Of everything I’ve written/shared thus far, this is without a doubt thee most important topic you will ever see me write about….

Here’s why…CELERY JUICE SAVED MY LIFE!

Without a doubt, no questions asked, saved my life. Why? How?

Let me tell you about my healing journey…

I’ll never know when or how I was first exposed to the Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) but what I do know is my symptoms began to manifest in 2013. I was  a full time culinary school student, a full time stay at home mom, and had a contract with my former employer to work for a year. I was stressed. I was putting entirely too much pressure on myself, and worst of all I started holding on to my emotions out of fear that if I expressed them I would loose my contract and I was determined to do anything it took to benefit my family. It was a recipe for disaster and I was the sole victim. This was my original trigger.

It started with unexplained weight gain. Then came the anxiety and a general feeling of being unwell, but not being able to put my finger on exactly what “it” was.

Flashforward a year and I was pregnant with baby number two. We had a great pregnancy. It was different than my first, but I chalked that up to being older than I was when I had my son. The real difference came postpartum.

Everything leading up to going to the hospital was great. I looked great, felt great, and was prepared for baby number two (or so I thought). My delivery was great by conventional standards, but for me everything about it was off. From the delivery room, to the doctor breaking my water, to finding out at 2 a.m. that the hospital no longer had a nursery. Leaving me to care for my newborn child when in reality I needed someone to care for me. I was exhausted, mentally and physically fatigued. Still numb from my epidural I was barely able to walk to use the restroom. All I wanted and needed those first hours after birth was to rest. Yet every time I began to doze I immediately woke up to peer over the bed and make sure my newborn baby girl was still breathing. This was a signifigant trigger and a trauma. Five years later and I still think about writing a letter to the hospital about the need for a nursery so women can properly rest and recover post birth.

Moving on…

Six months after giving birth I got my first infection after trying to get an IUD. I had no idea that the course of treatment I used to remedy my infection would continue to cause chronic reoccurring infections. I also had no idea that it would take me two years to get them under control and in the process of doing so I would take more rounds of antibiotics than I could count. This was an ongoing trigger.

Two months after my first infection (8 months postpartum) we moved to a new home, and two weeks after that we learned we would be moving again, but this time to a different state. My world was turned upside down in what felt like the blink of an eye. The grief of leaving my home state coupled with the prolonged stress of moving and building a new life in an unfamiliar place was a trigger that lasted for years.

In March of 2017 (two years after getting the IUD) I sought treatment for my infections from an incredible naturopath Dr. Tricia Pingel at Pingel Progressive Medicine. After years of being passed around from doctor to doctor she was the only person who finally sat with me, listened to me, and took a comprehensive look at the entirety of my scenario. She figured it out relatively easy and gave me a natural remedy should another infection occur.

And then just as I was enjoying life again my dizziness began three months later in September of 2017. It started as a cold, which appeared to be a sinus infection. The dizziness followed soon after. It wasn’t vertigo, the room wasn’t spinning. It felt like my head was a balloon. It was debilitating. It took so much of my energy and I constantly felt drained doing simple tasks. Something as simple as going to the store became increasingly difficult (Home Depot and Walmart were the worst for some reason). It got to the point where just the thought of it made me want to cry. I was once walking through Home Goods holding onto the cart for dear life because it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other. When I would wake up in the morning I would lay in bed feeling normal, and I would think to myself, “is this the day it goes away”. But the answer was always the same, within minutes of getting out of bed it would all start again until I couldn’t take it any more and would finally lay down barely able to talk to my kids. I was so often impatient with my family because I exhausted from enduring entire days feeling like my head was detached from my body floating somewhere in the sky above me. This lasted for an entire year.

Then one day not long after school started last year (September of 2018) I was attempting to pick up my daughters room and put away laundry. We were finishing up a renovation and my household chores had slowly but surely gotten the best of me. I was barely able to make it through each day let alone keep a house. Anyhow, there I was trying my best to fold her laundry when the emotion of all I had been enduring hit me like a ton of bricks. I literally fell to my hands and knees and said the biggest prayer of my life. I begged, I mean begged, god, the universe, spirit guides (whatever you want to call it) to take it away. I begged them to take it, begged them to make it stop, begged them to guide me and help me figure out what “it” was.

