Oh its BIG

2010... 3 years ago... just months after initially getting sick and not getting well, I started doing my own research. I came upon something that I thought made perfect sense as the answer to my sickness, as a diagnosis. I brought it up to doctor after doctor and I was brushed off. So, I pushed it to the back of my mind.

3 years later... I WAS RIGHT.

I hate to say I told you so to anyone and I hate to sound arrogant because that is not my intent, but time and time and time again I am right about something... yet people go against me and make it much more difficult than it needs to be than if they just listened to me to begin with. I'm not an expert in anything but I know my body, I know God, and I know when I'm right. And I was right about this.

And so I will explain.

Obviously traditional medicine has not been working out for me. Furthermore I still face questioning and doubting by doctors and to be straight up, I'm sick of it. I have two serious diagnoses and just because you don't know how to treat them doesn't mean I should be left hanging. But perhaps God had a reason behind the stand still on my treatment.

A couple months ago I don't know what led me to it, but I found a website about functional medicine. Functional medicine combines traditional and alternative and more importantly, functional medicine tends to look for the cause and not just treat the symptoms even if the symptoms fall under a diagnosis. Sometimes functional medicine doctors are covered by insurance. Well I checked each one of the doctors listed on that website to my insurance and I found a couple who were covered. I researched those that were and chose one who happens to be about a 15 minute drive away. I had my initial visit a little over a month ago and then a follow up just a week ago.

He is the most thorough doctor I've ever encountered. He looked through all the old records I brought in, read through every single part of the extremely long paperwork I had to fill out, asked questions on it all, listened to me and examined me. And then he figured it out, part of it at least so far. And guess what? I didn't say a word about my thoughts on it until after he figured it out himself.

If you are a traditional doctor reading this or one who strictly believes only in traditional medicine, you can either stop reading right here or read on with an open mind outside of what you were taught in the books. To all others, I say that because this is something many traditional doctors do not believe in or if they do they claim it's not possible for anyone who LOOKS healthy, they claim you really just have to have cancer or HIV or look very very sick in order to have this. Again, some doctors are like robots reading out of books. (No not all and I know there are some very good ones.)

Let me first say, when I made my first attempt at blogging it was specifically on this diagnosis that I received now 3 years later. I talked ALL about it. Shame on myself for deleting that blog because of others saying garbage to me about it and discouraging me from doing my own research, figuring out my problem myself and going after my passion of writing. Shame on me for listening to people trying to bring me down instead of raise me up. I was right!

My new diagnosis (not to replace my other ones though): Candida!!!!!!

I pretty much remember most of what I learned 3 years ago so I'll just cover what I remember for now. Candida is yeast overgrowth within the body... no not just thrush or any other visible yeast. It is a systemic overgrowth throughout the insides of your body which primarily reside in and start in the digestive tract. The way you can get this is basically your body out of balance- being given too many medications especially antibiotics, inhalers and steroids, eating too much sugar/yeast or unhealthy/processed foods, and you are more susceptible to it if you are already sick.

What does candida do?

Everything I have encountered. It can affect your entire body pretty much in any way. To name a few of the very many symptoms, all of which I have- dizziness, fatigue, brain fog, weight gain or loss, reflux, nausea, cramping, sore throat, post nasal drip, ear infections, ringing ears, sensitivities to food and environment, joint pain etc. etc. It can harm you to the point of being unable to function.

How do you treat it?

That's the very tough part. VERY tough. There are 3 options here, including all of them is the best bet. One- pharmaceutical- but not the antibiotics and other stuff that makes you worse. Instead a medication to go against all those other ones, to kill the yeast overgrowth. One of these is less harsh on the body but sometimes the yeast become resistant to it. Some others are more harsh and you need your liver and kidneys checked during treatment. Both can take a very long time to kill off the yeast especially if the infection is very wide spread and severe. Two- non-pharmaceutical- you can take certain supplements as natural ways to kill off the yeast such as garlic, caprylic acid, oil of oregano and more. Again a very long process and you have to switch up the treatments to "fool" the yeast in essence. Furthermore, you must take probiotics at a very high dosage to give your body more good bacteria to fight the bad stuff. Three- changing your diet. This isn't simple at all especially because everyone is different. The two biggest things to remove- sugar and yeast but most of us are also very sensitive to/made worse by dairy, processed foods/additives, and gluten. This doesn't leave much when you think about what you normally eat. Some things you might not think of that are bad for those who have candida- vinegar, mayonnaise, pizza, too much fruit, juices, sour cream, beer, wine... Treating candida is insanely difficult and a long long process, could be life long.

