Mold Illness Treatment Week 5 and 6- Going Home!

Last weekend I didn't write a week 5 update. We were supposed to see my doctor on Monday and I was going to post a blog after that but he called in sick. My appointment got rescheduled for today (Thursday) so I am doing a combo of weeks 5 and 6.

We have had amazing improvement over the past two weeks! Patients and nurses keep running up to me saying, "You're walking! You look like a different person! You're glowing!"

My doctor told me today that he knew it was going to be a good appointment. He said, "Patients keep running up to me and said, 'Have you seen Megan?! She's walking!'"

Last Friday I had my second apheresis treatment. I have been amazed by how much these help me. Apheresis pulls the cholesterol out and because toxins store in fat, it removes a lot of the toxins. In my case, a lot of these were mold toxins. This is a picture of what they pulled out of my body last Friday.

We started my appointment today by reviewing my labs. There were certain numbers my doctor wanted to look at before he was ok with releasing me.

1. Viruses- Some of my virus numbers before we started treatment were really high. Dr. Poteet wanted to see that these numbers started dropping. A couple of them had dropped by half. This is a really good sign that my immune system is doing its job.

2. CD8- The doctor explained that these suppressor cell numbers were high, indicating that my immune system was suppressed. They are now normal.

3. Candida- I had candida antibodies before. They are not in my bloodstream, which is good. I still have antibodies. They haven't gone up which he was very excited about. He was happy to see that my compliment C4 has gone way up. This gets very elevated with fungal infections. He said this indicates that we are killing candida.

4. Inflammatory markers are going down. He also wanted to make sure that there was no indication of anything bacterial in the blood. There isn't.

He said that we've been in the kill and detox mode. In the next couple of months we will be working on moving towards the heal mode.

Dr. Poteet also went over my neurotransmitters. He said they look great. In his words, 

"This wasn't brain chemistry going on. This was purely environmental."

In other words-

MOLD.

So where do we go from here? Tomorrow (Friday) is my last day. I got my permacath out today (can I get a Hallelujah?!)

After this I will be considered in Envita Home Care for a year. My doctor will still be over my care. He will talk to my doctors back home and explain the plan going forward and those doctors will help me through the next steps.

Honestly, things are looking really, really good. Steve says he hasn't seen me like this in almost 20 years. 

I do not think that I can ever thank you all for you prayers, support and encouragement through this journey, but I would like to try.

I believe I am one of the most blessed women in the world. I have been amazed by friends from elementary, middle and high school who have supported us. Church friends, new and old, have come to clean our home, take our kids out to play and pray over us.

My parents and sister have worked tirelessly to help get us here.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. I plan on continuing to write.

I hope to share our journey with you going forward.

I hope to go into herbalism.

But because of God, and because of you, I get to live.

We are forever grateful.

To see my speech and ringing the bell to finish treatment at Envita Medical, click here.

Mold Illness Treatment - Week 4 (Exciting Doctor's Visit)

This week has been amazing! I can not believe the improvement I have seen in the past week since getting apheresis.

In apheresis they run your blood through a machine to clean it. (I shared a short video of what it looks like here.)

Then, this week I had a colonic to clean out the toxins. Between these two things (and the daily treatments), I am walking more and more each day. I have been walking more and walking more normally.

I have been getting comments from the nurses and other patients that they see such a huge difference in my eyes and skin. My mood is better. I am normally a very driven person and the drive has come back. I've started thinking about business ideas (because that is how my mind works if I feel even remotely decent.)

I truly can't believe the difference.

Today we had a wonderful visit with my doctor. He said that I am exactly where he would want me to be in this stage. Here are the highlights of what he said:

• My liver numbers are up a little but that's what he'd expect at this stage when we're pushing so many toxins out. If they start rising, he'll have to back off but as long as they stay where they are or drop, he's completely comfortable with continuing at the rate we are.
• We have another apheresis treatment to clean my blood next week. He is excited to see how I'm doing after that and another colonic.
• He thinks we have another 2-3 weeks and that's it. After that I will go home and he will work with my doctors back home for the next steps.
• He is ordering the nasal spray for the staph infection. He can have it compounded without the ingredient that bothered me. I should just have to be on this for about a month.

