Saturday's Child is Full of Woe, and When Almost an April's Fool, is One to Duel!???

Well, I wanted to keep up the tradition of writing on the important holidays -- St Patrick's Day, April Fools Day, my birthday .... .   The story goes, as it was told many times over the 50 years I shared the road of life with my father and sister (plus the 26 that included my mother), there was concern all winter about the early April due date because a couple of years before they had the first snow that closed the road to my parent's/grandmother's house.  It had been a busy house they purchased in 1955 in the mountains west of Denver, Colorado, USA before my birth in 1960: while my parents were both only children, meaning no aunts, uncles, cousins for my sister and myself, the grandparents had average sized families for those days for Protestants so there were lots of great aunts and uncles who came to visit. 

My mother's mother, who we called 'Nanny' was very close with her sisters and brothers and they came to visit; one of their sons and his wife and son who was about my sister's age even lived with them in a house that was two little houses married with a breezeway with a washer, dryer and hot water heater in the hallway.  Many years later the creators of South Park lived just up the way and went to the same school: Mr Mackey is actually in real life, Stan Lackey who became our 'guidance counselor' when he pretty new to it and had a crew cut and not balding as the show portrays.  Same guy though!  Same stuff going on as the show portrays too. It's a funny place and it was a funny place, our formerly named 'Rose-Bud Ranch' named after Rose and Bud who they bought it from. With them from England where my father was a US Air Force officer involved with the atomic program there (trainer/educator about electronics maintenance) came beautiful golden retriever showdogs for breeding which I later pulled myself up to standing and walking with instead of furniture. 

Life had many wonderful things which served me well and lead to about as diverse and unusual an upbringing as I've ever heard of, yet my story is really very much the same as many people; mostly the same to most who have chronic illness in many ways.  I hope my story of getting my health recovering helps many people, and it's been with great insight and work that I have come to share as I hava these past years on Lumigrate, in order to hope it helps from an angle that is beneficial.  

We were having to be on a shoestring financially, there was a recession and jobs had been difficult to come by for my father and my mother was staying home and focusing on her dog business. Families then pooled their resources as some do now, as the extended family could help with money but needed to be close to family -- it was really a wonderful model that worked.  Since the area is now thought of as hoity-toity, let me share that I took my first years of baths and toilet training in something that is now a storage room but was 'spartan' let's say, with exposed 2x4s as the uprights for the counter, a rolled down lip of linoleum over it and that black felty construction stuff with the gold lettering what was on the walls, and the shower area had the painted wallboard that was pressed to look like tile.  

I got my shots like they gave every kid and had my bad ear infection probably not long after like a lot of other kids and to give mor of an example of the doctoring concepts, I took a VERY cold bath there one day about the age of 5 when my second teeth were being formed and I had a 106 or so degree fever and my mother called the ER to ask what to do and they didn't realize we were on well water that was COLDER than city water.  Hope that sets the stage for this story today about my birth and how it has EVERYTHING to do with you reading today at Lumigrate.

As Yenta would say in her Forum at Lumigrate currently in the Fibromyalgia section -- go get a drink and bring a blanket and stay a while for the storytime. It's going to take a while to get back to what this has to do with golf .. and my mouth and pituitary gland today.

How did I know I was a 'Protestant?'  School forms made me put what my gender, color, sex and religious affiliation was.  AND my grandmother pounded out hymns on the piano every morning.  However, she'd been playing for years on a badly out of tune piano so she'd started using different keys that sounded better on that piano and then used those keys on our lovely upright Chickering which was tuned once a year.  None of us were good enough pianists to have it be out of tune and get away with it! 

My father was an atheist and insisted we be raised without religious training so that we could decide for ourselves what we wanted to 'be' when we grew up. You'll notice one of the first big developments at Lumigrate in our very FIRST year was the creation of Yenta, which was an attempt to set a tone about spirituality being part of Lumigrate and what that would be like the way I was wanting to create things for people I wanted to be attracted and sticking to Lumigrate.  I wonder what Yenta has to say about this:

My mother used to sneak in a little Christianity in the form of tucking me into bed and having me say the Lord's prayer which scared me because I didn't believe in anything the prayer was about and the part about 'dying before I wake' is what I have thought contributed to my life long sleep issues. After I was an adult, she fulfilled the intention and goal she made before meeting my father, to become Catholic -- she'd seen it when she moved from the midwest of Ohio to Albuquerque, New Mexico after college as a non superficial form of religion that appealed to her.  She taught in the Catholic church after her retirement as a public school teacher, and was so frugal as to bring the macaroni shells she used for Bingo with the kids home and cooked them for my father's dinner -- that was one of the many complaints I heard when I came home from college about the deteriorating conditions around their lives together. 

