My Autobiography II - Health

I have shared by autobiography with you and wanted to take a moment to explain the life threatening illness I went through a few years ago.

The year was 1981, place Sutton. The whole of South Central Massachusetts and Black Stone Valley was hit hard by a plague of gypsy moth caterpillars. The worst devastation of gypsy moths in fifty years as this plague had decimated the whole area. After months of this blight the heat of summer finally put an end to this misery.

I had used numerous poisons to get rid them around our home. So whether my illness was caused by the moths, or by the different poisons I used is unclear. Shortly after the caterpillars left I began to experience horrific headache. Having had great health prior to this disaster, I did not have a doctor to call on so went to a doctor in the area. He told me that “all women your age get headaches” and dismissed me. The headaches worsened and I found myself walking the floors at night and banging my head against the walls in an attempt to relieve the pressure.

As a side note, my husband was of German background and every other year one family arranged to have a German Picnic Reunion in their home. It was our turn. I found that I was too ill to prepare the food. So my husband told me to call each and every one of them to cancel the reunion because I had initiated the party.

A few days later, a nurse friend and neighbor took me to hospital in Worcester. The emergency room doctor told me after several hours under his care, that “my x-rays were ok and so he threw out my blood work”. Three days later, when I found I could not lift my head, my husband said, “I guess I will have to stay home from work and take you to the doctors.” So he called an eye doctor. The eye doctor looked at me and said “I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but it isn’t her eyes”. He called a neurologist, in this same building, and when he saw me and quickly had me admitted to the hospital.

After examination the doctors told me that my head was five times it normal pressure as the white count was enormously high. Also, I had uremic poisoning as the nurses removed two or three bags of urine from my system. I recall the doctors performing a spinal tap and waking up – I do not know how long I was out – I just recall the young doctor sitting my bedside, and he sighed as I awaken, and walked away. While in the hospital my husband only visited me twice, he said “he could not tolerate a women that was sick”.

I ended up spending three months in that hospital. The neurologist wanted me to go to a rehabilitation hospital, but my husband said, “No, she is coming home”. I was discharged two days before Christmas. My twins were only six at the time and their father didn’t want to get them a Christmas tree, so I insisted. I remember how happy they were as they decorated the “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree.

After Christmas, I had a doctors appointment with the neurologist. My husband had a deep distrust of doctors and attempted me from seeing the doctors telling me “I was a selfish person and did not care about the boys if I kept this appointment”. He refused to listen to my argument that I needed to take care of my health and needed to go. He took the car so that I could not go, so I asked one of the mothers from the boy’s school to take me to the doctors office. She and her three daughter’s managed to picked me and my boys up. At that appointment my doctor told me to get out and try to impose some self-help. With the assistants of my friend and confidant my parish pastor, I quickly became engaged in numerous volunteer works as described in my autobiography. I, also, began playing golf and for first time in many years was enjoying life. A year and a half my husband and I divorce and one year later I entered college and worked parttime.

A few years later after meeting and marrying my current husband we decided to get treatment for some of the residual effects of the spinal meningitis, encephalitis and was now diagnosed with fibromyalgia and hypothyroidism. I began with a treatment of steroid pills and cortizone shots which dramatically changed my weight. I had always been underweight and now found myself one-hundred pounds overweight. Because of the horrible side effects of this treatment, I decided to go on natural supplements. The first supplemental company just threw a lot of pills at me. But then a colleague at the college told me about Tahitian Noni Juice. He had just retired from teaching because of horrific arthritic pain in his legs. We were now working together in the Advising Center. He went on Noni and within three months was back playing tennis and skiing, again. So I felt what could I loose I was barely walking myself for I needed a cane to get around. In my next article I will write about the changes that occurred because of this fabulous supplement. It certainly CHANGED MY LIFE!