Next, he discussed my environment and figuring out where we should live from here. He has worked with a lot of mold patients and they're all different so this is what he recommends:

• I go home and see how I feel. There is an indoor air filter that he has recommended. He said for some people, this is enough and they feel great.
• If I feel bad at my home, I go to stay at a friend or family member's house for a few days and see if I feel better. If I feel better, then there is something in my house or environment that is bothering me and I need to move. In the past, one of the places that I have felt best is at my father in law's house on a mountain in Cookeville (middle TN). If I can't handle living at home, I may be able to move here- just a couple of hours away.
• If, however, I don't feel good at either of these places, I need to consider leaving the state and moving to a more sunny and arid climate. For us, that looks like southern Texas, New Mexico or Arizona.

Please keep us in your prayers. Please pray that God will provide the rest of what we need to wrap up treatment and get home. Please pray that I will continue to improve through the next couple of weeks and that we won't have to slow down. Please pray that we won't have to leave Tennessee, which we love so very much.

Thank you all for your continued prayers and encouragement!

Megan

Mold Illness Treatment- Week 3

We are now 3 weeks into treatment! This has been a pretty good week so I'll keep it short. 

On Tuesday I had my first apheresis treatment. Apheresis cleans the toxins out of your blood so this is great for removing the mold toxins and any other "die off" that could have been in my blood stream. It took about 3 hours and my detox symptoms have been minimal.

Since apheresis, my mood has been better, I have been less "foggy headed" and I've even been able to walk a little better. I still have a lot of limitations but I'm grateful that I've seen some very noticeable improvement. A couple of times since Steve has said in surprise, "You're walking completely normally!" It doesn't last but we are seeing improvement rather than decline which is quite exciting.

I only had one bad episode this week. They tried to up one of my iv treatments by 50 mg and it was too strong for me. I started having an extreme tightening in my head and neck. It felt like someone put vice grips on me and was tightening them. They quickly turned it off and flushed me out with fluids. We'll just have to stay at the lower dose for now.

Last week when I met with my doctor, he said that my labs showed low blood sugar. My fasting blood sugar was at 62. I've had blood sugar issues for 3 years but no one has been able to pin down why or what is causing it. The endocrinologist checked me for diabetes several times and never found anything but I can go months at a time and then suddenly have drops so they're very hard to catch. I've been having more episodes since starting treatment and my doctor here thinks it might have something to do with how hard he's pushing my body. He's keeping a close eye on it. I'm curious to see what my numbers are next week.

I meet with my doctor next week. Please continue to pray for wisdom for him for next steps. I know he was originally thinking that treatment would be much faster than it appears that it's going to be. He was thinking he'd be building me up for a week then going after some of the infections, yeast and viruses. Instead, it's been 3.

I have debated on sharing this last bit. We wanted to make sure our families knew first and we weren't sure even then that we wanted to share publicly.

I shared in my last blog that we received some difficult news from the doctor. As we really need prayers for wisdom, I would like to share it now.

The doctor told me that they basically treat two groups of patients. The first group has some type of disease or infection (or both). They have to come down for treatment but, once they're better, they get to go home and go about their lives.

The second group is more chronically ill. They are very heavily influenced by their environment and their genetics. By working with me and looking at my labs, he believes me to be in that second group.

So what does this mean?

He said that while I don't have to move here, it would be beneficial to look at living in a climate like this one. 

We know that mold has made me very ill and, while I haven't been in a mold home for over 3 years, I have continued to decline. Obviously, it was still in my body but there's a deeper problem. No matter what we did, we couldn't get it out. My body can not detox well. It can not handle mold well and in the southeast, mold is everywhere. It is in the air in sky high numbers.

The doctor recommended both a more arid climate and more sun year round. This basically puts us in southern Texas, southern New Mexico, or Southern Arizona. Of those options, Arizona appeals to us the most.

This is very hard for us. Tennessee is home. It is beautiful. It is where family is. And I never really imagined leaving it. But the doctor is saying that my health may depend on it.

We need real prayers. If we are to move here, God will have to provide a good job for Steve. We need prayers for that. More than anything, we do not want to be outside the Lord's will. If God wants us back home, He can help me be healthy enough for that. If God wants us here, we need His guidance and provision. If God wants us somewhere else, He needs to show us.

This feels like starting all over again... again. And it's really, really hard. Please keep us in your prayers.