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| | Karen
4/12/2017
5:22:23 PM
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Many thanks to everyone's kind response to my looooong and self indulgent whine fest.
Feeling better now...glad last Saturday's nightmare was a gate to a better place...will try to remember that and be glad about it next time it happens.
Love to all,
Karen | Linn
4/12/2017
3:33:06 PM
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Dear Karen,
Thank you so much for your encouragement too!!
It means a lot to me you took out the time to answer my question in such detail. I will try it first on my stubborn parts. I will let you know what happens.
If there is anytime you need a listening ear, you can ask Mel for my information.
Thank you again
Love,
Linn
| Paula
4/11/2017
8:33:30 AM
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Hello Karen!
Thanks for sharing this! I love how you were transparent in this. Hang in there girl! I am going to look up the song you were singing;)
Love always,
Paula | Karen
4/10/2017
8:30:25 PM
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Hi Linn,
Thank you for your encouraging words...it was a pretty tough piece of road on Saturday, and I got teary eyed when I read your response...means more to me than you know. I thank God for this site and the good people like you on it.
I've found the following ingredients to be a very effective mixture for exfoliation, and so far (over a year) I haven't found the pathogens have gotten resistant to it even though I pretty much use the same mixture every time.
I don't measure anything...just put in a little pool of coconut oil in the bottom of a small bowl (maybe a couple of tablespoons) and add:
papaya powder (maybe a half teaspoon or so)
haritaki powder (same amount as papaya)
Kleen Green...(about a teaspoon)
Few drops of lavendar oil
I ordered the papaya and haritaki powder online a long time ago. They weren't expensive and one bag of each lasts forever...don't remember where I ordered them...probably Amazon...just google and find the best price. It seems to me that the haritaki helps keep the purging from hurting as much...at least that's my conclusion...but for some reason it seems like it binds with the debris and makes things come out less painfully. The papaya is sticky...and if you rub this mixture on an area you want to purge, after a while it'll rub in and your finger will kind of stick to the area. That's a good thing...if you can keep your finger on that area for just a minute and then hold the skin tightly with your other hand and then pull your finger back across the area, it'll open up the skin and allow some bigger particles to come out. Be careful doing this if you are dealing with those sharp crystals or glitter...make sure you have the area well coated with coconut oil...or it'll hurt.
A LOT.
I usually do this for a few minutes and then the area will start purging like crazy...can't tell you how many times I run from my vanity to the sink to rinse off during the course of these sessions, but...suffice it to say, it's a pretty high number...so if you do this...stay close to the sink.
Also...the haritaki is a dark green...so the mixture is muddy and it's sometimes hard to tell the color of the debris / fibers / particles that you're purging because it makes everything green. Ok with me though as long as it's leaving my body.
Hope this helps!
Thank you again for all of your kind words of encouragement and all your contributions to everyone here on this site. I always learn so much when I read your posts or listen to what you have to say on the conference calls.
Karen | Laura (aunt)
4/10/2017
6:29:48 PM
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Dear Karen,
It is so important to constantly share with the community who understands your frustration; as we have all been there. Sometimes just writing about it helps you to get it out of your system and move on. Again, we have all had those dark moments. I call those the valley days as I am searching for the peaks!
I want to let you know after starting this protocol (Faithfully)I started noticing more debris in my environment which was most discouraging. I would ask myself what in the world is going on? I am doing everything I should be doing and am still noticing the science fiction particles leaving my body. I have come to understand this is positive (better out than in).
Anyway, last week (starting fifth month on protocol) I noticed some symptoms getting better and my environment was getting better too. So please realize this disease has many stages it goes through. But in the end the final stage will be our freedom from MD.
Let your children and grand children be your inspiration for getting better. And picture your future when you are free from this disease. God will get you there Karen. This is a line from one of my poetry postings;
"Some advice to my fellow warriors
During your darkest and gloomiest day.
Close your eyes and picture our Savior
Taking your hand while leading the way."
God Bless you Karen! Please keep posting as we all care about you!!!
In Christ Love,
Laura | Jenny S
4/10/2017
2:30:18 PM
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Wow Karen, you have a lot on your plate.
Way to fight through and I do pray you have reached a turning point! I am always amazed when reading through threads the unique challenges we all face.
Working a high demand job with extra hours would be difficult, but you handle it all with a great attitude. We all have a threshold and it looks like you hit it the other day.
I'm glad you had an opportunity to let it all out and cry out to God! I'm sure your recent efforts to really stick with the protocol will pay off.
I have had purging, but it has not been very painful. My 14 year old daughter, however, has experienced a great deal of pain with her purging. A couple of weeks ago, during a challenging spell, I put the essential oils of thieves and tea tree in a carrier oil and rubbed it on her feet. This helped with the pain within the half hour. She puts it on her feet now every night before bed and hasn't experienced pain since. She still gets crawling, but I am extremely thankful the painful purging is gone. Not sure if it would help for everyone, but I thought it would be worth mentioning.
