I begin...

      I started this blog, despite my abhorrence to blogging, for 2 reasons: 1-even though every one and their cat has a blog, I find myself sharing my personal health info with not only family and friends, but with complete strangers at my doctor's office, and with some of my personal health care professionals, and with some of my clients. So I thought, "perhaps I should write it somewhere instead of verbally re-telling my experiences"?  2- In a way, this is a journal, and I am sure that is exactly why many who have blogs, blog!
      So, if you're one of the 1.3 million Americans dealing with Rheumatoid Arthritis, read on. If you don't have RA, but perhaps deal with MS, or Lupus, or some other auto-immune disease, you may want to still read on. And if you're a Mom like me, you might want to read on, otherwise, other blog sites might be more entertaining.
      When I was first diagnosed with RA, and given the standard protocol of Methotrexate and Plaquinil, and told about all of the side effects I could experience while trying to relieve pain and swelling, (ie Liver and Kidney damage, eye damage, hair loss, an even lower immune system, etc) I will be honest, I was horrified! I immediately said a prayer and clear as day, got an answer. My answer lead me down a path I have since found is quite different from others suffering from this obnoxious disease. I wonder how many people have needlessly suffered from the hideous side effects of the common drugs prescribed for RA, or even have died because they chose a different path? That is a HUGE reason why I am writing this. I am not a doctor, and I am not an expert, but I do have first-hand experience with this disease, and because someone else shared their personal experiences with RA on this amazing, over-kill-of-info place called the internet, I feel like I should at least pass my experiences on, so perhaps others looking for an alternative to the standard protocol can further research for themselves.
      I'll start with my personal health history- I know... boring, BUT as we try to understand WHY this is happening to more and more people, the majority being WOMEN, I believe this is important, and if others who have been diagnosed with RA have similar histories, that can help us eventually eradicate RA and other AI Diseases.
      First let me say that I do not blame anyone or anything for any of my bad experiences as I believe our parents, and doctors do the best they know how at the time. You can only be as best as the info you have, and unfortunately for the first half of my life, RA held ALL the info cards, and was winning there for a while!
      I was born into the X generation at a whopping 6 1/2 pounds. The generation born TO the Baby Boomers. My parents were kids in the 50's and 60's but they weren't  hippies. At the time, is wasn't cool to breast feed your baby, yet formula really hadn't been developed enough that it was affordable for the average working parents, so my diet for the 1st 4 months of life consisted of evaporated milk and Karo syrup. Now I know many of you might be gagging at this idea, and apparently, as a newborn, I did too as my Mom told me I projectile vomited all the time. I'm pretty sure I was hungry, and in abdominal pain as I didn't sleep very much, and I know to this day that I am allergic to Casein Protein- a protein found in all milk products. I get horrible stomach aches after drinking a glass of milk, or eating ice cream or frozen yogurt with my family. I was making my own smoothies for years using Greek Yogurt and always wondered why my stomach hurt all the time and I was bloated and gassy. So I believe this might be a key part of my health history as your immune system is being formed in the first few weeks and months of your life, right? So if a baby is not getting the colostrum it needs from Mom, and for sure isn't getting it from canned, evaporated cows milk, and in some cases, from formula, then I believe this could affect the baby's immune system. I also suffered from chronic ear infections and tonsillitis which resulted in a tonsillectomy and tubes in my ears by 6 years old. As I got older, I developed in-door and out-door allergies- another symptom of an off-immune system. My parents fed me and my siblings extremely healthy- my Mom is an excellent cook and we rarely went out to eat, and always had fresh veggies (mostly salads) with every dinner and sometimes lunch. We loved to get huge crates of fresh citrus from my Grandparent's trees in Arizona, so really, the only things I can pin point as possibly changing my immune system were the formula, and the constant anti-biotics. My diet and physical activity were the BEST. We had afternoon cartoons of Tom and Jerry and Saturday morning cartoons, but that was it fir the TV! The rest of the time we were outside in the California sunshine or rain! I was extremely active and always at the correct weight as a child. As a teen my allergies worsened, so much so that I had to get on prescription allergy meds like Seldane, (removed from the market in 1998) and I developed extremely painful cramps every month starting at age 15 where I was prescribed Annaprox (Alieve today) for the pain.
      Then came college, and I was immersed in dance, but noticed that I started having strange "pains" in my feet. I have flat, pronated feet, and at the time was told to get orthotics to force my feet into the "correct" position, but at one time, I had such horrible pain in my foot, I was told that I had "tendonitis" and was given a thick, Vaseline-like injection of steroids (cortizone) to help the tendon swelling and pain go away. I continued to wrap my feet and dance until I got married and then pregnant with child #1.
      During my pregnancy, I developed a cyst-like rash all over my body from the neck down. The blisters were painful and itchy and filled with liquid, and after many creams, and ointments, the doctor took a sample of one of them to find out what they were and the best they could come up with was that I was "allergic to myself"! Ha! Basically I was having an allergic reaction to being pregnant and the hormones involved.
      But really, how can you avoid yourself?
The answer is, you can't, so you just live with the strange rash and it did go away after delivery. It returned a little less and less each subsequent pregnancy, (4 more) but to this day, every once in a while, I will get a couple little of those blisters on my hands, or arms or legs?  
      My allergies developed even worse after the birth of my second child, so much so that I was on an inhaler for allergy-induced asthma. In fact, I found my self ill all of the time after my second baby was born, and my baby suffered from extreme eczema. By this time, I was extremely exhausted all of the time. My babies (4 year old and 1 year old) would not even wake up until 8:00 AM, and I was ready to go back to bed by 10 AM!
I had strep throat and bronchitis several times that year and as I tried to find out why I had no energy, I was eventually told I was depressed and given a prescription for Prozac.
      Luckily for me, my sister worked at my local health care center and convinced me to go to the doctor on my baby's 1st birthday where once again I had strep throat, but she introduced me to a doctor who was practicing homeopathy. And by a small blessing, I went to a local women's conference, to a health class where I learned about another auto-immune disease called Candida.
      My new doc and my Father-an animal nutritionist,  changed my life at this point to a life of supplements, God-made food eating, and no prescriptions, including birth control.
It was a long journey but from 1994 to 1999 I used no anti-biotics and had to take them one time when I ended up with pneumonia while pregnant with baby #4 in 1999, and to this day, have not used them again.