My Health Story

The Early Years

My health story begins with my childhood. I was 7 years old. Most children have an aversion to vegetables. I didn't. I loved them! But at about this time I chose to stop eating meat. It wasn't a moral decision. Just didn't like the texture. So I sat at the table for hours, not eating my meat, until my parents finally gave in and accepted it: I was a vegetarian. In addition to this, milk upset my tummy, and so I avoided it, too (later this problem was identified as a mild milk allergy). Vegetarianism seemed like a quirky kid thing at the time, and I'm sure my parents hoped I would grow out of it!

The Jr. High Years

It wasn't until the Jr. High years that there was a noticeable impact on my health. We had less information on how to eat a healthy diet as a vegetarian back then. I ate cereal for breakfast, usually a cheese sandwhich or Mac and Cheese for lunch, and then whatever my family ate for supper minus the meat (usually something like veggies and potatoes, or spagetti and tomato sauce). It only made sense that, when puberty started to make demands on my body, I noticed my body was getting weaker.

At some point between 1 and 3 in the afternoon I would fall into a deep sleep during a class, and I would get home after school, lay down in front of the TV, and sort of fall into a desperate sleep for a while, or become almost catatonic, and when I tried to stand up I had to hold on to something until the spots went away. I was told that during basketball games that I "looked like I was moving in slow motion" and that was what my reality felt like.

It wasn't like that every moment of the day. I had enough energy to participate in most normal teenage things, but after exerting energy for a while I would hit a wall, my body would become very weak and shaky, and I needed to sleep. Come night time, I would struggle with sleep in a different way. I was weak, shaky and exhausted, and needed to be still, but didn't fall asleep.

I have always been a very active person. I played basektball, loved to work out, run, etc. In my grade 7 year I had a siezure, which I was told was stress related. I had nerve pain that ran from my neck to shoulder to elbow and wrists, and from my shoulder blade to my tail bone, knee, and foot. I struggled with severe anxiety, and began to develop depression. From this point on I had struggles with my memory, making school much more difficult. I had to study for hours every day to keep up my grades.

The High School Years

Come high school I had learned to identify nutritional deficits. I knew what it felt like to be deficient in Iron, protien, calcium, etc. Often if I would go and eat something appropriate when I had symptoms of deficiency, the symptoms would go away fairly quickly! But, because my diet largely remained the same as my Jr. High years, and my understanding of "healthy eating" was limited to the concept of a "low calorie and low fat diet," my health continued to decline. This diet turned out to be very UNhealthy for me. My body NEEDED the calories, it needed fat to function properly, and it needed them in order to provide me with the nutrients essential for my health. I was still struggling with my memory, depression, anxiety, nerve pain, etc. But still, I continued to be as physically active as possible during this phase of my life.

The College Years

I started to notice an improvement in my energy during the college years, when I started cooking for myself, and learning more about what a healthy vegetarian diet looked like. But I still struggled with anxiety, had a racing heart, and had a four month "major depressive episode" where visually I saw in shade of grey, wasn't able to feel much with my skin, and didn't feel emotions (happy or sad). During these four months, late at night, I had insomnia, and one night I fought back a very strong compulsion to hurt myself. It wasn't even that I wanted to. I felt compelled. I held on to the bedsheets to keep myself in bed until morning, and it passed. After the fourth month, these aweful symptoms lifted, and life returned to normal!

Marriage and the First Baby

I was married later that year. My health continued in about the same way, until 2 1/2 years later, when I was 6 months pregnant with my first son. I expressed to my OB-GYN that I was afraid that I might experience post partum depression. She said that if I was at all worried about it, why don't I take antidepressants as a precautionary measure. I had never heard of this being done, but she seemed to think it was a good idea, and even though I had a psych degree, I figured I'm not a doctor, so i started on the medication.

This choice coincided with a decline in my health. I became more tired and weak, struggled more with insomnia again, and I was also discouraged because I wasn't able to take my last semester of my Masters Degree (because of when the baby would be coming). All of these things can be normal during the 3rd trimester, but if causing enough disruption in life, could be signs of depression.The baby came early. My amniotic fluid level dropped without reason, and when they tried to induce me the baby's heart rate dropped. An emergency c-section caught me off guard, and exposed me to probably the only things I was more afraid of than childbirth! Also, a week before the baby came, I caught a cold, and so as I kept coughing post c-section I kept bursting my incision. I was extremely discouraged, because it took much longer to heal than normal, I seemed to be leaking some sort of fluid from every possible place, and I couldn't hold the baby because of the pain, and because of a strong hormonal response (each time I picked up the baby I hot flashed, and had to put him down). When I went to see my family doctor he suggested we raise the dosage of the medication. Well, I figured, anything to take care of this - make it go away!

