Follow-up appointment

I had my follow-up appointment with the alternative doctor two days ago. It was a bit disappointing because he was totally unprepared. He had looked at the results of all the allergy testing he ordered, but hadn’t looked at any lab results– I had a ton of labs done– and seemed to have forgotten everything that he asked me to do– which was a ton of things. I have to pay for the visits out of pocket so I started asking him direct questions, but if I had known he wasn’t going to be prepared, I would have given him a review and gathered all the lab tests myself.

As it was he wanted to order more lab tests without even having seen the first! Anyhow. I am very grateful to him for recognizing that I had a food allergy.

So vaguely what I got out of the appointment was that I can either cut corn completely out of my diet (which is beginning to seem very difficult, if not impossible) or I can do Low Dose Allergen Therapy. The doctor prefaced this by saying that this method meant coming to his office once every 2 months for 2 years and getting an injection that costs $200 and taking supplements and seeing a dietician. He framed it all in a way that was very discouraging, but honestly I have spent already more than that on my two visits with him and and 4 allergy testing sessions. (I realize that I am very fortunate to be able to afford these things.)

You can read more about Low Dose Allergen Therapy here. This is the website of W.A. Shrader, the doctor how developed it. I also came across this site, which has a more succinct description. It actually sounds pretty awesome with what it can accomplish– ridding you of all allergies– food and environmental– but there are some serious restrictions in diet around the time of each injection.

The doctor was very enthusiastic about me starting iodine supplementing and gave me a prescription for Lugol’s, which is the liquid form of Iodoral and doesn’t contain corn. I said, “Doesn’t that taste horrible?” and he said, “It doesn’t taste horrible. It’s disgusting.” He said I should take it with 2 ounces of juice and then follow it with a 2 oz juice chaser because it burns as it goes down your throat. Nice.

Instead I ordered I-Throid by RLC Labs. They say that it’s exactly the same formulation as Iodoral except without any corn. RLC is the same company that makes Nature-Throid, a natural thyroid hormone replacement, so I am optimistic. It hasn’t arrived yet.

In the meantime I started taking magnesium in the form of magnesium orotate. My lab test showed that I am low on magnesium, and the doctor recommended I take Magnesium-Potassium Taurate from Emerson Ecologics.  I decided to give the magnesium I had already purchased this spring a try instead. It was a new bottle, and it didn’t appear to have any corn ingredients in it. It was recommended by someone on the Iodine Yahoo group: “Nutrient Carriers Incorporated, Advanced Research, Magnesium Orotate, 500 mg, 100 Tablets” from iHerb.com.

Bad idea! I started taking it two days ago in a fairly high dose as the doctor had recommended. Nothing unusual happened the first day, but last night I had trouble falling asleep and then woke up at 1:45 and was awake until at least 4:30, then up again at 5:45, my body buzzing and warm. This is exactly what happened when I took Iodoral and Vitamin C. It’s funny– it actually didn’t occur to me that it was the magnesium until this morning. Last night I was thinking it was something I ate. But honestly I seem to have the strongest reaction to corn coming from supplements. One ingredient that is also in the Vitamin C that affected me so strongly is magnesium stearate. I just realized that it’s not listed on the corn allergen list I have been using, but it is on this one: corn allergen list. The other ingredients listed are “Provsolv, Pure Food Glaze, and Avicel.”

I think I really need to just start calling the manufacturer to ask if there are any corn derivatives in the product. One interesting thing that the doctor told me was that many companies use corn products interchangeably with other products, depending on what is cheapest at the time they’re buying ingredients. So, for example, they might list “starch” or “thickener” as an ingredient and that gives them the flexibility to use cornstarch one week and wheat flour another. As far as food is concerned, he said that Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods were the best about listing their ingredients.

So this morning I will order the magnesium he recommended and check that there is no corn in it…  And when I start any new supplement I will take it alone for 3 days to see if I have a reaction before adding in another.

My plan right now is to start taking iodine again as soon as the I-Throid arrives, and take that along with magnesium and the other supplements Dr. Brownstein recommends for a month or two. Also to see how well I can do avoiding corn derivatives.  And then to decide whether to do the Low Dose Allergen Therapy or to get less expensive seasonal allergy shots which I can administer myself.

