My Healing Ride

Trigger warning: this post involves discussion of suicide, molest & infanticide

My road to wellness has been a twisted rollercoaster ride filled with unexpected delays, breakdowns and setbacks. While I honor your healing journey, mine has been much more of a wild ride.

The First Bite

I was bitten by a tick on my soft spot when I was about two months old. The tick was doused in vodka and twisted out of my head — a popular method in 1974 which we now know causes the tick to regurgitate its innards into its host before it dies.

My immune system was compromised far before the bite. My father had at least two known autoimmune diseases and my mother was physically abused by him during pregnancy. The first house I lived in had so much mold there were mushrooms growing on our bathroom walls.

One month after the bite, I got my first ear infection and a fever of over 105 degrees. I had dangerously high fevers several times and was constantly sick as a kid.

Fight, Flight, Freeze

The first eight years of my life were filled with fear, violence and alcoholism.

I was neglected, abused and molested by my father. We lived in and out of motels and moved constantly between California, Arizona and Mexico.

My mom and I finally escaped and ended up in Reno, Nevada where I became free from my father but not from violence. I was bullied from fourth to eighth grade so horribly that I attempted suicide in the seventh grade.

The Slow Suicide of Addiction

I found solace in drugs, alcohol, attention and overachievement. I self-medicated my crippling depression, anxiety, and fatigue with anything that patched the dam that was my internal life.

Soon after turning 21, I was raped. I spent the next three years trying to get sober or trying to drink and drug myself to death. I had my first nervous breakdown during this time.

I decided to kill myself or get sober. I had no insurance, so I detoxed in my tiny apartment and went to 12-step meetings. I got sober at 24 and moved to LA to be a movie star.

Mental Illness

The more sober I got, the more my mental health deteriorated. I teetered between fantasies of world domination and violent self-hatred, between barely needing sleep and sleeping for days on end. I also started having panic attacks.

I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism at 25 and was told it was no big deal — it only meant I had to take a pill for the rest of my life. I was given Synthroid.

When the panic attacks became daily and four-hours long, I quit acting after 16 years. I was still pretending — just no longer trying to make it my living.

I got married and went to graduate school, convinced these outside things would fix me.

Medication Patched the Dam

The daily panic attacks didn’t subside. I had my second nervous breakdown six weeks into grad school, saw a school psychiatrist and was put on an antidepressant.

And it actually worked! The four-hour panic attacks stopped. My highs and lows were finally manageable. I couldn’t believe it. I was diagnosed with anxiety disorder.

Mental Hospital #1

I got my master’s and weaned off the antidepressant because I believed uninformed people in my 12-step meetings who told me I wasn’t truly sober if I was on medication. A dark and unrelenting depression replaced the panic attacks. When psychosis hit and the walls in my house changed color, I planned my suicide.

I was placed on a 72-hour hold at a county psychiatric hospital. I was diagnosed with PTSD and bipolar disorder type 2 (later changed to C-PTSD and type 1 rapid cycling). I learned that the panic attacks were from C-PTSD as a normal panic attack only lasts about 15–20 minutes, not four hours.

I was told the bipolar disorder was genetic. After all, I had two suicides and tons of mental illness on my mother’s side of the family.

I did intensive therapy two to three times a week for two years and found a cocktail of medications that worked. I worked hard and felt sane for the first time in my life.

I saw my first endocrinologist and was correctly diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, yet I was given no solution for the immune attack on my thyroid. Again, I was told to just take Synthroid.

Miscarriages

In 2009, I suffered a miscarriage and had a D&C. I was thrown into a deep depression from the hormone drop-off. This was my second miscarriage so I saw a fertility doctor and I found out that after a few weeks of pregnancy, my progesterone plummets and kills the fetus.

The doctor had no explanation for why this was happening in my body.

Pregnancy

I got pregnant and stayed pregnant with medical assistance. My depression came back with a vengeance. It would be four excruciating years until I’d experience sanity again.

Postpartum Mental Illness

In 2011, my perfect baby was born. The next morning my OB told me about a mother who threw her baby out of a hospital window to his death. I knew at that moment that I was fated to murder my child.

Graphic, scary images of me throwing my baby out of windows looped constantly through my brain. I duct-taped all the upstairs windows and sliding glass door shut in our townhouse.

Then I was hit with a mania akin to a kilo of cocaine. My breast pump started talking to me. The postpartum psychosis was short-lived, but it took six months before the looping OCD murder thoughts, visuals and fears would subside.

Over the next three years, the unrelenting darkness took away everything for which I’d worked so hard. The guilt and shame of feeling like I was a horrible mother made my downward spiral complete.

I tried integrative doctors, several endocrinologists, meds, no meds, jogging, CrossFit, yoga, the Autoimmune Paleo diet (for 18 months solid), up to 80 supplements a day, bioidentical hormones, upping my 12-step work, meditation, prayer, therapy, acupuncture and Chinese herbs.

An integrative doctor discovered I had an issue converting T4 to T3 and put me on natural desiccated thyroid meds. After 12 years on Synthroid (T4 only), I learned my T3 was never checked or optimal. I found out that T3 is nature’s antidepressant, but changing thyroid meds wasn’t enough to save me from the darkness.

Mental Hospital #2 & #3

My head screamed “kill yourself” whenever I was awake. I went through maddening medication side effects, went into perimenopause at 39, lost my ability to sleep and eat, went through a three-month intensive outpatient program and was hospitalized two more times.