When we did this, again, I noticed a decline in my health. I became even weaker, had more hot flashes, was sleeping about half the day away, was unable to awake in the morning (I would get my son when he cried, pass out in the middle of the living room floor, and he would crawl around and on me until noon), breastfeeding had failed altogether, and people around me were starting to say I just had to push through it, and that everyone has to deal with these difficulties when they have a new baby. I went to see my doctor. He interpreted my weakness/sleepiness as lack of motivation, inability to do normal activities as a loss of interest, and referred me to a psychiatrist, because he didn't feel he had the expertise to discern whether he should increase the dose, or change the medication. I respected that, and just wanted to do whatever it took to get better, and as fast as possible, so I went to the psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist interpreted my symptoms the same way, and doubled my medication. Once again, my health took a noticeable decline. I became almost catatonic. I couldn't rouse from sleep. In the morning I could here my little boy crying down the hall, and feel a desperate need to get to him, but I couldn't move my body. I couldn't even turn my head to readjust because I was sore from waking up in the same position I fell asleep in. And I couldn't close my mouth to stop myself from drouling. I was stuck there, and had to listen to him cry.

He was alone in his crib, without food or a diaper change, until 12:00. I don't know what it was about that hour, but it never failed that at noon I would have a little burst of energy. It would come out of nowhere, and with it i would try to turn my self over in a way that would get me to the floor, and I would begin the long journey on my hands and knees down the hall toward his room. It would take me as long as a half an hour, and then I had to wait for the strenth to get up on my knees and lean on the handle to open the door. Then I had to make my way across the room to his crib, find a way to pull myself up, grab onto him and get back to the floor. I couldn't let go, because if he got away, I might not get him back.

And that was just the beginning. I still had to get to the stairs with him, and then sit with him on my lap to go down each stair on my bum, get him to the living room and close the gate, get back to the fridge to get him juice, and grab as many cheerios as I could in my hand, and then, in the living room, I put them on the floor, pressed repeat on Baby Einstein, and passed out until my husband came home around 3.During this phase of my life I stopped eating when my husband wasn't home (I didn't have the strength to get anything). I had no concentration - everything was a fog. I couldn't read anymore. I couldn't get my eyes or my mind to focus. My husband came home, changed my son's diaper, picked me up, made us supper, did some house cleaning, and took care of us until bedtime. I felt guilty, and angry that no one helped my husband or my son. I started to wish I could die, so that someone would take him and take care of him. By this point no one could argue differently: I was depressed.

When I saw the psychiatrist again he doubled the dose once more. This brought me to almost 1.5 times the highest recommended dosage for the medication. I knew there was a problem when i went to the pharmacist and had to fight with her to give me the "medication." The night sweats were so bad that my husband had to change the sheets at least once each night. Eventually we would just start adding additional layers of bedding on top. But it didn't matter. In a second my body from head to feet would spew fourth water that would drench my clothes and the blankets right through again.

On this dosage I lost all function. I became extremely suicidal and found myself clinging to the bedsheets with every bit of focus I could muster, because if I relaxed for even a second, I was sure that I would run full speed into a wall! I kept wishing that I would die. There was no point in being alive in that state - and as long as I was in the picture, no one would step in and take my son. I begged doctors, counsellors, and the psychiatrist to send me somewhere that we could figure this thing out.

I felt confident that the medication (at least this one) was not the answer to my health problems. Each time the dose had been increased coincided with a health decline, and even if it was right, the side effects made it completely not worth it. I had almost forgotten that when I had been put on the medication in the first place I didn't even have the symptoms of depression! I was put on it as a precaution, so that I would not develop post partum depression! I forgot this detail as I met with later doctors (it was my OB-GYN that put me on them, and I didn't see her anymore once the baby was born). They were all under the assumption that I had been diagnosed with depression already.

I was discouraged about the way things went when I had the baby, but i think my reactions were reasonable for the situation. And by the time I saw the psychiatrist, I was genuinely becoming depressed, so he saw no reason to doubt the diagnosis. I asked multiple doctors to take me off the medication at this point, but each responded the same way: however you are feeling now, it will only get a lot worse without it. And when my husband told the psychiatrist that I'm basically a zombie - not there anymore, his response was "well, she's basically medicated" (like - what did you expect, of course she is!). And he thought I would have to be on the medication for life. He seemed to feel like that was a completely reasonable way to go through the rest of my life!

