Tag Concussion

I plead insanity…Cytokine Storm Mania

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My kids can vouch for me.

Being chronically ill is likened to being traumatized all over again. On top of being a survivor of previous abusive situations, I likened my situation to triggering all of the above all at once. With Mast Cell Activation your body goes into a cytokine storm. When I mentioned being allergic to your bullshit, my bullshit, stress, and all the other junk in between, I wasn’t kidding. It’s true.

Your body has a response mechanism to cytokine storms, and once your mast cells are activated, no matter the mitigating factor, it activates my mast cells as well. Stress me out, and I lose my shit. If my body is in critical attack, I literally lose my shit… sometimes I forget everything, need to sleep, or scream. I really have no control over it. Other times I hyper react, overthink, and literally drive everyone nuts around me talking about a subject matter three or four times until they’re bored. It’s essentially like having ADHD mixed with a good dose of memory loss.

Most of my life it’s been contributed to me being annoying, obnoxious, crazy. Well essentially, I do go crazy a little. When my body is in crisis at the ER, sometimes I can black out and say things I don’t even know I have said. One critical time, the resident doctor feared even coming into the room to talk to me even before I was released.

I had went to an outdoor wedding that day, and I was just not feeling right. My husband and I had left a little early, and I went home to change clothes. Something was brewing and I couldn’t put my finger on it at that moment. I was going to the garage, and had told my husband, I needed to go to the hospital. I made it to the landing in that garage, and bam, total neurological shut down. I could speak, but I couldn’t open my eyes, I couldn’t move my body, arms and legs totally dysfunctional. My caretaker and husband tag teamed picking me up and sort of dragging me to the truck to get me to the hospital. I am ever so grateful for the wonderful family I have in my life.

That was my life changing moment in the ER. My body was overcome by mold and yeast, I was literally foaming at the mouth, the thrush was so bad in my mouth. I had taken 30 Benadryl to keep me alive, because who can freaking afford an EPI Pen at those kinds of prices, and then still have to go to the ER anyway?! It’s highway robbery to try and save your life. I was in anaphylactic shock, and I needed help.

My husband took me to the nearest ER and they stuck me directly in a Covid wing, my body had went into neurological shut down, I seized in their waiting room while checking in, yet they stuck me in a COVID wing! I was furious. As soon as my legs could work again (I’m assuming from ingesting all the Benadryl), I got up out of that bed and told the whole staff to, “Go fuck yourselves.” Not my proudest moment, because they called security and threatened to call the police until they got the IV start out of my arm. I promptly had my husband drive me to the next nearest ER.

That moment was when I really freaked out the resident doctor, and my husband really doesn’t tell me much other than, he said, “You got MEAN.” I had blacked out. The paresthesia in my veins was so bad at that point, that it took them four hours to get the IV in, and when I did “come to life” again, I was confused but not surprised they had me strapped to the bed. The turning point, I had full function of my brain again, for the first time in years, my body fully functioning like normal. I wanted to see the man who listened, and administered the treatment that saved my life that day! It took a GRAND amount of pleading with the nurses “I’m nice again, I promise.” Sheepishly the doctor came in to receive the “thank you” that he so very much deserved and appreciated, then I told him my story, and he told me to write the book.

Apparently, the mold and yeasts had taken over my body! When they Iv’d an antifungal through my veins, everything miraculously came back to me! I don’t knock the medical field in anyway shape or form, but I am a product of being mistreated over and over again, and when I say, “You can fire your doctor!” I damn well mean it! Find the ones who are in the field and ask why they started it in the first place, TO HELP PEOPLE. You treat that first appointment like you are interviewing them. Unless you are in a position you can’t advocate for yourself, NEVER RELENT to just letting them do whatever. FIGHT for yourself and your needs! However, I suggest you do it as nicely as possible. My mother-in-law always told me, “You can catch more bees with honey, than you can with vinegar.” She’s not wrong.

That day was the day, I realized, that there was SOMETHING in my Garage, that was a PROBLEM, and I set out to find why! After all, I had suffered seizures in there, and a concussion… it was time to figure out why my body had neurological problems with my own home.

I’m the guinea pig…

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My venture into being my own lab rat…

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Butea Superba is an herbal supplement that I recently discovered. Let me tell you if you click the link above, you can purchase and partake in the said herb. Throughout my venture of getting better I’ve came across various supplements that have helped me in my journey, some that I continue to take, and some that only helped for a little while, but not for the long term.

