After two wonderful years in Zimbabwe we headed home to Sweden, rich in experiences and friends.
I was far from well despite the pills, creams and pharmaceutical cures for the candida. But I didn’t give up and firmly believed that I would now be able to get help in Sweden to overcome all the strange symptoms. But when I met a doctor at a hospital in Stockholm I was told that the symptoms are common and you just need to learn to live with them.
My symptoms worsened and a friend suggested that I visit an allergy specialist at Sahlgrenska in Gothenburg. That wasn’t easy to achieve as I was required to do an intestinal biopsy, an x-ray, lots of blood- and stool tests and then a lactose intolerance test. None of the tests gave further information but the lactose intolerance test led to a new series of symptoms that were hard to get rid of. After that I had major pain every time I ate any milk product. And still I was told by the hospital that I was not allergic to milk products.
This was when things started to go downhill fast. A specialist was finally prepared to recommend me to the Gothenburg hospital but first he asked me if there was anything worrying me that could be the real cause of my problem! When I said that what was worrying was that the medical service was unable to pinpoint the cause of my increasing food sensitivity he didn’t reply.
I left no stones unturned in my search to discover the cause of my problems. One person wondered if there was a connection with amalgam poisoning due to all the dental work done on my teeth during these years. I contacted our Swedish dentist who we visited in Zimbabwe and who knew me well. He suggested investigating the yeast fungus candida.
A friend of mine was going to visit a very popular homeopath who used iris diagnostics. He worked in the south of Sweden and I joined her for the visit. I didn’t tell the homeopath anything about myself before he looked at my eyes. Then I asked him if he could see that I had a fungal infection. He said, “Have you noticed that you have a urine infection? You have a fungal infection in your whole body.” I hadn’t noticed a urine infection but I certainly noticed that it had disappeared after taking his remedies for a couple of weeks.
I decided to deal with this fungal infection and an understanding local doctor contacted a specialist in England. But long before I got to there I got even worse. I started reacting to everything synthetic and an old jacket that I had had for 8 years started to affect me, making me dizzy when I wore it. I felt like I was a bit drunk for a week.
The saddest thing of all was that I struggled to be able to spend time with our children who were now 10 and 8. I felt totally wiped out. I couldn’t even manage to walk down our street and if we went for a walk Jan sometimes had to carry me home or pick me up in a car. I couldn’t concentrate. My memory was a disaster and I couldn’t read because I forgot what I was reading by the time I got to the end of a page! When I cooked, I couldn’t remember what was in the pot once I put on the lid! My husband had to take over most of my daily tasks and my bank account. I was happy if I managed to get out of bed.
I still took part in my calisthenics group twice a week. It was important to stay active, or so I thought. Then something new started to happen. Each time I did a little extra my muscles ached as if I had run several kilometers! I often woke up with cramps in my muscles, had problems sleeping and got more and more stomach aches. I had dots in my field of vision and didn’t tolerate bright light. I eventually lost my eyesight for a few hours and was totally exhausted. Yes, the list of strange symptoms was endless and those who didn’t know me well could imagine that I was simply hyperchondric.
Around this time I went to Britain to visit a specialist. This in itself was a major undertaking and was possible thanks to the help of many wonderful friends who enabled me to get there! The specialist took a cytotoxic test that disclosed hypersensitivity. He administered a sweat test that showed a massive lack of vital minerals. I was recommended nutritional supplements and a natural supplement to deal with the fungal infection. I left for home and everything went fine for 14 days. I began to be hopeful. But then I had a painful cramp attack of my whole alimentary canal that left me lying on the floor like a dishrag. It took a week before I was able to eat and take the supplements again. Two weeks after the first attack I had another one and these attacks continued every other week for 6 months. All this time I kept a diary of what I ate; how I was feeling at the time; and which supplements or medicines I was taking. I finally figured out what was causing these attacks with the help of my diary. I was intensely allergic to the supplement I was taking to deal with the fungal infection. Once I stopped taking this I was able to start eating again but by now I had lost 20 kilos.
When I got back from Britain I had wanted to investigate if there was anyone providing treatment in Sweden for the ailment that I had. Several of my friends sent me articles about practitioners who seemed to be working in a similar way as the doctor in Britain and I contacted those that were active in the media and health news regarding ME and fungal infections like candida. I was really surprised when one of them responded! He offered to test my food tolerance, give me a nutritional treatment program using kinesiology, ie testing my muscle strength to different stressors. His goal was to help me get rid of my health issues and restore my health. At the time I turned him down as I thought I had the doctor I needed in Britain with whom I had telephone contact. I assumed that I would soon be well. The reason I had contacted the Swedish practitioners was to see if there were treatments available in Sweden for others I knew who also seemed to have similar problems.
In the end I decided to accept the offer of a kinesiology or muscle test even if I didn’t know what it meant. It couldn’t harm! I would at least be able to judge if he knew what he was talking about as I already knew that everything I was sensitive to turned my insides inside out! And anyway I had started to get better!
I visited the practitioner who at the time worked at Strandgårdens Health Center in Vika, Dalarna. He tested me and it correlated completely with my own experience of my 9 hypersensitivities! In fact it was more accurate than the cytotoxic test had proven to be. So I decided to stop the treatment program from England that I had now carried out for 6 months. There were probably several causes to this total allergy syndrome which may have originally stemmed from my genetic deck of cards.
It isn’t easy to stay at a Vegan Health Center when you basically only eat meat! I survived a week at Strandgårdens Health Center with the help of new found friends and I began to feel that life could be worth living again! I realised that in order to get well I couldn’t give up hope. I had to put every ounce of energy into making changes and would need to take food supplements as I was sadly lacking in nutrients.
My family gave me their full support and were longing for me to get well. Now I had a practitioner who was prepared to give his full support, and seemed to understood what the underlying problem was. Up until now I had thought there could be a solution after reading many books and researching many articles, but felt immense relief in being to hand over the main responsibility to a qualified practitioner was indescribable.
I started to take food supplements like they were dinner. And I tolerated them! I also began to have a deep longing to help others so they could avoid getting as sick as I had. During the years working in the clinic in Zimbabwe and my own years of struggle I had learnt the hard way how important our diet, lifestyle factors coupled with our inner and outer environment can affect our health. By now I had learnt that there is such a thing as ecological illness caused by everything from environmental exhaust, amalgam in teeth, psychological stress, toxins in water, food coupled to the pharmaceuticals like antibiotics, cortisone, contraceptives and the chemical “soup” in our environment that has increased year by year since world war II. It isn’t so strange that the numbers of allergic children rises yearly considering the additional allergic overloads handed down through their parents and grandparents environmental effect on their genetic contribution.
Due to all this I decided to write down some of the things that I have learnt about regaining health. When I started I thought I would simply tell about myself. I had thought I would contrast my disaster by telling about someone else who had regained their health with natural methods in order to balance my story. I didn’t really think that that could be me. But already 9 months later my health had turned a corner. I was no longer losing weight. I could walk, read, concentrate and eat food that had been impossible to eat previously. In fact I was now able to manage my own bank account again and take a job!
During the seven years that I was sick I struggled to make sense of the cause of it all. My doctor ‘generously’ said he could help me as I got worse, but I wasn’t interested in getting worse. I longed to get my energy back and live life fully with Jan and our Children. All my feeble attempts to do so led to serious set-backs.
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