It was only after I told him that I "could" be pregnant that he said he'd take me off the drugs (in fact he was kind of mad that I would be so "careless" as to get pregnant). No one told me it would be an issue (remember, I was pregnant when they put me on the drug in the first place). He did wrote the prescription to "step down" off the drug for over a two week period (I've been told by many since that it should take place over a much longer period of time), and when I asked what to expect as I go through withdrawal he said that, as long as I follow his suggestions for stepping down a level every two days, I shouldn't really expect any symptoms.

If he believed that, then he was wrong. For the next month I became what I can only describe as demonic - I yelled and screamed, felt evil, saw darnkess, and there was never any reason for it. Brain shivers/zapping, insomnia, headaches, suicidal compulsions, extreme agitation, confusion, hallucinations, sweats and trembling - a far cry from no withdrawal symptoms. After a few weeks I noticed the withdrawal began to lift, but it took a full two months to start to feel like a person.

I discovered that many many people I knew were on the drug, too, and that it was new, and incentives were being offered when doctors prescribed it. And, while I don't think they were randomly handing out drug prescriptions, it became the "drug of choice" even though it was not sufficiently researched. I was told by my OB-GYN and family doctor that it is safe for pregnancy and breastfeeding. The fact that the views on pregnancy and the drug changed that much in two years suggests to me that I was experimented on without my consent, and that doctors would choose it to prescribe over other drugs - why not?

But, nevertheless, as I began this journey off the medication, a few other things happend. One was that I began to see a counsellor. I found out about a month and a half later that I was, indeed, pregnant! When I told my counsellor, she seemed supportive, but then at a seesion where my husband was there (supposedly to talk about other things), she spent the entire session telling me that I shouldn't have gotten pregnant, and possibly should never have another child, because I would likely get postpartum depression again, and it wasn't fair to subject my family to that. Ironically, it was getting pregnant that allowed me to come off the medication, and led me to the doctor (my OG-GYN for my second son) that I believe changed my life - he gave me my answer.

The Road to Recovery

This doctor, an OB-GYN at a University teaching hospital, and a clinical associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, considers the general approach of medicine today (that illness is largely genetic/predestined and requires medication to fix) to be outdated according to the research of the last decade, as it takes about a generation for new findings to be incorporated into the everyday doctor's office. He talks about a few reasons this happens - mainly that there is resistance to new ideas, and it takes a new generation of doctors being 'raised' with that information as normal for change to occur. I had tried to ask all of the doctors i'd seen the questions that he answered in a short time (some without me asking).

According to him, genetics do impact whether a person will get a certain disease; however it is only a predisposition. Genes are turned on or off depending on what they interact with in the bodily environment. If the bodily environment is sub-optimal (ie. doesn't have what it needs to function correctly), or is toxic, then one's genetic predisposition to certain health problems (that would have remained dormant) turn on. Yet, even if a gene is turned on, they have found that if they restore the bodily environment, by removing what shouldn't be there, and making sure what should be there is there, the gene will often turn itself off again. The body is always trying to function optimally. Some damage is irreversible, but much can be restored!

He believed that most of my problems could be explained by adrenal problems, and be related to nutritional deficiency and some environmental factors, and so could possibly be managed just by bringing those things into balance. It made sense that the medication made my health worse. It put demands on my body, after a life of poor nutrition, college and graduate studies, pregnancy and a c-section - my adrenal glands couldn't handle any more demands! He made some related recommendations, and as I was two weeks into withdrawal, I made those changes: I started taking pharmaceutical grade vitamins, and began the process (which took about a year) of making my home chemical-free (cleaning products, pesticides, body care products, and beyond).

The blurred vision, and some memory loss have remained even to this day. But, when I made these changes, over the next few months I noticed each day i had a little more energy, i was more calm, my mood improved. Most days I was sleeping when I was supposed to, and I woke up every morning. I got to the point where I didn't need to nap, and now I have actually achieved a level of health that I have never had before in my life!I don't expect that I will never get sick, but my health has improved to the point that when i do, my body can fight it. I recover quickly. I feel strong day to day, and I deal with stress and anxiety much better.

When I stop taking care of myself and my home, the symptoms begin to return. But, when I keep my life in balance, my health stays in balance, too!

If you would like to know more detail about any of these things, I'm happy to share what i can with you. I have a wealth of resources - studies, articles, etc. that I believe will help many many others!

Read what happened a few months later!

*i'd like to add one final correction after the fact. As I look back on the timeline I believe the adrenal related diagnosis is properly attributed to a Naturopath that I saw for a short while shortly before, and for a bit after I started with the Medical Doctor of Environmental Medicine. I don't remember the doctors comments regarding this issue, but the diagnosis certainly seemed to fit.