Success Story – Finally Pain-Free!

Success Story – Finally Pain-Free!

If you’ve been following along and are a sufferer of chronic pain…

Here’s my success story and how I finally made it to pain-free!

For those just jumping in, I recently posted about my extreme bout with chronic pain after the birth of my fourth. Suffering miserably for a time, far from a fully functioning life, desperately trying to manage my ridiculously high pain levels each day –

and with no actual way to appease the pain.

It was downright scary and I despised of life, seeing no way out but to end existing. Check out the post here.

What heartache this was for my family and me.  

My husband and I felt robbed of life, slaves to the exhausting task of (unsuccessfully) managing my pain. My body was out of control and we were very confused over what was happening.  

I was obsessed with managing my pain.  

All of my physical issues were very debilitating; I had 4 young ones, but couldn’t take care of them and had the thought, many times, that if social services could see me, they would take my kids from me.  

We didn’t know how long this would last and, with such chronic fibromyalgia, I feared it would continue until I was 85 and finally passed away.  

50 more years of this…the thought was scary.  

Come July 2014, I could see that I was really going downhill.  My efforts to gain weight were unsuccessful, I was 91 pounds and a nerve-wracked, pain-encompassed zombie every day.  I figured I would be alive in the fall and winter, but trembled at the thought of what that would look like with my rapid rate of decline.  

There Must Be a Way

I was in a dire place. And up to this point, I had tried everything I knew to try.

I only knew of the medical world I clearly saw, the one I’d known since childhood. The world all of us is familiar with. Doctors, hospitals, surgeons, therapists, orthopedists, and the like…

So when I was encouraged to see a naturopath, I balked at the idea.

First of all, I had already spent a fortune on all those other doctors, not to mention the two surgeries I’d gone through. How was this new person supposed to do anything they couldn’t?

Second, a naturopath wasn’t going to take medical insurance. I was looking at hundreds of dollars spent on one visit alone, all out-of-pocket.

So I hesitated. Had I truly thought this person could help me, there would have been no hesitation. But I knew, with all the money we’d already blown on my illness, we had to be very careful about what we spent. We couldn’t afford to just keep trying everyone and everything.

We waited. And as we waited, I continued to suffer.

Turning Point

It was a dear family member who turned the tide for me.

She was the one who had suggested the naturopath to me. She had even flown in from Texas for two weeks during my illness to care for and cook for us, trying to educate me in the benefits of a cleaner diet (I truly didn’t believe a thing she said at the time).

A letter arrives in the mail. Crisp, clean, white envelope, carefully addressed and showing a Texas return address, I quickly recognize it’s author.

The words inside –
“Take this and go see that naturopath. We want you better.” –
enveloped in a $1000 check.

A jaw-dropping gift. This dear woman loved me enough and believed in this world of natural healing enough to send the money for me to go.

And the door opens.

By this time, my exhaustion is through the roof and my pain is an ultimate finicky monster. It doesn’t tolerate much at all and to get through each day is strength-sapping beyond belief.

But I research, once again, a possible way out of this mess. Who to see? I don’t know of a naturopath in my area and I don’t live close to a large city.

If you aren’t aware of the natural world, you don’t know what to type in the Google search field and the whole mysterious entity remains hidden. Once my eyes open to key words such as “natural healing” or “naturopath” in conjunction with “trigger points,” that blessed world reveals itself and you realize you’re not alone –

there are thousands, millions, of other people who struggle like you do.

And there are many who have found relief.

The answer springs to my attention once I find her – the woman who had pain worse than me.

If she went through ALL THAT and can be healed, I can be healed, too…

First thoughts of true hope.

Phone calls ensue, conversations back and forth with many questions posed and answered, and I make the appointment. My husband is to drive me, but the office is almost three hours away and I’m afraid my pain will prohibit me from sitting in a car for so long. Plunge taken, prayers plead.

Appointment day arrives – and, praise the Lord, God gets me to that office door and blesses that amazing visit. I’m diagnosed with a few things – Candida, Adrenal Fatigue and Leaky Gut Syndrome, and sent out the door with a some high quality supplements and an impossible diet.  And then…

…things start to change.  

Quickly.  

One of the first were those horrid trigger points.  

By the end of August, most of those crazy symptoms were gone.  

By mid-September, my year and a half bout of severe insomnia was calmed as my sleep became refreshingly almost normal.  

And at September’s end, we were able to take a family hike, hubby and I counting the marker as an achievement on my road to recovery.  There are still some wrinkles to iron out, but Praise God, I can confidently say I’m able to live that coveted “normal” life I was so desperate for.

I’ve only been able to tell so much of this healing process…

soon, I’ll detail
my diet
the issues
why the medical world didn’t work for me
and why health and nutrition are so amazingly crucial in the fight against chronic pain –

and for a normal life.