Somehow unable to ever solve life's problems until the very end when he had the support of family and hospice to do so, but infinitely brilliant at sales forecasting, I was burdened by my visits home which had been expected in turn for financial assistance in college. It's been a sweet blessing this past year with his brave death where he totally took on life's problems and decided it was time to quit eating and drinking if it meant he could die with the help of hospice when he wanted to, that my sister found his acknowledgement of all of this in a heartwarming piece he wrote to my mother on what would have been their fiftieth anniversary had she not died fourteen years prior.  Included alongside his recognition he couldn't help her with her problems was that he was at a loss to do anything about his.  I hope nobody who ever encounters Lumigrate ever feels that way, but in reality, he had me in his life and access to the whole enchilada and it just wasn't in 'his cards' this life to do so.  I have made peace with that everything happened just the way it was to be.  And that's a blessing this day and birthday. 

He also wrote his appreciating for having had my sister and myself as well as their time together.  He was making such peace with things as his abilities were lowering but his mental capacities were still pretty good.  In the last few months I've come to realize the blessing of cognitive decline for those of us who survive because you so gradually lose a loved one as the person you call upon that when they're no longer there much of the things you grieve are long gone and had been replaced by watching their hardships losing independence and life's joys. So yes, I feel blessed this day because his sweet and tortured soul got to go on this past year when I was 50 and I'm quite confident 'upward' in all any any ways possible if that is what happens. 

I think it does but in a way different than he did, or anyone else in my family. We were all over the board in our beliefs which I recall someone after my mothers VERY Catholic funeral and burial (as in with the Monsenior driving the incense and holy water dobber) on a snowy spring Colorado mountain day, saying 'it's just too bad the service didn't have more comfort for the family." And as a result of seeing how our work at Lumigrate that has been successful related to spirituality, which enticed Beth Patterson to jump in with us this past year, I turned some attention to end of life issues and planning for medical mayhem, so to speak. 

Having been raised to be independent ASAP, and being born an Aries, after my freshman year in the dorms, I looked at my savings account and found a way to do the rest on my own. I took an attitude of doing what a normal HEALTHY family's child would be expected or want to do with their family.  I started getting out of the way as the 'glue' between my parents to let them do for themselves, they were capable of it.  They needed some professional help they never got but at least I didn't go down with the ship.  I'm trying to do that these last three years when I similarly quit allopathic, insurance based medicine as an OT and founded Lumigrate.  I'm working hard to make a new ship for myself and others to get on board. A healthy one which will serve well and go where it needs to go in the trying times we're in -- these are rough waters.  It's going to be virtually a tsunami-like effect with healthcare in the US and beyond, and I really believe things are in place and we have things shored up and are afloat in a sturdy ship with a GRATE Group as crew!  So therefore I feel very blessed today.

I was as well back in 1979 but wasn't as 'in tune' with spiritual things as I was an atheist at that time -- that didn't start changing for me until I was 21.  It REALLY changed for me when I had chronic fatigue syndrome in 1989 and then again in the 1990s, it was just a time of exploration and learning for me and as I told Alice, who founded the Life is Good Forum our first year after this conversation: I believe I was not called upon to be a Christian so that I could make a website like Lumigrate where a lovely Christian wise woman like yourself could come upon it and feel it was a GRATE place to be.  Or Yenta.  Or .... anyone.  

Fortunately someone needing a statistical typist for CSU called one of my business instructors who remembered me because I dropped her shorthand class (I have dyslexia, undiagnosed at the time and it and shorthand do NOT mix and why I was in that silly secretarial program as well as a program for a Bachelors in Business Administration made no sense to me.  My mother had taken me to orientation, which was a 2.5 hour drive away each way, requiring an overnight stay, and my dad had to stay home and watch animals and work so again, the adults/authorities didn't do the best directing and I knew it. 

So here I was at 18 already unraveling what 'they' had set up for me to fail at.  I didn't want to study business, it was the only thing my father would allow, I wanted to study psychology but that would take too many years of school he said.  So what happened?  Eighteen years it took me to get a 4 year degree/BS in Occupational Therapy, but each lesson along the way adds into what allowed me to literally one day get ticked off enough at 'the system' of health care and be middle aged and have enough confidence and sense of NEED to and purpose in life to step out on a limb and do what has now been Lumigrate.com for two years.  I had someone three years ago who teaches systems theory-based family therapy, say he's never seen anyone as much of a 'fix the problem' person.  I'd like to think he would appreciate this story if he knew WHY that is!  Oy, the problems there were to fix outnumbered the things that were embellishing life, but as Paula King reminds me -- I've made it through. So therefore I'm blessed, no?

