I’d like to share this journey with you in the hope that it may illuminate a path for you. I continue to learn - about myself as well as about how to help others through this journey.
Chapter 1
In late November, 2021 the nausea and fatigue began. I was tested for everything from pneumonia to stomach and heart trouble with nothing found until the blood test that showed elevated EBV antigens, so I received the diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for which western medicine “had nothing to offer me”, according to my practitioner. And in a very real sense, she was right, though I probably could have used some support and guidance. At this point, I became my own science experiment. Scheduling appointments with a naturopath and an osteopath, both 6 weeks out, I was truly on my own as I lay on the sofa with my eyes closed, perfectly content to do absolutely nothing except think, examine, explore.
Being a believer in the concept that we have the knowledge we need within us to heal, and not having any other resources to hand, I lay on my back and started checking in with my body. Were there better ways to do this? Diagnostic tests? Screenings? Probably, but nothing had been offered to me and I did not have the energy to go and find it myself, so I looked inside myself. I mentally scanned my body, moved my body parts to see what happened, poked at myself. And found nothing. Just like the scans and tests that had been done told me.
Having failed to find a physical cause of my symptoms, I chose to examine the possible trauma and stressors that might contribute to those symptoms. I explored fear of failure, fear of success. I looked at family relationships, starting with childhood, looked at present relationships. I wondered about trauma, was there something I had buried. I discovered, not to my surprise, that there are things I had not dealt with, that might be lurking behind my functioning, but nothing that felt traumatic enough to throw me off my game in quite the way I was – unable to do anything. I did these explorations daily for a while, thinking that maybe I could go deeper and find something, but, no.
I did engage my science mind – was my immune system depressed? Did the EBV reemerge because I needed immune support? I tried that and felt worse. I know the theory of die-off and feeling worse before you feel better, but that did not feel like it fit. When I finally saw the naturopath, he did more testing to rule out more illnesses and rule them out, he did. That only left treating the gut and providing immune support. The gut treatment did not change anything and I had already ruled out immune support as it made me worse, not better. At this point, I developed my theory that my immune system was not depressed, that it, along with my autonomic nervous system, were on hyper-alert, pushing my body into freeze mode, disengaging completely, and were in dire need of calming and reassuring that it was safe to allow me to function again. Who is going to believe that? Do you?
And so, I started looking at all the ways to quiet the immune system, including my nightly mental work on simply lying there and convincing every cell in my body that it is safe, reminding my immune system there is no danger, and the same from my autonomic nervous system.
This is not something I talked about a lot and I am sure you can understand why.
I finally made it the 6 weeks to the osteopath appointment. At this time I had stopped all work and spent my days lying on the sofa with my eyes closed – I did this for a full 3 weeks before I started trying to do anything again.
What I did not know about classic osteopathy could fill a book, but, when a doctor says to you, you will get better and I can help you, you can’t help but believe him. Especially when he then tells you that you have the tools you need to heal within you. This was particularly helpful because I had so recently been told that there were no tools outside me to help. But osteopathy is an outside tool that helps the body to tap into its healing capacity. And, slowly, it has. Much more slowly than either the osteopath or I had hoped or expected, but it is happening. It has been just over 2 years.