So really I am back where I started in January, only this time with a known corn allergy.

Iodoral and Corn

I just figured out my problem with Iodoral!  It contains corn in some form– and I have just learned that I am allergic to corn. Two weeks ago I tested positive to corn in a food allergy test. I am fairly allergic to it. The way they test it is they inject a dilution of corn into your skin. If it reacts by swelling and growing red (I think sometimes there are other stronger reactions too), then they inject you with a further diluted amount until they find the level you can tolerate. It wasn’t until the third injection that I didn’t react. And then I swear the marks on my arm stayed red and swollen for almost two weeks.

I stopped eating corn after I discovered this, but yesterday by accident I ate a couple of cheese puffs. When I realized that I was eating corn, I decided to eat more :). It’s like that crazy kind of diet logic where when you go off your diet a little, you decide to just give up the day and eat whatever you want. We had these really delicious looking Late July organic corn tortilla chips my husband bought, and I really wanted some. So after the cheese puffs, I helped myself to the tortilla chips. Then… I woke up at 4 a.m. feeling super hot, just like what happened to me all spring when I was taking Iodoral.

I had a vague memory of reading about someone being allergic to corn and not being able to take Iodoral, and so I looked it up this morning when I got up, and there is some form of corn in Iodoral. I am so excited to have discovered this. It clarifies so many things. It explains why my symptoms  got worse when I began taking the recommended supplements with Iodoral. They must also contain corn. I looked up corn allergens on the web and found this page which lists ingredients which are derived from corn. Vitamin C can be derived from corn!  My symptoms were so much worse when I began taking Vitamin C.

It’s so crazy. You know I am pretty sure that the allergic reaction threw my hormones out of balance. I am going to search around on the web a little. But my reactions started with waking up hot in the middle of the night and then moved on to screwing up my period (making it very close together) and then giving me crazy hyper-emotional PMS days. Since I stopped taking Iodoral in any amount, this has all normalized.

 

 

 

Everything is the same. Nothing is different.

So I have had two sessions of food allergy testing now because the holistic doctor I went to in April said I looked like I had a food allergy. He said 50% of his patients’ were able to resolve their health problems through a change in diet.  But it turns out (at least so far) that I don’t really have food allergies. I am a bit allergic to corn, and slightly allergic to soy and strawberries. Dairy and wheat, which seem to be the big offenders, don’t bother me, nor do all the grains we tested, chicken, pork, kale, apples, chocolate (thank God), yeast…

The way the doctor ordered the allergy testing for me is really slow. I go in for a 3-hour session and am tested with one food and then have to wait about 10 minutes before I can be tested with another. This is the most accurate way to do it, and (I think) sets you up to be able to get shots later on to reduce your allergies. They test me by injecting the food into the top of my skin. It stings a bit, but it’s not too bad.

I haven’t been eating corn now for two weeks, and it hasn’t seemed to have made any difference. I have had killer seasonal allergies for the last two weeks +, but I think they are winding down. My main symptoms are serious fatigue and a slight headache. The fatigue really sucks. I just want to close my eyes and lie down. It doesn’t seem to matter how much sleep I get.

This is the fourth spring that I’ve had bad allergies. It was these same springtime allergies that made me realize I had a lump on my neck, which turned out to be thyroid cancer. So it’s very frustrating that here, three years later, I haven’t been able to clear them. The other night in a moment of severe frustration I googled “seasonal allergies fatigue” or something like that and read about butterbur as an herb that’s worked for some people for fatigue. So I went to iHerb and spent $60 on herbs for allergies because one of the reviewers said that these had solved all of her allergy problems.  I got butterbur, nettle, and quercetin. I actually tried quercetin three years ago in the spring, and it didn’t seem to do anything.

They arrived today and of course the fatigue is gone. I think whatever pollen it is that gets to me has run its course. Or maybe I healed myself just by buying the herbs. Ha!

