Breaking Bubbles- The Genesis

At the ripe old age of 28 (yes, 28) I have developed a series of health issues that have caused many of my friends to suggest that I should live "in a bubble." Or as my coworker suggested the other day, "you should be in a medical journal somewhere." Strange food allergies that developed out of nowhere, sensitivities and rashes to anything that has a scent, and even an allergy to the sun. Yup. That's right folks. I'm allergic to the sun. Didn't use to be, but I am now. And every year has gotten progressively worse with my health for the past 6 years, or so.

Now, I can't say that I haven't had health issues all along. I've had severe allergies to anything that grows since I was a little girl. Thanks to allergy shots (love them!), I'm finally not having such a hard time with most living things anymore... provided I don't touch them (which is a whole different story). Either way, even before I started the allergy shots, I was starting to have more and more health problems, especially once I got to college. For the better part of 2 years I had pinched nerves, chronic pain, and symptoms of carpal tunnel.

Going the traditional, Americanized route, I tried your normal everyday docs for a while. I probably tried every prescription for anti-inflammatories under the sun, but had little to no relief. I even had one doctor give me cortisone shots in my wrists to make the pain stop. Didn't work. After giving up on NSAIDS, and all the prescription junk that wasn't working, I did what any college kid would do... when the pain bothered me, I took a shot of vodka. Realizing quickly that it was not a healthy long-term solution, I decided to go see a chiropractor who did acupuncture (at the advice of a friend). Early in the stages of pain, I had tried acupuncture at a friends (her mother was studying to become an acupuncturist), so I fully anticipated I would end up getting acupuncture and hopefully that would alleviate the chronic pain enough that I could function (without resorting to vodka). Boy was I surprised when the doctor took an x-ray of my back and it came back that my neck was practically at a 45 degree angle from the shoulder blades up! Needless to say, we decided to forego the acupuncture and do chiropractic. After 6 months of chiropractic I was pain free and feeling awesome.

So, how is it that traditional American medicine never thought to do a simple x-ray of my back to see if there was an alignment issue? Instead, they chose to pump me full of drugs to mask the symptoms, and thus the true root of the problem.

With that proverbial bubble "burst," I find myself sitting here almost 8 years later, back in a similar situation. Fighting between modern medicine and traditional, but new-age, Chinese and natural medicine. Last week I found out that I have gallstones.

Modern medicine's answer to my gallbladder problem- rip it out.

But here is the kicker- I keep reading report after report that says that patients who have their gallbladder removed still have digestive problems and frequently still get gallstones! So, why would I have them rip out my gallbladder without first trying to address the root cause of the problem? Wouldn't it make more sense to address the digestive and dietary issues issues that caused the stones in the first place?

And herein lies the genesis of this blog. My journey in attempting to restore my health through natural means, carefully examining all advice given to me by modern medicine, and incorporating alternatives medicines to detoxify and fix my broken body so that I can once and for all break out of the bubble I'm living in.