I was totally self sufficient and actually provided support two two husbands (not at the same time, ), and one of my best friends of several years here heard me say and stepdaughter and didn't know I'd even HAD that whole chapter of my life.  We're saving that one for my birthday, which is today. I won't be saying more about that due to her request when I found her via facebook AND her father, who will turn 60 soon and that's amazing as 'they' (the doctors') told him he would not live to be 30 most likely.  He's a mess from all the medications, seizures, infections in the brain and shunt revisions for hydrocephalus, but I hope he remembers in the brief conversation we had that he didn't need to apologize after reading about me on Lumigrate that he'd caused my problems.  He was just one of many factors which I now realize were blessings because they're lead to Lumigrate.  Which last night had more people reading it at one time that I used to help in a day WITH an assistant at my old gig, and so I've already surpassed one of my goals for Lumigrate after only TWO years!  That's GRATE and it's because of the outreach and efforts each person has made to tell others about Lumigrate.  So THANK YOU.  (Or thank you in advance!) 

I saved up a lot of money even in my 20s, as I came out of the womb wanting to tuck money away and not spend it, and my second husband being older and having had health issues since he was 20 with a Swedish, blue collar upbringing had him very conservative about money and saving as it wasn't an 'if' there's a rainy day in his world.  Like in mine and anyone's who has chronic illness and expenses.  Until my health care crisis ten years ago burdened me with credit card bills for the health care that wasn't covered by insurance coupled with the change in occupational therapy from Medicare drastically changing reimbursment two years after I graduated. 

50% of therapists were not employed as therapists in 1999 I heard in the past from a reliable source.  That all pulled me over and in their uneducated attempt to save me from bankruptcy when they got wind of it, my family pitched in with ways that kept me out of that but kept me working and falling apart further and further. I chose to not somehow find a way to pay for the things I was finding helped that were 'out of pocket' and not covered by insurance, such as hormone therapy.  I regret it only because it was the most miserable time of my life and the only reason I went on was because my family needed me to help my dad, but also because inside deep, I knew I needed to keep going, and now I so honor and value and know from personal experience the deep and dark place many people who find Lumigrate are in.  And I hope it is a blessing to them to read my story and all the information here and get up out of the drain.  Many who are or have similarly share their stories as well. (See Forums, Your Story Forums are easy to find in the Fibromyalgia Section).

By then my father's body and mind were failing and we were trading off going to care for him and the property every other weekend.  Exhausted, I couldn't keep up with my own life 'stuff' and my family wasn't able to help with me nor maybe realized at the time what was going on.  I actually think my dad realized it better than anyone because his illness had him kinda parked and sitting and thinking a lot with time to think while the rest of us more able bodied were scrambling around.  I remember him telling me to stop mowing.  Or chopping ice. Or cutting trees up.  But it had to get done.  Just as Lumigrate has to get done now.    So all that was a teacher to me which I use today to know that I'm right where I should be and I'll be fine, I always keep enough balance BUT I do stop so I don't get back that down the drain place when I feel I'm being floated that direction.  Sadly that has been the case lately, it was not the easiest of past years.  True to my MO, my results of stress lag a ways behind and then the recovery lags too, but luckily is faster to occur than the 'drag'.

I didn't really realize how bad I was then, which is why I write so candidly about it so that people with fibromyalgia and chronic illnesses who don't appear to be 'sick' to our culture will have more possibility of finding a stick and a white flag and raising it and saying 'help, please' -- if the community around them will just pitch in here and there and take the burden off while the person can focus on better nutrition/eating and other things and start unraveling the problems starting with their forks, it can be HEALTH CARE REFORM that is cost effective and we can ALL afford.  Because its cheaper to eat the healthy way if you know how to do it.  (Look in the Forums and the Nutrition section for more details and again, more and more will come there as we go along in our third year. Deirdre Rawlings' forum up in Fibromyalgia has outstanding information and links out to her website where there's all kinds of goodies AND the enormously popular collaboration we had last year for FMS awareness season of the Three Doctors Interview, you can catch the link to that several places on Lumigrate but it's hosted on her website as she hosted it while our podcast studio was not operational and it actually changed the direction of the products she's offering. BIG new stuff she's releasing next week in an e-book about FMS, you'll see.  Definitely a blessing to have collaborated with her, we have much in common and much different and that's the makings of good diversity for education for different people!) 