I will continue to pray for you Karen as well as everyone involved with this community. | Linn
4/9/2017
7:35:06 PM
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Dear Karen,
Thank you for sharing. I'm glad the chin got better. You are very brave and courageous. There were times Bible characters broke down too like Job and Elijah. They had feelings like ours. It's reassuring that God is greater than our hearts and knows all things. You are triumphant and victorious!!
I am wondering can you share how you exfoliate? What do you use?
Thank you,
Love,
Linn | Karen **
4/9/2017
2:44:15 PM |
As many native Southerners, I grew up attending the Southern Baptist Church on a regular basis. The church had a great education department...Sunday School was not a place to waste time...we learned much about the Bible from a very young age and I can truly say they made the lessons fun and engaging. As an adult, I have chosen a different denomination, but those lessons learned in early childhood have stuck with me for a lifetime. As much as I enjoyed the lessons, nothing could come close to how much I enjoyed the music. I believe the hymns...and especially the lyrics to some particular hymns have carried me through many of life's rough patches.
Case in point. As I've mentioned in every post I've written, I have had trouble staying consistent on the protocol. With a couple of exceptions, I've been really good about the diet, but have had considerable difficulty taking all the supplements as directed. I've heard Mel say that people who work have a much longer (and tougher) road to recovery, but since quitting my job isn't an option, I have to just do the best I can...sometimes that isn't too great though.
The last few months at work have given my department the "gift" of increased demand...by over 70% and no new help. We've been given the option of working on Saturdays to address this increase, and fortunately the Saturdays are spread out...except for the last two weeks where we worked two Saturdays back to back. It was tough...but somehow I made it through...and...I also added another puzzle piece to my load. I swore to myself that I'd take the supplements as directed or die trying throughout this last week.
One of the issues I've had has been swallowing the large capsules...particularly the Thymic Formula. I have a medical condition that precludes ease of swallowing and have been told by my doctor not to swallow capsules...I'm supposed to crush the hard ones and empty the capsules into liquid of some sort...but given the options of not recovering from M and the potential difficulties I might face with swallowing the capsules, I opted for getting well first. That decision was easy in thought...but very difficult in application. Pain and nausea were often the result of swallowing a handful of pills, and with my schedule at work, I'd often talk myself out of it. There were many times I did take them in the car before arriving at a meeting, and would have to go into the meeting (sometimes late) trembling, weak, and in a cold sweat. This was quite a challenge as these meetings I attend several times a week require me to be actively involved throughout the duration.
Last week I decided I just have to do something different. I hear Mel constantly talking about strict adherence to the protocol, and I suspect he may not fully endorse what I ended up doing, but I made the decision anyway...because it was that or keep on having the above described difficulties. Here's what I ended up doing. I made the chocolate avocado pudding and / or smoothies and emptied the mixture and blended the daylights out of the concoction. The Thymic was the tough one. I ended up taking a week's worth of these and pulverizing them with a hammer...of course I put them in double zip locks and folded them into a towel first. Those capsules are tough! I had to beat the daylights out of them, and then I had to shake the powder through a strainer to separate it from the orange papery coating. Preparing a week's worth of supplement doses in this way took about two hours last weekend...but...the end result was that I took all the supplements and stayed on the protocol! I was so proud of myself! I'd found a system that worked!
After a couple of days I noticed an increase in purging. I'm big on exfoliation and had spent hours each night last week on same. There just seemed no end to it...I was getting very tired, and was starting to wonder if I'd eaten something wrong or if it was a healing crisis purge. After a while I'd just have to stop...not because I'd gotten to the bottom of it...but because I was just exhausted. As all of you know, it's not just the exfoliation...it's painful...especially when you get down to sharp crystals and glitter which is what I was excavating more and more frequently as the days went by.
By Friday night, I was almost kissing the ground when I got home. I was so incredibly exhausted from working full weeks and two Saturdays in a row that I would have jumped for joy at a two day weekend, if I'd had the energy. Saturday morning brought another story though. I got up and looked around at all I had to do around the house and all the paperwork that still needed to be done before the weekend was over. I was tired...and the areas on my chin seemed to have increased over night...these areas express themselves in ropy ridges that will alternately swell up a bit when purging is imminent and flatten out once purged...well...to a degree anyway. Tired and sick of chasing the basics of my life around in an endless circle, I sat down at my vanity to begin...once again...the endless task of exfoliation.