What I am realizing is that this latest effort of mine to heal myself by going to a holistic doctor is not working any more than any of my other efforts have. The crazy hormonal imbalance I had going on (which I’m pretty sure was brought on by taking Iodoral) has cleared up on its own. I don’t seem to have any life altering food allergy. I’ve had a battery of blood and other tests, and I’m pretty sure they all turned out fine. That is, the doctor told me he would call me if anything came up, and he never did. So $940 later I am feeling better but not because of anything that anyone did for me. ($1000 if you count the herbs:) In fact, the holistic doctor told me to start taking these hefty multivitamins from Emerson Ecologics, and they’ve been screwing up my stomach and making me feel worse, if anything.

I have a friend, Leslie, who is also on the path of awakening. I was talking to her today, and she was saying that everything that isn’t peace is all the same. It’s all a manifestation of our ego mind. I am able to see that clearly when I get angry at my husband. I can look at my thoughts and see how it’s my ego thoughts that are making me unhappy. I can see that if I let go of these thoughts, I will be at peace again. But somehow when things go wrong with my body, I think it’s outside of me. I think I can find peace in herbs or in a doctor or in some other healing method. I mean, lots of people do. All those reviewers on iHerb who claim that such and such herb completely changed their life– they have found some peace in a bottle of pills.

But Leslie was saying that it’s all the same. That I need to allow whatever symptoms come up in my body. I have to stop resisting them, trying to make them go away. And that is when healing will come.  I think it really is true. That’s how what healing has happened with the thyroid tumor has come– from focusing on my spiritual practices: meditating, reading, allowing. There is a great talk by Story Waters on allowing, if you’re interested in that. The practice is basically to just be with whatever is happening in your body or mind– to watch it, to feel it, but without judgment. You’re not trying to change it or figure it out, you’re just allowing it. Of course, Story Waters explains it much better.

So I am going to finish out my last two allergy testing appointments. I am getting tested for molds and pollens, and maybe a couple more foods. But I’m not going to schedule an appointment with the nutritionist as the holistic doctor recommended. I have already done so much research on nutrition and changed my diet over the last 5 years that I don’t think I can go much further with dietary changes.

I have a follow-up appointment with the holistic doctor in two weeks, and I’ll see what he has to say. I want to finish this out since I’m in so far. But I think what I really need to do is see that everything is the same, and everything requires the same thing. I need to allow. I need to trust. I need to let go. I need to remember that I am Cause, not effect.

An alternative doctor and a healing plan

I went to an alternative doctor today, a doctor who is interested in healing the cause of illness, not in treating the symptoms. It seems like such an obvious response, but it’s not. My primary care doctor, who is part of a “holistic” practice has never expressed any interest in figuring out what is at the root of the cancer.

I have been trying to make sense of my thoughts and feelings since the appointment. First I’ll say that the doctor said that he doesn’t think I have low thyroid. He thinks I have a hormone imbalance (I have a low sex drive, screwed up menstrual cycle, and now more and more frequent mood shifts– what I notice mainly is a heavy sadness that seems to fall on me). He says he could fix these symptoms with hormone therapy but that that wouldn’t get at the root of the cause.

He says my body is not detoxing properly and has ordered a series of blood (and other) tests to look for suspicious toxins. I know fungus and mold were two of them. He has also told me to  go to an endocrinologist to get a full battery of tests and a diagnosis, to get skin patch allergy tests, and then to follow up with a nutritionist to be put on a diet that works with whatever food allergies I may have. He said I look like I have food allergies. (Do you think that’s a compliment?)

In general he thinks there’s something fairly seriously out of balance. When I told him my experience of waking up in the middle of the night from taking Iodoral, he said that very few people had adverse reactions to Iodoral and this was another red flag.

After I left I felt like crying. And why? In part I think because of this hormonal thing. I felt that same heavy sadness descend. But also it seemed like too much—too much to have to go to all these appointments, too much to have to follow a diet, too much to have all this hormonal problems coming in now after 3 years of effort at healing naturally. And then it occurred to me that perhaps this was all a gift from Holy Spirit to nudge me out of my small self, to push me into surrender. Because honestly I don’t feel like I can do all of this on my own.