Also on my second birthday the firetrucks came because my dad was burning trash in those days and he started a grass fire, (no icon for fire, the devil was as close as I could come) then not long after some new people rented the house across the road and lit a huge fire in the fireplace that had a beam running through that heated up and caught the house on fire, burning it to the ground -- I woke up that morning with a little boy in our living room and my mother making cookies and coffee to serve the firemen -- volunteers and excellent.  So up until not too long ago, I thought THAT was why I didn't sleep well as a child -- all this stuff.  AND then all the carcrash/neck/whiplash connection to FMS, which I always though BUT wait, the head is so easily injured .. but in my case when I was 12 and rolled in a vehicle the first thing that went through my mind after I figured out I was alive was 'oh no, we're going to get rescued by the Longs' -- in addition to the amulance, they had the tow truck and in past years were also the undertakers.

To continue about 'authorities knowing more about YOU than your common sense', the cop (which was a sherrif dept type0 rolled me over with a back injury to look at the small scratch on the back of my leg -- it was a different time in some ways but also adds up in my mind to how much better life became for me when I got old enough to be the one in charge of my own life. That happened when I was 18. I was a passenger in a little fender bender and had a neck injury that I didn't recognize as serious at the time ... are you seeing this cascade here? 

Yup, Dr Kennedy found things so awry in my mouth this spring when I finally made ME a priority of the week to get scheduled finally, and said 'and it should change things related to your pituatary which is right at the top of your palate (the splint to move my teeth and his treatments on the cranial vault through hand's on release work you can find at The Cranial Academy website).  Driving home with it I realized I could feel sinus drainage at the back of my throat JUST from that slight repositioning of the jaw with the retainer-type splint. I'd had all these sinus infections since my mid 30s ... which I attributed to the FMS FIVE  (infection).   It'll be a process of treatment and modification/moving, around and around but I'm currently pretty optimistic about this being a significant piece to the puzzle.  Then I'll approach looking more into the pituitary to see how it's working and address that with a provider I'm recently hearing about from a woman who has fibromyalgia and has put some significant resources into her recovery with good results. 

A friend of 'our' Helen's! See, Helen's quite an influence in Lumigrate and even with her quiet humility she will openly admit to that! Hence she has a chair of honor to fill whenever she wishes to join the Grate Groove of the Grand Valley because I believe in honoring our wise elders with including them in our processes when they are able to.  So I hope everyone who is taking the time to read this sees the way that I have utilized the people that have come to me with their knowledge, this is not an allopathic 'the provider's that the top', the providers on the outside and YOU are the ones bringing education and resource to them.  Through You, and I hope you include Lumigrate in that in the future increasingly. 

We'll see where it goes with my mouth.  I'd not identified myself as needing this treatment, despite referring people to him with other problems, until he presented about childhood breathing issues at the training at our hospital that so generously includes paraprofessionals such as occupational therapy.  You know I've reported on those over the years when they apply to Lumigrate's core market. 

So what I mostly want to convey here today is that it took me another 30 years after I started taking control of my life from 'them', which was a process for me.  People canNOT believe the shy, 'won't ever say no', do-gooder I was raised to be comparied to the way I am today.  Some from my past didn't deal with the change; some did. Some today who I will meet won't meld with me either, and some will. But the people who come along for the ride DO have the ability to see layers and account for what is and why, and work with it, as just like my mouth, I'm a work in progress.  And so I feel blessed to have so many people surrounding me today who do that.  

Because I not only have had to peel the onion to I THOUGHT know what had caused my issues and now just this year, at FIFTY, I discovered MORE and that all of this was something more related to my birth, I also am trying to bring a whole lot of people via Lumigrate through the process with me. That can feel like a burden sometimes but really it's a blessing. Not to compare myself to Oprah in any way except as a visionary who had some skills that all were in the right place at the right time, but I've appreciated her transition to OWN network and having the cameras backstage and showing her last year of the Oprah show and all her private moments as she disclosed similar feelings. 