I try very hard to avoid getting down...but yesterday was another story. This purging was painful...very painful. The crystal granules felt like glass coming through my skin, and the glitter is sharp. I was tired and just sick of it. And this purging was out of control! It went on and on and on. I didn't want to stop because I wanted to get rid of it, but I was getting to the end of my rope. Finally I just stopped, took a shower and cleaned up my vanity area. I was so tired...I lay down in bed to try to rest and recapture some energy. However...the area on my chin started having that crawling / filament producing / drive you out of your ever living mind reaction. I got up and tried to remove these, but as those of you who have experienced this know, this is not an easy task.
I ended up giving in to despair. I threw myself on my bed and cried...and I'll forewarn anyone reading this...I was pretty melodramatic about the whole thing too, which I generally try to avoid in my life...but once the genie was out of the bottle, it was a Level 5 on the Richter Scale. I asked God what possible reason He'd want me to keep on experiencing this. I told Him that I believed my life should be devoted to serving others (which I do in my job) and how in the world was I any good to anyone else like this???? I asked Him to please just go ahead and let me die...I'd had enough...had worked so hard for so long to address this and all I've accomplished is to hold onto my job and my possessions now paycheck to paycheck because I've drained my savings and maxed out my credit cards from this blasted illness. I told Him I'd kill myself before getting to the point of having to put a burden on anyone else but asked Him to please just take me and do it quickly because I didn't want to leave the legacy of a suicide for my children and grandchildren...I'd never hurt them like that...I was even thinking of how I could do it and make it look like an accident so they wouldn't have to endure the death of their mother and grandmother and know it was a suicide.
I was so down...and crying so hard I even cried out to my deceased father and boyfriend and asked them why they'd left me and would one of them please come and get me and take me Home. Ok...I'd forewarned this was melodramatic...but it was sincere and I share it because there's a good ending to this story.
I finally got out my laptop and wrote Mel an email and asked him if what I was going through was a backlash from my better adherence to the protocol or something else. Exhausted, I finally was able to ignore the crawling and itching and creepy fiber tickles to go to sleep. Felt better upon waking and decided there was no other choice but to dig in and plow forward. This was easier said than done though, because when it gets like this, the fatigue is pretty much the thread that ties the whole discouraging batch of symptoms together. Regardless, I sat back down at my vanity and did a few more hours of exfoliation.
However...this time...it seemed like I was making some progress. I didn't put a lot of stock in it though...I've been fooled by apparent progress before...right before the pathogens band together in a full scale quorum and likely have some kind of an orgy in their newly made protected biofilm dome and reproduce at record rates. I continued anyway until I just couldn't do it any more. I just had enough energy to finish the main things I had to do before going to bed and then retired for the evening.
For some reason I slept well...that doesn't always happen when these kinds of skin backlashes are in full swing, but thankfully, I did. I woke up this morning thinking it was Monday and sprang out of bed to grab my computer and check my Outlook for where I was supposed to be. That was the first good thing that happened today...it's not Monday and I had a whole other weekend day to myself...thank goodness. Then I felt the area on my chin...could it be? It was flattened out more than it's been in over a year...impossible! I couldn't believe it...and I feel good today too...no crawly sensations, etc. I spent another hour this morning on exfoliation, and to my surprise, the progress I was making seemed to be working through what was left...not the usual situation of seemingly encouraging the pathogens to rare back and create more. It's not gone by a long shot...but boy is it better.
And so with this long and self absorbed diatribe, I'd like to leave this thought with others. Don't give up...there's light at the end of the tunnel. This disease doesn't give up easily...it goes down fighting...as we all know. There have been so many times I feel like I'm fighting a dragon with a sword and when I cut off it's head, two more grow back in it's place...and so on.
I was about to give up...I cried out to God and to whoever else beyond the veil I thought might listen, but didn't really expect any response...but this turn for the better today makes me think otherwise. Is this an answer to my prayers? I think so. Does this mean I won't cycle through this same purge pain again along the way to recovery...no...I do understand it won't be that easy, but...I also believe I've turned a corner. Apparently taking the supplements like I did worked...even though the recommended way to take them is to swallow them whole...I did what I had to do to get them down. It seems to have worked, so I'm about to go get my hammer and start pounding away to create this week's doses. I wish Logos would sell me some powdered Thymic Formula...maybe I'll call and ask.
My faith got pretty shaky yesterday...but...when events unfolded in the way they did, I was reminded of the old gospel song, "The Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn" and I've been singing it around the house all day long...in my deep fried Southern accent...I've been really belting it out. Good thing I live alone...can only imagine how annoying this song fest would be to anyone subjected to hearing it, but sing I did and will continue to do so when the spirit moves me. I find the words encouraging, soothing, and on target.
And...the words are oh so true.
Godspeed to all of my fellow travelers. My continued prayer is for health and peace in each of our lives.
Love,
Karen
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