Drug Free is the Way to Be!

Perfect timing for this post, since it’s Red Ribbon Week and all!  Today I’ve decided to give you some back story as to why I prefer to do things naturally.  I was raised on homeopathic and naturopathic medicine due to my mom’s interest and accumulated knowledge.  Cold and flu season, we didn’t go running to the nearest pharmacy to get a flu shot, rather Mom gave us immune-boosting supplements such echinacea and vitamin C.  Goldenseal and pau d’arco are good ones too.  Voila, we made it through cold and flu season with nothing more than a bit of congestion, if anything.  What’s interesting to me is that she got a late start in working with natural remedies with my sister and I, but started right off the bat with my brothers.  Guess which kids were the healthiest all throughout their school days?  I’m not saying none of us had our issues, but I can say that hospitals haven’t seen any of us and our doctors had some preeeetttyyyy out-of-date files.  Anyway.  So this was my upbringing.  Then one day when I was I guess 18-19 years old I got sick.  I don’t know what it was, or why I got it, but I suppose it could have been some form of flu.  Throwing up, dizzy, feeling like c.r.a.p.  For the first time I caught something more powerful than whatever naturopathic stuff I had on hand could handle.  I had already missed a week of work and didn’t want to miss any more, so out of desperation I called a doctor.  A real MD.  I hadn’t been to one since my mandatory high school physical.  I was in the waiting room forever, of course, and only in to see him for like 5 minutes.  Of course.  WTH??  You can’t assess something like this in just 5 minutes!!  This was so aggravating.  Obviously he didn’t care that much.  He just scratched out a prescription for penicillin and sent me to the pharmacy.  And out of desperation, I obliged.  About a week later I was no longer throwing up or feeling horrible, so it either ran its course, my naturopathics finally worked, or the penicillin did.  But I’ll tell you what the penicillin also did.  I broke out in the most hideous rash I have ever seen/experienced.  I was covered in little red blotches on every inch of my skin, and every 5-10 minutes a random patch on my arm, or my leg, or my stomach, or wherever would erupt into welts and burn and itch like CRAZY.  Um, bring back my throwing up and nausea, please!  This is WAY worse!!  Everyone who looked at me kept their distance, and then would either tell me to call the doctor or take some benedryl or something.  I tried benedryl.  It put me to sleep.  I woke up to hideous welts and itching.  I searched online, but couldn’t find anything.  And hell no I was not calling a doctor, it was a doctor that got me into this mess in the first place!  I’ve never had this problem with natural medicine!!  I later came to find out I’m allergic to penicillin.  The rash was my body’s way of detoxing itself from the poison, which makes sense, with skin being your body’s largest organ.  The rash finally went away, but I was never the same since.  I developed a respiratory sensitivity – I couldn’t handle smoke as well and I’d wind up wheezing if I did too much physical exercise, and worst of all my pre-existing cat and dog allergies (which were just sneezing and itchy eyes) progressed into my windpipe swelling and constricting and making me feel like I was breathing through a straw and gasping for breath after a short period of time with the animal.  Not good.  I also developed chronic yeast infections.  That’s probably TMI so I’ll stop there, but anyone who’s had one before knows how HORRIBLE they are, and imagine having them at least once a month for YEARS.  Eventually I saw a local massage therapist who did a lot of natural work along with manual therapies, and I explained my problem to her, not even sure if she could help.  She did a lot of really fascinating things involving muscle testing and pressure points, and we learned that I really needed to get some probiotics in my system.  The penicillin killed off any/all of the good bacteria in my system and I was left defenseless, therefore a breeding ground for things like yeast and weakened against things in the environment like smoke and pet dander.  I started taking probiotics.  Slowly but surely my yeast infections dissipated, and my breathing became easier.  Holy crap.  I needed to know more.  And I needed to share this!!

That’s kinda why I’m a massage therapist today.  My main goal in my career is to assist people in making natural, healthy choices for their wellbeing and to avoid drugs and even surgery.  I’m only 3 years in, and I’ve helped a LOT of people in simple ways.  I refer to this career as a diving board – with this license I have access to a WHOLE lot of other avenues in natural healing that I can dive into, and I’m so excited to see where I’ll have gone with it in 5, 10, 20 + years.

After the penicillin incident I vowed never to take a drug again.  It was natural or bust for me.  I know it’s not the doctor’s fault that I’m allergic to the prescription he gave me, and neither one of us knew it when he prescribed it, but I’m sorry, he only spent 5 freaking minutes with me in that office, as crappy as I felt I would have liked a little more care than that!

I became more adamant about living my life naturally after that, learning more about supplements and remedies to ward off different things, but fortunately I never came across anything quite so severe as whatever that bug was that led me to the penicillin ordeal.  My immune system has been compromised ever since then, but I’ve been doing fairly well treating myself naturally when I do catch any bugs, given my circumstances.  Before I ever had kids I knew I’d raise them the same way.  In massage school I became friends with people who lived life similarly, and I learned from their knowledge base and also got support.

In the meantime I looked at a lot of different things like cancer (does anyone other than me feel like chemo just kills you slower than the cancer does??) and how chemo patients suffer so horribly.  And it was definitely an eye-opener when a friend of mine from massage school did some volunteer chair massage for stress relief for cancer patients, and when she asked different doctors if they would administer chemo and radiation to their own loved ones, they said no, they wouldn’t… um, red flag?  Then I watched as a good friend of mine found out her elderly father had lung cancer, he decided he’d rather die of cancer than chemo, and after opting against any western “therapies” she took matters into her own hands and helped him boost his immune system naturally.  About a year and half later he was completely cancer-free.  Yes, I’ve seen some pretty awesome stuff with naturopathic medicine.

Enter pregnancy, and now you can see why I made a lot of the choices I made?  Aaaanddd why I was so disappointed in the birth outcome.  I’ve said before, though, that it was humbling.  I learned a great sense of balance – that maybe being so ANTI-Western medicine isn’t the best way to be.  It has its place, and it’s a good thing when needed.  But I was still going to continue to avoid it.  I reversed a positive Group B Strep test into a negative one by ALL natural ways, and now, after a year of battling some really rough postpartum depression, I’m beating that in natural ways too.  More about that in future posts.

It’s been an interesting learning experience and I’ve really enjoyed it, and so far I’m really impressed with my son’s immune system as he’s growing.  I’ve been doing a LOT of different things to keep him healthy, such as visiting the chiropractor regularly, using essential oils in every day life, adding probiotics to his juice (I’ve told you how gung-ho I am about probiotics, and I intend to tell you more too!), using side-effect-free homeopathics when he does experience any kinds of issues, and trying to keep meals and snacks as healthy as I can.  I’ve been doing the same for Justin and myself, too.  Lots of vitamins, natural supplements, and healthy eating habits as well as my regular use of oils and probiotics, and we visit the chiropractor too.  All these wonderful things to stay well, and with no hideous side effects or harmful toxins that can be detrimental to our lives or lifestyle in the future!  See?  Drug free really IS the way to be!

I’m excited to elaborate on a lot of these choices we’ve made, and educate you to help with decisions you may need to make regarding your own or your family’s health.  I hope you’re as excited as I am!