On the way home I got pulled over by a policeman for driving through a stop sign. Thankfully he only gave me a warning. While I was waiting for him to write it up I was thinking about how I had attracted all this with my gloomy mood, and then I thought about how I couldn’t bear to be in charge of attracting the right things to myself. I couldn’t bear to be in charge of making sure that my thoughts were aligned rightly, that I was focusing on the proper things. Certainly I can’t bear to focus on my healing any more. I am so sick of it.

It was kind of funny. When the doctor was saying he could give me something to fix my hormone imbalance, I was thinking, “Give it to me!” I don’t really feel this way totally, but part of me is so tired of all this healing effort. I don’t even care if I’m fully healed anymore. I just want to be like everyone else and make the problem go away as fast as possible.

The tumor is hurting today a bit. Little twinges of slight pain. I asked the doctor if he thought I should get surgery, and he said he really couldn’t say. Then I asked if he thought surgery would interfere with his plan to get at the root cause, and he said it wouldn’t.

I have another ultrasound in a week and a half. I will make an appointment with the endocrinologist tomorrow, and hopefully he will be able to recommend a good thyroid surgeon.

An alternative doctor and supplementing with iodine again

All that said about wanting to heal through the mind, I am quite happy because I have found an alternative doctor who I think supports iodine therapy, and I have an appointment to see him in two weeks. He specializes in environmental medicine, which I need to read more about. But this includes allergies, which are a major issue for me in the spring and late summer.

I spent a good deal of time (way too much time) this week reading more about iodine and how to implement it. Yahoo groups are great, but I would search the Yahoo Iodine Group for a specific thing like, which type of selenium to take, and I would get over 1000 results. How long do you spend looking?

One thing I downloaded and read was a .pdf file called The Guide to Supplementing with Iodine. You can download it for free from that link. I am going to try iodine again, but this time use all of the supplements that are recommended.  The first time I tried iodine, a couple months ago, I took it with a very high dose of Vitamin C (which upset my stomach) and Celtic sea salt. This time I am going to add in selenium, magnesium, ATP Cofactors, and an adrenal health supporting herb. I got all of these at iherb, which is a good site. I got a buffered version of Vitamin C, which should help with my stomach problems, and I got a version of magnesium that is supposed to be easy on your stomach also.

Here are screenshots of my order in case you want to see exactly what I decided on. I did afterall spend 2000 hours researching the types before I ordered:)

I am excited to start them because a lot of the reviews on iHerb had people talking about what a big difference some of them had made. I’m starting with all the supplements except Iodoral. I will add that in after I talk to the doctor in two weeks.  A lot of the information says it’s best to do tests and monitor things when you’re taking Iodoral.

Just to review my main symptoms now are: low sex drive, more frequent periods, occasional low energy, and occasional unexplained weight gain. I have had low sex drive since the birth of my second daughter 7 years ago. The problems with my period seem to have developed in the last 6 months; the unexplained weight gain has been happening for the last two years– but in spurts, not all of the time; and the low energy seems very related to allergies and has been consistently happening in the spring and late summer. Overall, however, my health seems very good. I run and do sports and function normally most of the time.

I will post again after my doctor’s visit.

Surgery?

I am trying to make this blog very honest. It’s the main reason that I am trying to stay anonymous– so that I can write anything. I think, however, that I have been refraining from writing because I don’t feel like I have anything positive or supportive to write. Like I am not being altogether successful with my own mission.

I stopped doing the MMS after about 4 days. It upsets my stomach and it just doesn’t feel right taking it. Jim Humble says that you should feel better after taking it, and I actually felt worse. I had a small cold, and I think it made me feel run down so that the cold lasted longer than it should have.

I continue to take Iodoral, but I have greatly lowered the dose. Now I am taking 3 mg (or 1/4 of a 12 mg pill) two times a week. When I take it at higher doses, I wake up early in the morning– sometimes as early at 3:30– and feel very warm and kind of agitated. So I kept lowering it and lowering it until these symptoms went away.

