It started when I was little. I had two or three ear infections every year. I also had stomach problems, causing a lot of vomiting and…well, other unpleasant stuff. My parents took me to the doctors who prescribed me the medications that I took.
I grew up in a small town in New Jersey. Granted, the air is not very clean there (hahaha) and neither is the water. But that’s normal for our society, right? When you live within an hour of The Big Apple, you pay for the pollution. But, hey, it’s New York! Broadway, museums, art galleries, great restaurants…it’s worth it!
When I was 11, my family moved to a larger town in Sonoma County, California. Now, LA is infamous for its smog, but the San Francisco area is cleaner, right? Apparently not, because the next year, I was diagnosed with asthma.
And carpul tunnel syndrome. I am the youngest person my doctor has ever treated for that syndrome (yay, big proud record for me!) Sure, it’s common among people who spend a lot of their time on the computer, or writing, both of which I did (plus I played flute and piano, and I cooked). But those people are usually in their 30’s. I was twenty years younger than them. To make matters worse, none of the treatments worked. At 19, I had surgery to relieve the pressure. Luckily, that did work, and, 4 years later, I haven’t had any additional problems with my wrist, except a limited range of motion.
Throughout my teenage years, I still suffered from my stomach problems, and when I was 16, I was sent to a psychologist, who determined it was bulimia. Yes, bulimia! I wasn’t physically inducing the vomiting, but mentally I was. Along with the bulimia came the diagnosis of depression.
Two years of therapy had no impact on my depression or bulimia, so I was prescribed Prozac. Around the same time, I slipped on a wet floor at work (Starbucks) and hurt my back so badly, I needed physical therapy and Vicodin. The physical therapy only helped a little, and I am still dealing with back problems today. Also, the Vicodin use escalated into a dependency, which escalated into an addiction, just short of Dr House. (OK, that’s a bit of an exaggaration…I was only taking three or four pills a day, not three or four an hour.)
When I went off to college, I decided to move to the LA area. My conditions stayed the same. My depression did get pretty bad over the holidays when my boss told I couldn’t go home for Christmas, but the pretty decorations at Disneyland helped with that.
Anyway, I have now graduated from college, and I now live in Hawaii, where I am studying Organizational Change and Communications (both are Master’s programs.)
And nothing has changed. I still have bulimia, I still have depression, I still have back problems, I still have everything. I have had my blood drawn for tests three times since I moved here in August, and I have missed three weeks of school and one week of work because I was too sick to go (that doesn’t count the other days when I was sick, but was still able to go.)
Three weeks ago, I had a migraine that kept me in bed for five days. I couldn’t watch TV because the light hurt too much. For the last week and a half, I have been sleeping 12-18 hours a day.
My friend, Mondy, who I met in a sustainability class, knows a lot about “clean living”, which basically means she knows how to never get sick. She lent me this amazing book by Kevin Trudeau, “Natural Cures ‘They‘ Don’t Want You To Know About”. Trudeau is not a doctor, and all his conclusions are opinions he’s reached after doing twenty years of research. But if 23 years of prescription medications and doctors haven’t cured me, and have actually made me feel worse, why not try some of those “Natural Cures”?
I decided that I am going to start doing so. I gave up eating meat three weeks ago and I threw away every single prescription and non-prescription drug in my apartment today.
Let’s hope this all works…But first, I know I have to deal with the backlash of drug withdrawal. After all, I’ve been on Prozac for 7 years…
Hopefully you’ll stay with me on this journey, and offer me encouragement, and maybe even take some of my advice. After all, who wouldn’t want to learn how to never get sick?
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