She also shares similar spiritual values that this is God's work we are doing here in these times -- you know she's only a few years older than I am. And you know, she had the SAME problems with hypothyroid detection and treatment and speaks about what I have as the You model often, which SHE learned from her experience with being at her FOURTH doctor about issues and her saying 'have you checked thyroid?' and they hadn't!  When she did that show Lumigrate was editing the hypothyroid video we had shot about the same time she was shooting the show about hypothyroidism.  I felt one of those 'poofs' that you get where you know you're doing EXACTLY what you are supposed to be doing because you are blessed with the ability to have those insights if you're in tact with yourself.   

But back to my birth and my head -- It's gotten me this far with a LOT of work for vision therapy, brain recovery therapy, and now oral/cranial structural and release work therapy.   Chelations, but I'm on hold on that for a while until I get my health turned back 'up' out of the drain.  When I gain 10#s a month for month after month it's the old patter of 'something is off' and then you have to get your ducks rearranged and figure it out.  Which I'm doing.  But you have to be well to chelate and wise to have insurance which I've not had the time to get back since it's a WHOLE huge reggamarole now for uninsurables to get insurance in Colorado.  "Health Care Reform" has caused some worsening before things might get better it seems. 

We have no way of knowing, and why does it matter exactly what or who, really, but the structures of my mouth and face are just all messed up in the way that he assesses things.  Again nothing the other regular dentists every said anything about -- Wes Sheader, a chiropractor I started seeing in my late 40s found something in the roof of my mouth and adjusted it on my first visit and said 'that's been like that your whole life'. That was the planting of a seed of thought -- or the law of the lightpost and law of the hammer moved just as Dr Young talks about in the Health Management video at Lumigrate, which he was presenting for the first time about that same time 4 years ago to our collaborative forum on fibromyalgia.

I've had to have PT on my jaw/neck after surgery for things that were in the TMJ category and that PT had presented with Jim Kennedy after that and a went off for me as I'd just been at the allergist the day before getting the usual 'I don't know what's wrong with you, you're not allergic by the way I test and diagnose, you just have had bad luck, that's for sure.'

The next day that allergist actually came into the continuing education seminar area at the same time I did and held the door for me, so we both were educated about what was wrong with me and presumably if he got another patient with my symptoms he would then know to refer to the two gentlemen speaking.  But that means he has to have enough time and low stress to THINK in the little bit of time a patient is in front of him.  How many times do YOU have the right answer for someone the minute they ask?  Think about it.  That's why I load up Lumigrate to bring information to the consumers who will hopefully PRINT and EMAIL (see the little buttons at the lower right) this to people. and if YOU take a minute to find something on Lumigrate and get it to someone who provides services to people which it might help them and many others learn more about our website and information ongoing to them.

As it dawned my birthday today, I did my morning 'check in' with myself and felt the world 'blessed' and despite having a very full afternoon today I put other things aside I would like to have done for myself (like enjoy this beautiful morning!) and write this to share with people today and in the future days as we head into Lumigrate's THIRD year and my 51st. Because you're my priority -- and facebook is so cool on your birthday in making it easy for people to stop by and say a little something and you know what your impact is in their lives ALL in one day. 

Perhaps that's why I so badly stubbed my toe the week before last and cannot be hiking and walking more than I will do today to attend a Women's Fair, Fundraiser for Japan, Meet and Greet and PeaceFleece with Darden Smith and then go enjoy my friends for a concert by him in downtown Grand Junction, my home for the last 7 years. One of the first people I met was Rock Cesario, who is on our 2nd and 3rd podcasts about music and healing and interviewed Darden about Lumigrate's work and his song about health and illness.

I'd had a computer glitch yesterday which took me until the wee hours of the morning to have time (after a few hours sleeping watching TV) to correct and then catch up on my work from the afternoon.  That meant I got to see the lovely facebook greetings that the earlyl birds and eastern USers and UKers were posting and looked forward to getting up and seeing what was there this morning.  So I'm writing THIS one to YOU, my facebook friends.  You've provided me a huge group of people these last two years to get used to this NEW business of doing what I 'do', the occupation of health care, via the Internet. 

I felt blessed to have something named by Tammy I believe, and hopped onto by the ardent followers in our early days, The Grate Group -- those that were writing in the Forums.  Since everything is organic about life, particularly websites designed the way we put Lumigrate together and I was taught by my teacher, Adam Cochran currently of talkingDigital, who produces and hosts our podcasts, the Forums have changed, as has facebook.  There are tons and tons of opportunities now for people to write and tell their stories and do their thing -- and what has happened is that the initial Grate Group layed down such a nice foundation related to people with fibromyalgia writing that people are now coming and mostly READING at Lumigrate, or accessing the information about podcasts and listening, downloading videos continues to be steady for those who invest more attention in their learning.  Also blessed because the Grate Groove of the Grand Valley which I started this year after priming and considering it last fall is serving it's purpose well so far and appears to also be on a similar track that in another year and two will be creating much change in MY community, something I felt it important to set an example for and document on Lumigrate in the Forums so that others can do the same but easier because we already did the recipe here for YOU.

