bottles or the half dozen empty gallon wine jugs that I was cleaning and saving for home brewing. And all had been amassed in a 3 week period. When I showed Anthony our hoard, we both went back to healthier habits, ditched the alcohol—for the time being—and went back to our daily spiritual practices in earnest. It was one of the more serious brushes with illness for me because I remember the phone conversation with my doctor very clearly with him explaining how the mass seen on the scan was not a new cyst or an old fibroid, how it had depth and size, and how the shape of it told them distinctly it was a tumor of some kind and clearly not a shadow. The weeks that I waited for a follow-up sonogram—which was required before any surgical procedure—was spent quite literally inside a bottle. And then the subsequent weeks waiting for the tests to come back was spent detoxifying the system—physically and spiritually. All told, it was the longest 6 weeks of my life—spent waiting and worrying and wondering. When the tests finally came back, there was absolutely nothing on them. No mass. No shadow. No cysts. Nothing. My doctor had a good laugh and told me it was either a mistake or a miracle.
It was the evidence I needed to understand firsthand that illness could be dealt with and healed. I will never know definitively if it was a mistake or a miracle, but it I did see more than a glimmer of hope that illness could be healed. While the shadowy mass in my abdomen disappeared, I continued to undergo tests. I had sustained a series of back injuries after several nasty falls and my vision was having issues that came and went. Our healthy eating came in fits and starts.
I finally got a diagnosis of epilepsy, partial onset seizures which the neurologist confessed was not a kind of epilepsy that ever responded well to medication… although she gave me a nice list of meds she would start me on, keeping in mind I would have to gradually increase the medication over a series of weeks. I questioned why the dosage would wind up being so high and she said my kind of epilepsy had a small percentage of success with conventional medications, and only in mega-doses. I asked the ramifications if I opted not to take medication, and she said that while epilepsy isn’t degenerative, from the number of falls I had sustained—which she believed were to blame on seizures—the next time I succumbed I could very well fall into oncoming traffic or off the edge of a subway platform. I didn’t disagree and took the prescription home. But, after investigating the side-effects, which were worse than the condition, I opted to try a more natural, non-pharmaceutical route. I wasn’t convinced that I needed to zonk myself on medications that my doctor didn’t even believe would work for me. I looked at the notes my doctor kindly gave me, detailing her diagnosis and noting that from the tests done, my seizures seemed to be related to sleep deprivation.
I began cataloguing my seizures, noting when I had them, the duration, the type, and other possible triggers. After several weeks, I was able to verify that the biggest trigger was lack of sleep. If I have so much as 5 minutes less than a solid 6 hours of sleep, I will have a seizure at some point the following day. If I have between 7 and 9 hours of sleep, I rarely have a seizure. I was further able to pinpoint other triggers and by doing that, I was better able to prevent seizures. I went from several seizures a day, to one or two a week, and sometimes, depending on whether I expose myself to a trigger or not, I can go a week or two without a single seizure. Sure my neurologist will say, but how do you know that you’re not having dozens of unnoticed seizures during the day or when you’re sleeping at night? I can tell. I may have minor seizures here and there—by familiarizing myself with the condition, by not accepting my neurologist’s diagnosis of heavy duty meds for the rest of my life and finding an alternative treatment for me, I’ve been able to reduce the negative impact epilepsy has had on my life.
By doing research and becoming observant of my condition, I’ve been able to cut the number in half by eliminating triggers, such as lack of sleep, alcohol, and junk food. I can do my utmost to avoid other nearly unavoidable triggers, stress, and am actively working to balance another trigger, hormones. When I add herbal supplements in, the number of seizures again is radically reduced and those few I do have, don’t affect me as they once did. The other day, during the holidays, I had a seizure at lunch while spending the weekend with my aged parental units. My brother and my nephew were there and not a single one of them noticed I had had a seizure. It lasted less than a few seconds and I wasn’t left feeling like I had been razed to the ground by a rampaging horde of Visigoths.
The next installment will contain my recipes and the regimen both Anthony and I have used; his to reduce his blood glucose and a1c levels; mine to control my seizures and chronic pain.
Source: http://www.green-and-growing.com/2015/01/the-cure-is-you-dealing-with-chronic_16.html
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