The very next day my first Medical Medium books came in the mail (an unexpected gift from my mom). Within a week of drinking celery juice my dizziness subsided. I wanted to be skeptical but I couldn’t deny how I was feeling. The more I drank celery juice and the more my dizziness continued to stay at bay the more I began educating myself about Medical Medium and the information he has to share. I dove into his Thyroid Healing book and learned all there was to learn about the Epstein Barr Virus. Soon after I scheduled an appointment with my naturopath and requested to be tested for EBV. We ran an entire viral panel and when the results came back lo and behold my numbers for EBV confirmed my suspicions. I also had elevated numbers for HHV6. For the first time in three years I finally had bloodwork identifying the source of my ailments.

Receiving the diagnosis was a relief, it felt empowering to know I could stop the work of figuring out what the cause was and begin the work of figuring out how to heal. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the last year. My morning celery juice was just the beginning of my healing journey. Soon after I began the Medical Medium protocols and implemented a morning cup of lemon water upon waking followed by my celery juice. Next cam the heavy metal detox smoothie then came the supplements. I started incorporating suggested supplements by Medical Medium in November when my dizziness came back after exposure to household chemicals. This led me to take a deeper look into the chemicals I was bringing into our home and also putting into/on our bodies. FYI PharmaGABA has been a life saver for my dizziness!

Then in March, six months into my healing journey, I finally succumbed to the cold I had been fighting off for months. It took me down for the count and when I reemerged I was immediately confronted with a traumatic encounter with an immediate family member followed by a falling out. I was heartbroken and cried everyday for two months straight. Not long after I broke out with psoriasis on my face, eyes, and scalp. This was followed by patches of eczema on my arms and feet. I had already suspected that the Epstein Barr Virus had found its way to my liver, but it wasn’t until the external manifestations began showing up that my suspicions were confirmed. This time the protocols did little to keep the psoriasis at bay and while I could live with the flaky skin, the pain and the irritation was what was most bothersome, especially around my eyes. For more information about the connection between your liver and skin conditions such as psoriasis and eczema read here.

So I once again refocused my energies and this time I realized I needed to start working on the mental part of my healing. You know the whole mind/body connection. Yeah, it was time. So I started weekly therapy in June. Remember those feelings I talked about holding on to at the beginning of this post? Well it turns out I’ve been doing that for a lot longer than I even realized. Unpacking my life experiences and understanding how those experiences shaped my behaviors, my perfectionism, my stress response, etc., has been incredibly eye opening. It’s been far from easy, but it’s been necessary. It’s also been unbelievably eye opening in understanding how much power our minds hold over our health.

Most recently I began acupuncture with Cailin at Sun Tree Healing Arts. I had long thought that acupuncture was going to be the final layer of my healing so I was beyond excited to start working with her. She has a unique approach to Chinese Medicine and I am loving it. She believes in addressing the “root” of our misalignment within the body which in my case has synced up perfectly with the work I’m doing in therapy. She’s incredibly generous with her time and asks all the right questions. I’m happy to report that within one month of seeing her on a weekly basis my psoriasis has cleared up. Further strengthening my belief in the power our mind/emotions hold in our abilities to heal.

So how does all of this equate to celery juice saving my life? Because it was the catalyst of my healing journey. First came the celery juice, then came the Epstein Barr/HHV6 diagnosis, then the protocols, supplements, and finally the mental work. By providing such an in depth comprehensive look at my own story, I hope that it may help you connect the dots of your own. All too often we get so caught up in the day to day that we fail to recognize how we’re truly feeling both physically and mentally. Had I not gone through an experience such as this I never would’ve had the opportunity to sit back and take an in depth look into my own life and put  the pieces of my story together. I never would’ve been able to realize how all these little things were always connected and how when left out of balance for such a prolonged period of time those little things led to big things. And trust me when I say it’s a lot easier to tackle those little things while they’re still little. Once the whole tower comes crashing down it’s much more difficult to put it back together again.

So why share it? Why be so open, so honest, and so vulnerable? Because I know that somewhere out there others are going thru similar experiences. Whether you’re in the beginning, middle, or end of your journey my hope is that by sharing my story somehow it will help you with your own. It’s taken me a long time to fully understand and unpack my own healing story and how it came to be. And guess what? I’m still working on it. Day in and day out. Some days are easier than others and some days I want to curl up in a ball and feel sorry for myself. Yet here I am, knowing in my heart of hearts that if there’s even the smallest chance this story can help someone else then it’s worth sharing. Because along the way, the stories of others who’ve overcome similar struggles has given me hope. It’s shown me I’m not alone  and introduced me to an entire community of others who’ve began their healing journey in the same manner as myself…One glass of celery juice at  a time!

Cheers!