I’ve been a on a specific hunt to heal my brain, and improve my cognitive function, knowing that eventually I may actually have to relent to dementia or Alzheimer’s at an early age. I still leave that in the back of my mind. The MRIs don’t lie. I have a lot of black space in there, from the various abuses I sustained over my lifetime in my early years before I turned 28, that basically results in damage. Science has proven, that abuse in many forms is just as damaging to the brain just as much as the many concussions that I have suffered in my lifetime. I can at least count 5 maybe 6 total that I did suffer, that I remember.

My husband is also 18 years my senior. Don’t worry we were well beyond the ages of we didn’t give a shit when we fell in love, and age wasn’t a consideration, and still isn’t today. When it comes to my venture into the world of supplements, he’s been ALL in for choosing this over the millions of doctor appointments and tests that had not been getting me anywhere.

I became essentially my own guinea pig, and I’ve been following a regimen for over a year now, and when I stopped the regimen, I suffered memory loss, cognitive dysfunction, headaches and the like, I recently returned to my regimen before I was confident in finishing the book I was writing and beginning the blog you are now participating in reading.

I very well may be on this supplement train forever, but not without all the research that led me to the supplements I’m on. Remember, I’m allergic to just about everything. I have to carefully find things, that are peanut, shellfish, yeast free and gluten free for the most part. I also have to avoid medications and supplements with ACIDS (lets not forget my bladder disease).

Today, my husband and I have ventured onto the train of Butea Superba, because PubMed has literally published articles, verifying that this tubular root, has the potential to literally be a turning point in Alzheimer’s Disease treatment and prevention. So, sign us up, no questions asked. The various other articles tell you about how it helps erectile dysfunction as well as it being nontoxic to the various patients that were tested, and so on.

With our hereditary backgrounds, we know that it very well be in the cards for us, so cognitive decline is what we are preventing. So, we have chosen this supplement specifically. I’ve done the studying, and I’m not a doctor, but it never hurts to try.

Yes, that black space is not supposed to be there, that’s supposed to be full of white matter.

I still don’t listen…

SpoonfulofDiva 1 Comment

(Sorry dad, it is what it is. I’m going to Google it.)

It’s a theme here, as you can see, I have a stubborn streak in me that is fierce. Refusing to listen as a child was my favorite hobby for many reasons. When these symptoms cropped up, I started Googling like hell, and that was the first thing I was told to STOP doing. Don’t Google it, don’t do what you pay the doctors to do.

Let me tell you this warning: If you Google, do it right. Google the system first, if you are losing blood after you’ve had diarrhea for days, search those webs for Gastrointestinal tract and start from scratch. The only way to learn about something is to gain the knowledge of its system and function first. Even though you own the car, and have for 7 years, doesn’t mean that you’ve ever seen the fuel light, or the little button that adjusts your gas pedal, but it MIGHT or MIGHT not be there, so remember this. Same with your body.

If you go for symptoms first, you’re going to panic, because every symptom is going to lead to a death-defying disease or illness. You’re going to be thinking that you’re in the midst of a heart attack, when you are literally just having heart palpitations because you just gave yourself a damn panic attack over searching the internet wrong.

I’ve spent years when my brain allowed me to have focus to read about the systems that were going awry in body. The doctors followed and treated my symptoms which found me a tiny bit of relief. Especially when it came to the GI tract and tachycardia, random rashes, and things they COULD treat. I say the things they COULD treat, because there’s one thing about me that they couldn’t really treat, and that was my dying brain. I had two MRIs and was scheduled for a third but got cancelled during the pandemic.

The first was to find my baseline 80 yr old brain. The second was to ck the possible (TBI traumatic brain injury) concussion that I had suffered from a fall when I lost function going down the stairs in my garage. Ever know why a dog won’t sit its arse directly on a concrete floor when it’s cold out? Well, I know now, and that shit is not pleasant, get the dog a damn rug. The third, was for yet another concussion, when I slipped on the ice at my new job and smacked my head so hard, that the officer who witnessed it turned his vehicle around, and asked if I needed EMT, but alas, when you are the only manager in the store with a key, I opted to just go on my merry way with my damn headache.

In my defense, my thought process was at the point where another blast to my head wasn’t really going to hurt, since that particular area that I had smacked on the iced over pavement, just so happened to already be missing brain matter there, so it probably won’t hurt much. *Insert sarcasm here* No dad, it didn’t “knock anymore sense” into my thick skull either, at least I don’t think so…I guess, this is where you can actually remind me that I don’t have a PHD, so you are absolutely correct there, I’m still not a doctor. However, we never got that MRI rescheduled either, we’ve had a few insurance changes since then, thanks to my hubby’s employer so, I’m going to wait this one out just a little bit longer, until our insurance changes again, probably another year, as it will probably take me six months just to get to see my neurologist again.