Finally, a brain procedure called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation gave me a ladder out of the darkness. I had a lot of work to do to pull myself completely out and I made a lot of changes in my life. I started over.

When I realized I was going to live, I took a stand-up comedy class. The laughter healed me. I did stand-up comedy for three years, but I still struggled with severe fatigue.

Seven Psychotic Episodes

I caught a 6-day stomach flu from my son that lasted 14 days. My psychiatrist took me off lithium until my stomach healed. Lithium affects thyroid meds so I had my labs drawn because I felt intuitively my thyroid was off.

My endocrinologist told me I was within range around the time I had my first psychotic break. By the fifth break, I didn’t know who I was, who you were, where I was or what my life was. I dialed 911 on myself.

My psychiatrist put me on antipsychotic medication and I suffered two more breaks. I gained 30 pounds in a month, so I was put on a med to offset the food cravings. I was a mess. Again.

I changed endocrinologists after sanity returned and found out that my intuition was right — she verified that my thyroid was the cause of my psychotic episodes.

Lyme

My life came to another halt at the end of 2018. Two weeks after a Cub Scout camping trip, I could barely lift my head I was so fatigued and I had bronchitis three times in a row. I could function until around noon and then the headache and fatigue would literally close my eyes and I’d pass out.

The initial diagnosis was chronic active Epstein-Barr virus and Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, so I attacked it head-on and actually got the CAEBV back into dormancy in three months.

But I was sick again less than three months later. Almost a year and over 50 vials of blood later, I was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease. I was reinfected on the camping trip. I had an answer for the fatigue I struggled with my entire life. I also had reactivated cytomegalovirus, HHV-6, HPV-18 and mycoplasma pneumoniae.

Lyme explained the miscarriages, madness and thyroid attack, but now I had to fight one of the hardest diseases to beat.

Treatment for Lyme

I did a treatment for Lyme called Supportive Oligonucleotide Technique (SOT). I hadn’t detoxed at all and knew very little about Lyme so I ended up in a wheelchair with Parkinson’s-like symptoms. I wanted to take my life several times during the 6-month treatment.

But Hashimoto’s and all the reactivated viruses went into dormancy after the treatment. The Lyme was only cut in half so I’d have to endure another treatment.

Mental Hospital #4 & #5

After treatment, my serotonin started working, but I was still on four psych meds so I went into serotonin syndrome. I went off all my psych meds under the guidance of my psychiatrist during the height of the pandemic while homeschooling my child. I ended up in a mixed bipolar episode. I couldn’t eat or sleep and again my head screamed “kill yourself” whenever I was awake.

I tried TMS again, but this time it didn’t work. I ended up in a psych ward begging for electroconvulsive therapy only to find out they weren’t doing ECT because of Covid, so I tried another psych ward to no avail as well. My second suicide attempt was in my fifth mental hospital.

The Ride Takes Incredible New Turns

I stabilized again on lithium and an antidepressant, but not without side effects. I couldn’t imagine going through Lyme treatment again, so I tried several herbal treatments, but they all made me herx. I finally opened my mind to energetic healing and tapped deeply into my intuition.

It was then that despite negative tests, I intuitively knew I had parasites. I started an herbal protocol and almost immediately started eliminating worms. BIG worms. Realizing how bad the infestation was, I added Ivermectin to the herbal protocol and released pounds of parasites. I finally found a protocol that focused on drainage, detox, mold and heavy metals that didn’t make me herx.

I started seeing an LLMD who specializes in thyroid optimization and discovered that my thyroid had never been optimal.

I also had more detailed tickborne labs done and found out I had toxoplasmosis. The difference in the Lyme labs before and after treating the roundworms was dramatic.

Divorce

After 21 years together, my husband and I had endured too much to go on. Our marriage was broken from decades of illness. We divorced in 2022 and are co-parenting our son. There’s no way I can express the devastation that chronic illness has wreaked on my relationships — I’ve lost so many friends and family members that the only answer was to rebuild.

Healing on a New Level

I have a community of friends who are so precious to me. For humans who share a common bond of pain, you’d be surprised how much we laugh.

I’ve learned that I am in control of my healing. I am the driver and the decision-maker on my health ride. I’ve learned to fiercely advocate for myself and I have a team of doctors who respect my decisions.

Yes, Lyme is caused by a tick bite, but I don’t think the tick alone is to blame. To get sick the way I got sick, the immune system has to be very compromised. I have come to believe the root cause of all of these illnesses is limbic system impairment from being in flight, flight or freeze since I was very young. Trauma stores in our bodies and the trauma reaction causes inflammation so our bodies can’t heal.

No More Lyme

The second SOT worked! I no longer have Lyme or any of the co-infections or parasites. All gone.

But…

I have Long Covid and ME/CFS. I want so desperately to be the after picture, but the truth of the matter is I have more work to do and my body has been very damaged for almost 50 years.

I’m currently undergoing experimental treatment for the medical aspect and I’m in a brain retraining program healing from PTSD.

I keep fighting, but I also know when to surrender. Above all else, self-compassion and love are necessary for healing. We cannot heal a body we hate. I love my strong, beautiful warrior body today and I so deeply understand and appreciate what she’s done for me and is doing for me right now.

This ride has been impossible so many times, but I’m still here. I am no longer defined by the speed bumps in my life; I am defined by how I get over them.

I still believe, and will always believe, that the impossible is possible.