Meet Your Massage Therapist

Childhood Overview– Food seemed to make me ill and I experienced stomach pain from eating every day. I even tried to live without food through my middle school years. I also suffered from numerous ear infections.

College – I was sick ALL the time with one cold/flu after another. My chronic ear infections escalated and resulted in hearing loss.  A friend suggested that I was lactose intolerant so I asked my parents. Apparently, I was born lactose intolerant and since I had “stopped projectile vomiting” dairy was put back into my diet. Removing dairy from my diet resolved a lot of my pain and bathroom issues, even my mood, and I felt better than I ever had before.

• 2003 – HEALING CRISIS #1

Significant wt loss – very skinny – bad skin – bad gut – bad headaches  - low energy – fatigue – poor sleep – poor wakefulness – dreams exclusively of horrendous nightmares with sleep paralysis

I performed a sleep study and was borderline narcoleptic, so they put me on prescription speed… which didn’t help. I was also diagnosed with food allergies for every common staple in my Italian cupboard, adrenal insufficiency, and questionable thyroid issues.

We changed my diet and I was put on corticosteroids, and I felt just well enough to change careers and move across the country to Colorado.

• 2009  – HEALING CRISIS #2

Still super tiny – hair loss – restricted diet (FODMAP/PALEO/CANDIDA/allergy) – fatigue – brain fog – joint pain – sometimes my legs wouldn’t work – pain attacks - plus all the symptoms listed previously

When I stopped digesting for 10 days, I tried finding a doctor in CO with answers – in spite of no-one being able to help me much before this.  This bought of testing revealed no stomach acid, no digestive enzymes, nutritional deficiency across the board, non-human found parasites, perimenapause, and my adrenals were shot.

Now I was receiving nutritional IVs w/ added detox help (since my gut was now unrecognizable by human standards). I had candida in my blood, my organs – liver,heart, ovaries, etc…

I also had braces for the second time in my life, as my right TMJ was swollen and painful, and the metal set off some autoimmune issues – apparently, I am also allergic to some ‘hypo-allergenic metals’.

Again, treatment helped but I was still barely functional with debilitating fatigue, compromised immune function, and I still reacted to a lot of foods, and struggled with digestion.  I was under 80lbs at this point.

Oh! And did I mention I was having stroke-like episodes at this point? Turns out I was having severe migraines for years, just without the pain, and they escalated to stroke-like experiences with the left side of my face and arm going numb and immobile. Now, I’m predisposed to having real strokes.

• 2018 – HEALING CRISIS #3

By now I had some luck with gut support and my nutrition was ok, but I was far from ‘well’. Switching to another doctor who was just running test after test to try to find a POSITIVE outcome for a potential remedy. On top of high iron, gut, hormone, adrenal, fatigue, and cognitive issues, it was this year that I got to add black mold to the list.

For me, the black mold attacked my brain and symptoms included my vision turning off, I would forget how to drive WHILE DRIVING, I would forget where I lived and how to get home, I lost the ability to read, and I had barely any energy. I had no focus, at all, and no memory. I barely remember this time, but I can recall washing a mug with my head resting on my arm, while seated on a stool, because I was too weak to stand and do it.

2020 –

It took 2.5 years to heal from black  mold, but I was back to feeling just as lousy as before. Ironically, I got the ‘all clear’ during our lockdown, however, it was many months before I felt better. And it turns out mold was merely an acute condition, and not behind my ongoing issues. Given that this was COVID times, I was trying to lay low and coast with a “functional” status as long as I could without seeking out another doctor; after DOZENS of doctors and other medical practitioners saying things like “It’s all in your head”, “I don’t know what else to tell you, you’ve done everything I know to do already”, “What’s wrong with you?!? You’re such an enigma!” I didn’t know where else to turn.

• 2024 – HEALING CRISIS #4

The summer of 2024 I was determined to find a practitioner with some answers, or at least IDEAS and INTEREST in resolving my health issues. Under the direction of both a nutritionist with genetic and hard science training and a western medicine doctor, (and even after I questioned it!!!), I was instructed to take a medication that left me bedridden for a month. It seemed to be working, but my body wasn’t tolerating the ‘inactive ingredients’ -that I only learned about later - of red dye and sugar. Red dye is bad enough, but SUGAR??? This drug was feeding the very thing it was supposed to be killing, plus, adding MORE severe issues to my system.

The Latest…

I am working with a chronic mystery illness specialist and she immediately started talking about alternatives I had never heard of. I was excited but needed a lot more testing to explore these possibilities – and there IS a list!

With more gut and toxin testing, lyme testing (negative, although my doc believes this is false), etc… my results were even more baffling. With findings of horrendously bad strains of bacteria at UNBELIEVABLY high amounts, we could not determine where they were in my body. I had already taken a LOT of measures that should have resolved this in the digestive tract – so we still had more testing to perform.

Thermogram – After getting a heat signature of my body, it revealed severe lymph congestion in my neck, draining from head – indicating a possible infection in my head. And some heat signatures around my left ovary.

This got me on board with doing a CBCT at an office that can detect numerous issues in and around the oral cavity.

CBCT Findings – 4 cavitations (low bone density) from having my wisdom teeth extracted 25+ years ago. Surgery was performed to check for cancer and necrotic (dead) bone. It turns out there was no cancer, but there was necrotic bone and an infection; both were treated during surgery.

Recovery was pain-free, and it would seem, that the gut protocols I have tried for years are NOW taking effect. Gut healing can take years so relief is still forthcoming. 3/2025