I was also taking large amounts of Vitamin C with the Iodoral, as Dr. Brownstein recommends in his book. But this was giving me a stomach ache so I stopped. The stomach bloating/pains didn’t start for a few days after I began taking it, and it took me a while to figure out that it was due to the Vitamin C.  Now I am taking 500 mg of Vitamin C when I think of it in the morning. Otherwise I take 3 Fermented Cod Liver Oil capsules, 5000 IUs of Vitamin D, and 3 Standard Process Catalyn every day.

Okay, so that’s a bunch of material stuff. In the same vein, I am going to call the Broda Barnes Foundation again tomorrow and see if I can get a recommendation for an endocrinologist or thyroidologist who has a natural bent. I don’t think my thyroid is working 100% properly, and if I decide to get surgery, I would like to have someone like that to support my thyroid afterwards.

I am going to wait to see what my next ultrasound in May says, but I am starting to lean towards getting the tumor surgically removed with the hope that only half of the thyroid will be removed, and I won’t be dependent on thyroid medication forever.

For so long I have been feeling very strongly against getting surgery. I have wanted to get to the bottom of what caused it to form and heal that. I have also been very resistant to give up such an important organ when it seemed to be working fine. I may be changing my mind now because of two reasons: I think my thyroid is actually not working as well as I thought, and it may not be possible for me to shrink this tumor.

I think this last one has been the hardest one to look at. I still do believe that everything is in the mind, and that anything is possible. There are so many examples of people who have been healed from much worse. But I am moving towards accepting that I may not be one of those people, and to insist that I am might not be helpful for me.

I had a session with a spiritual therapist on Friday. She is a woman who channels. I went to her in 1997 when I was 29, and she gave me some very insightful advice that I have referred to ever since. For some reason it occurred to me to read the manuscript of the reading on Thursday, and then I visited her website and gave her a call. Her guide suggested that there is too much of a dichotomy right now between conventional and alternative healing methods and that this rigid separation needs to be broken down, and is breaking down.  It is in great part due to this session that I am seriously considering surgery.

My first step, though, is to find a thyroid doctor with a natural bent.

Iodoral and Vitamin C

I had a tough week last week. It turns out that a lot of it was self-inflicted. My lower right back was  bothering me for a good week– a lot of dull, aching pain that kind of wore me down. And then on top of that my stomach was really bothering me. It was a stomach ache that wouldn’t really go away. It seemed to come on after lunch and last most of the rest of the day.

I find it very difficult to stay positive and believing in my healing when I am in pain. It’s just really hard. It’s one thing to have energy and feel good and then to look at the tumor and think, “This is not real.” To be so uncomfortable for so long pulls me down.

But on Sunday I realized that the stomach aches are all due to the excessive Vitamin C that I have been taking as recommended in Dr. Brownstein’s book on Iodine. I have been taking Iodoral along with Vitamin C and Celtic sea salt. I started with a low dose– half of a 12.5 mg pill. Then I ramped this up to a whole 12.5 mg pill and added in the Vitamin C and salt. It took a while for the stomach aches to kick in, which is why I didn’t figure it out sooner. On the web, they say there are very few side effects of excessive Vitamin C. One is diarrhea, but this wasn’t my problem. Mine was more of a straight stomach ache.

It looks like now that the dust is settling I will be taking either 6.25 mg of Iodoral every other day or every two days, salt, and maybe trying a little Vitamin C– more like 500 or 1000 mg as opposed to the 2000 mg I was taking. Dr. Brownstein actually recommends 3000-5000 mg, so I was taking it easy.

I have been figuring out my dosage the hard way. It’s tricky I think because the effects didn’t kick in until the second week I was taking it. What I have found is that when I take too much Iodoral (which is a combination of iodine and iodide), I wake up very early, as early as 3:30 or 4. And when I wake up I’m feeling uncomfortably warm in bed, I don’t feel like I got enough sleep, and my mind is very restless.

On the positive side I think the Iodoral has helped my period. My periods have been averaging every 25 days for the last year or more. They used to be much more like every 28 or more days. Normally they are pretty short– 2 days of heavy flow and maybe a day or two at the end petering out. But this fall they had begun to stretch out. I was having up to 3 days of spotting before it started in earnest and then it would take a little while to end– so it was twice as long and then every 25 days or so. But this month for the first time in a very long time, my period came 29 days after the last one, it started quickly and ended quickly.

