Waiting Game

Well, I've had five NUCCA treatments. According to new X-RAYS, progress has been made, however, I FELL WORSE! Yet I cannot decide which symptoms are due to the NUCCA and what is due to low iron, full moon, GERD, horrible weather, and my cycle. I can normally suck it up but I had a couple days where I totally lost it. My worst symptom has something to do with my diaphragm. It's like I can't exhale fully. It feels like suffocation, but in reverse. My breathing sounds and looks normal, yet I feel like I don't have oxygen or I'm hyperventilating or something. My face and arms have gone tingly, I have "episodes" that I still can't explain, and the trauma of feeling like I'm suffocating is REALLY taking a toll on me. My worst symptoms seem to come mid morning? I wake up and deal with my crazy nervous system, try to get up and get going, eat, and then I usually crash. Around 11am?

I'm trying to get into my family doc today to check my iron. I have been SO nauseated, which I do attribute to NUCCA and that's normal, but it's making taking iron next to impossible. At first I thought I was having iron overload. It's such a balancing act. You can't have too little and you can't have too less.

So, I'm waiting for that, and am waiting to travel to The Hansa Center. I will be there two weeks from today. I seriously am concerned something horrible will happen on the car ride there. It's so far away! 16 hours from me! I don't want to fly there. I will be flying back, though. It's a whole lot of "middle of nowhere" between Utah and Kansas. I pray they can help me. This will be the fifth clinic I'll have been treated at. I will be blogging as much of my experience there as I possibly can. I will try to blog daily but I can't promise anything.

I'm learning a level of faith and patience that I've never even touched. It feels next to impossible to attain, yet I have no choice.

Whatever we go through in life, no matter how miserably we keep failing, we MUST keep trying. Sometimes I think the whole point of trials is to sometimes JUST keep trying.

At this point I feel like I'm just trying to remain conscious.

Biological Dentist

I really should not have gone to have 3 hours of torturous dental exams after being in the hospital the previous day having a torturous endoscopy. While this is all way to much trauma in 48hrs, the dentist had a cancellation and I wanted to just get it over with.

The drive up was weird. I was a strange kind of dizzy. My mom has to drive me everywhere for my own safety and for the safety of others. I'm usually dizzy in the car, but this was weird. Maybe leftover anesthesia? It was alarming Not sure if I should have had lunch right before my appointment but I did.

I had not been to the dentist in probably 5 years. I AVOID going because I have some sort of strange claustrophobia of the mouth that I cannot explain. However, in my quest to pursue all avenues of health, I figured I had better get my teeth checked. I have read many things regarding full body health and it's relation to the teeth. I also wanted to go to a biological dentist because they acknowledge chronic illness, namely Lyme.

First, I have to say I was assigned the sweetest, calmest, most wonderful dental assistant without whom I would not have survived the complete and utter torture of the exams. Now, I am NOT fluent in dental jargon, so bear with me as I try to describe what happened using simple descriptions.

So, it's all kind of a blur, but I had my teeth "tested" with a freezing Q-tip placed on each tooth to make sure they were alive? My front teeth are by far the most sensitive. They check my blood pressure on my calf to see how I am absorbing calcium. They also checked my blood pressure laying down AND standing up which I LOVED! They took pictures with a camera, did mold tray things to get an imprint which I swear I was gonna suffocate and die from. I coughed and gagged and panicked at one point. It was so embarrassing but we were finally able to get one while the assistant tapped on my temples. It was a strange kind of distraction to keep me from gagging. Then I went and got pictures taken for my posture, stood in the middle of a rotating space-like machine that I am assuming was a cavitation scanner, and had X-rays which was awful. A jagged, uncomfortable device had to be in my mouth for each picture and it felt like a chain link fence was being shoved down my throat. The assistant put salt on my tongue to help me from coughing and choking and it seemed tow work. I had a nutritional scan from a little space egg looking device, and probably other things happened but I can't remember. Probably 'cause I blocked everything out.