So how did I get it?

Simple. Exactly what I thought happened, happened. When it comes down to it, the doctors made me sick, really. They treated each symptom instead of putting it together and figuring it out. I was way over medicated. And since I had never really been sick before I didn't know any better, I trusted what they advised and I listened. I was literally on 50 medications within 9 months time. Society is taught that medicine is good. Well, medicine can be bad. Very very very bad, especially if used when it shouldn't be. That's what happened to me. Medicine made me sick instead of better.

So now what?

Well he wants me to try to eliminate everything I can from my diet. Before this, I already started doing the dairy free, started doing some gluten free, and for a long while have reduced my sugar and yeast intake as I know they bring on my symptoms very bad and I'm not much of a sweets person aside from my dear love of chocolate. I rarely eat fast food anymore either. Actually being on warfarin helped me as I HAD to have greens every single day in order to maintain my INR level. It got me into eating even healthier.

He is also treating me with a pharmaceutical medication to attack the candida. To start, he wants 3 months of treatment. Here's the thing with that. It has the good possibility of making me really really sick before I start (maybe) getting any better. That happens because of the attack against the candida and flushing them out of your system. You basically have to rebalance your body and then keep it that way. Because I am SO sensitive to medicine he is letting me start super low and up my dosage with time. He wants me on 1 full tab twice day 1,000,000 mg! OH my! But I started on 1/8 a tab twice a day. I should get an award for amazing pill cutter with that one! haha. Anyways, I started this yesterday. Already it's affecting me. Last night I woke up and almost fainted and got really sick. When I woke up my heart was going nuts and I was absolutely freezing. Today I'm not doing much of anything because my stomach is all out of whack and I'm so dizzy. I also was given Zofran to try to keep my stomach a little more under control.

After 3 months he wants to put me on a different medicine to try to push it a bit further. But pretty much forever, I have to watch what I eat and not take antibiotics, inhalers, steroids, etc unless absolutely needed... (try telling that to my other doctors!).

I don't think I'm making this sound nearly as serious as it is. It is really really bad and really serious. Unfortunately many people have it and don't know it but not to this extent. It's not just body out of balance as in take some vitamins and you'll be ok. It's one portion of your body that naturally lives in you got super out of control and took over and is attacking you. If untreated it will continue to attack you until you can't defend against it anymore. It pretty much really stinks. But I'm not reacting to it that much because of the fact that I've kind of been dealing with this mentally for 3 years.

What does this mean in regards to MG and POTS?

It MIGHT make it lessen if treatment is successful. He isn't saying candida is causing my MG (I'll get to that in a minute) but it might perhaps have something to do with all the POTS symptoms. The goal is just to make my body better in however way we can. It will be gradual and I will get worse first. I just hope I'm strong enough to not land in the hospital during this treatment. I also pray I have the support needed to get through this.

What else?

Here we go. Candida isn't the only thing. He thinks there are 2 other underlying causes, but this is the most serious and most important to tackle first. The other two things are something with low cortisol- so something about the whole fight or flight thing and my body's fatiguing so quickly. He isn't doing anything on this quite yet but said it is treated with steroids or cortisone... which slightly is a problem since steroids are on the no list for candida. Goodness I'm such a problem patient. And the other is this...

Epstein Barr Virus aka MONO... but not how you know it. I have it chronic or recurrent... meaning it either never leaves me or keeps coming back. This could explain a lot in regards to my overall energy level, rapid fatigue, weakness, a lot of things. He said we would attack this with a long term anti-viral to try to get the levels in my blood down. Here's the big thing- there is a link between Epstein Barr with both MG and POTS! It is thought that it could be the cause of either/both. Sooo... if we are able to attack the Epstein Barr and rid it from constantly being in me, we may in fact take care of the MG and/or POTS in return! How exciting is that!! But, I'm hesitant to get too pumped up on this one because he first wants to do research and see what would be the best way to go about this. Again it's a difficult one.

So, to conclude, my new functional medicine doctor believes the base/bottom/starting point/cause whatever you want to call it is 3 things- candida, a cortisol problem, and chronic/recurrent Epstein Barr. It's going to be one heck of a ride ahead, but at least I finally have someone I trust going in the same direction, in the driver's seat!

Here's to hoping this is the start of something amazing! Thank you all for your continued support and prayers as I begin this treatment. Thank you GOD for finally turning what I knew all along into a definite diagnosis with hopeful treatment.