Still no effects on my sex drive which is nearly non existent and has been low for years. But I am hopeful.

Also my back is much better after seeing the chiropractor.

Iodine Therapy and Confusion

Since the last ultrasound report that showed the tumor had grown again (after shrinking the time before), I have been on the web searching for answers. There was a book I had read about called Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can’t Live without It by Dr. David Brownstein. So I ordered this from Amazon and received it last Friday. In his book he recommends supplementing your diet with Iodoral, a form of iodine and iodide. I will not attempt to get into the science of it.

I also ordered 12.5 mg Iodoral pills. I began taking a half a pill/day two Saturdays ago. I upped this to 1 pill/day last Saturday. Iodine supplementation is controversial. There are many voices on the web that say that it can be damaging to your thyroid.

Dr. Brownstein, though, makes a very convincing case that nearly all of us our seriously iodine deficient and that it is likely the cause of many cancers and thyroid disorders. In his book he outlines a plan to detoxify and restore your body’s iodine. On the one hand he makes it seem very safe and doable on your own; on the other hand he says in several places that you should work with a doctor.

I would very much like to do this, but I have been hoping to find someone to oversee it– to test my blood levels. So on Monday I called Dr. Brownstein’s holistic practice in Michigan to see if he did phone consultations or if they could recommend a doctor in the Boston area. I told the woman on the phone that I had papillary carcinoma, and she said very emphatically that they didn’t do phone consults and that even if I lived in the area, they wouldn’t treat my cancer. You need to see your oncologist for that, she told me. We can only support the treatment your oncologist prescribes.

This was discouraging, and also seems crazy. Dr. Brownstein says in several places that he supports healing the root of the problem, not removing the symptoms, which is the only thing the oncologist is interested in. She did give me the phone number of the Broda Barnes Foundation which she said could provide a referral. I looked it up, and I think the referral would be for a natural endocrinologist. Which might be what I need anyway. I called and left a message. I haven’t heard back yet.

Meanwhile I’ve been taking the Iodoral and feeling uncertain and confused and worried, and unsupported by my doctor and the healthcare community. I don’t think I have noticed any difference since beginning to take it. It may be that I need a much higher dosage. I am going to gradually increase it and will also be supplementing with Vitamin C, Celtic Sea Salt, and drinking lots of water as he recommends in his book.

But to get to the confusion. It occurred to me this morning that I am choosing confusion as a state of mind, and that it is not helping. I found this definition of confusion in The Holy Spirit’s Interpretation of the New Testament, a book that has been massively helpful to me.

Here it is, from 2 Corinthians, Chapter 1:

“Confusion says that the events in your life are lord over you. Confusion says the events in your life may bring you joy or sorrow, or pain or peace, or fear or safety, or danger, or frustration, or any number of feelings, thoughts and reactions. But always, confusion says the events are lord and you are subject, in all circumstances, to react accordingly to your lord.”

Then it continues:

“The true interpretation comes from who you are. You are not subject to a lord who rules over you. You are lord of your own subject. In other words, your experience is given you, because you have chosen it. And so, if you would have another experience, you must choose differently.”

This is a lesson I seem to have to relearn over and over again. I feel all sorts of confusion because I believe that there is a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do, and I am afraid to choose wrongly. I think that it is possible to have an experience that I don’t want to have– and forget that I choose the experience first.

“To learn who you are, do not seek an experience that will give you what you want. Choose instead to be independent of your experience…

Experience is not the maker of you. It is for this reason that you do have a choice. Will you let experience tell you how you are to feel? Or will you let how you feel tell experience what kind of experience it is to be?”

And so my plan for now is to quiet my mind. To let go of confusion and worries about possible outcomes. To remember that I am a creator and that my intention is to heal– not just the thyroid cancer but my split mind. I give everything the purpose that it is to have– it is I who decide the purpose.

Also I intend to continue to take Iodoral, upping the dosage by half a 12.5 mg pill each week, and to monitor the effects.

Peace.