So after all the trauma, I finally met the dentist. He asked me what brought him to the office and boy did I have a response. He internalized everything and we seemed to be on the same page. I asked him about my jaw, my subluxation of my atlas, my dizziness, why my tongue is purple and has teeth indentations around it, why my lips are purple, why my stomach lining is destroyed, and why my nervous system is on the fritz. He suggested a liver cleanse. He tested a liver pressure point on my hand and it HURT, which he says means my liver is backed up. He says my lymphatic system is backed up like sewage, and it's affected my lips and tongue. He told me to take betonite clay and apple cider vinegar for my stomach. He pointed a laser through all my teeth and read numbers to the assistant which I didn't understand. He says the need to floss which I admit I do not do. It's too hard with permanent retainers on top AND bottom. I told him I had two wisdom teeth pulled over a decade ago, too. Oh, and he said my adrenals are having a hard time. They work by themselves I guess 'cause I've had them checked, but maybe my atlas is affecting them. My jaw is also weird. It was strange to not understand a lot there. I'm fairly knowledgable in natural medicine and my conditions, but I don't know squat about dental. ESPECIALLY these high tech, top of the line tests.

So, I have to wait TWO MONTHS FOR MY EXAM RESULTS! This dentist is the best of the best, very sought after, and very overbooked. Their office is beautiful, their staff is pristine, and even though I am a WUSS, they took good care of me. I would recommend this place to anybody. I like how they focus on the whole body, and use natural medicine in conjunction with VERY modern technology.

I don't think my results will be pretty, but that's why I went.

So all of this happened yesterday. Today has been awful. My dizziness is worse. My stomach is worse. My sleeping is worse. My "death" feeling episodes are worse. I really wish I could describe them. I feel like it stems from my stomach and/or my spine pressing on something. I still think it's my vagus nerve. I'm hoping that will be looked into further at the Hansa Center.

Until then, hopefully the PTSD will subside from this week.

Endoscopy

So, I have stomach problems. My stomach is rarely happy. I call it Lyme damage or at least damage from the stress of Lyme. So, I scheduled an upper endoscopy with my new GI. This was before I started feeling REALLY awful, though. Finally, the day came and I was SCARED! I did not know for the life of me how the heck my nervous system was going to respond to the stress of the procedure, the anesthesia, the recovery, the soreness, etc. It was scary to go into the surgery part of the hospital, even though I wasn't having surgery. Now, I've had a couple minor surgical procedures before, plus an emergency C-Section and I did fairly well. However, that was all back when my body was normal. When I responded to things normally.

So, I got in my hospital bed in my hospital gown and the nurse came in and checked my vitals, hooked me up to my IV (which was a chore 'cause my veins hate everybody), and explained what was gonna happen. I was just sitting there in denial thinking about NOT signing the consent form. My mom was there with me which I was glad about 'cause she's a nurse and has been by my side through all the horrendous health issues I've had.

So, the orderly came to get me and wheeled me away to the procedure room which looked equipped to remove every organ in my body! I'm glad I wasn't wearing contacts. Something about the blurriness of the room helped a little. My sweet, wonderful GI doc was so personable with me and has a confident, capable, trustworthy, experienced, wise aura about him. I generally do not get this impression from doctors, but I did from him. So, they put a horrible device in my mouth, hooked me up to monitor my vitals, put oxygen tubes in my nose which, to my recollection, I have never had, and put the sedating stuff in my IV which HURT!!!!!!!! It hurt so bad it upset me so much. My heart was already racing and I was shaking and sweating 'cause I was so scared........

And then I woke up in the recovery room from the best nap I've ever had LOL. I was so well rested, so comfortable, so at peace, so refreshed, and so out of it haha. It was a pleasant kind of "out of it", though. I was in a good mood, and, despite coming out of sedation, was apparently asking intelligent questions. The doc said he would just tell my mom 'cause it would go in one ear and out the other with me. He told everything to her and then left. So I guess the IV stuff calmed my nervous system instead of freaking it out.

When I came to a little more, I got a print out of the images from the scope. I would post a picture here but quite frankly it is graphic and I don't want to gross anybody out.

So, I will skip inserting the picture right here.

So the findings of this upper GI endoscopy are:

A one inch Hiatal Hernia (stomach protruding up my lower esophagus)
Gastritis in the lower part of my stomach (inflammation of stomach lining)
Esophagitis in lower part of esophagus (silent reflux maybe?)

Upper esophagus and intestine normal.

I pretty much diagnosed myself with all of this before getting the scope but it's nice to have validation.

I think I wanna go the natural route to heal this mess, but we'll see.

IT'S NEVER JUST LYME!