Blessed because this past week we had OVER 250 people read just the once piece posted by Yenta last weekend which inspired a new user to write a question about supplements which got ITC embedded into the 'volley' or banter, and then Robin Thomas had posted while my computer was having a 'timeout' yesterday.  And I saw with my own eyes when I went to bed as a 51 year old for the first time to get another round of sleep for the night, what I'd been intending Lumigrate 'to be' at it's two year mark. 

It truly does matter, each visit we have to the website is recorded as a 'statistic' and we can track what people are interested in, what words they Search on mostly in Lumigrate's Search area and then I go to work EVERY DAY networking to provide the content people want, and hopefully hearing from people when they have feedback that is 'critical' because it's like not going back to a provider who hurts you, just avoiding them -- they never know what was offensive to you! OR not going to a restaurant because of an experience you didn't appreciate, or a class, or whatever.  There's a responsibility as a consumer to give feedback beyond with your dollars when you think about it but I also believe I give 10 compliments for every criticism.  

And so FINALLY ... WHAT does this have to do about the sunny Saturday April 2, 1960 Denver, Colorado day of my birth?  EVERYTHING.  The doctor, like Gary of ITC Pharmacy just south of Denver in Castle Rock, Colorado (listen to the first podcast with them for details),and like my beloved Dr Kennedy here in Grand Junction who in just months has positively changed my life through my mouth, was a golf nut.  He had a 3:00 tee time (no friends, not 'tea time' like us ladies think lately, tee time), so at 1:30 he insisted on using forceps. Maybe is part of the reason there were so many people my age in middle age having some of the breathing and jaw and fibromyalgia issues?  Combine that with what happens to the pituitary when we have car crashes and falls on ice skates and in-line skates and I'd venture to say some amusement park rides, hard hot air balloon landings, etc. 

But after many years of nutrition changes, supplements by the boatload, PT, hormone therapy which the providers talked about the pituitary/head injury connection and I've been writing about it here for years now, I realize there's more to it in my MOUTH -- the one area I used to say I didn't have any expense!    I've not had a 'vacation' since 1995, the year I got FMS.  I graduated in 1996 and hit the ground running as I was snatched up by an eager employer the last day of my internship (illegal we later found out.  The first of many little things the medical industry does unwittingly that is not by the books.) I've fatigued in so many ways it's even affected my own compliance.  I didn't used to need a pep talk about changing, I was able to flip a switch, but goodness, how many years can you go on with such effort?  So I try to walk the line of compliance and effort that nets me the best 'value' for the least effort but it's definitely clear that the more time I take to work on myself, the better I do.  So I still work on that balance.  As I know everyone does. We all are where we are.

To keep you hopefully coming back for the continuing saga of my life with fibromyalgia from now I say 'birth or before' (maternal malnutrition, epigenetics brings in the grandparents of your parents... Oy Vey as Yenta would say! ....and to be able to thank here someone else very important to me, there is also the family story of my being in my first photos with a Christmas tree with the heirloom tree topper and pulling on the tree and being dropped out of reflex to catch the tree topper.  Dr Spurlock, Dr Kennedy (knowledgeable about holistic health and mercury poisoning such as I have as well) and the naturopaths I have spoken with in the last years have impressed upon me the impacts of the immunizations which tease out in the heavy metals challenge testing results I have on my table right now being prepared to get sent to the providers who want them. 

I was told by my optometrist the year I went to college that I had so much damage to the left side of my head that I'd need an eyelid surgery when I got to be middle aged as the lid would not be able to stay open due to the nerve damage.  However, he didn't pick up that my eyes were not fusing the image in my brain, and my once TOP grades in public schools which had become top 25% by high school graduation plummeted in college.  This is a reason I have identified aestheticians to be the peer health educators for Lumigrate.  They see everyone every month basically, they have time to chat about what's up ... notice changes in the hair, skin and nails.  Carolyn Lampshire, LE, registered as a new user this week and met with me for hours over the last two weeks about our collaborations locally about health education teas.  Stay tuned, she's an excellent writer when we can get some of her time.  Not a fan of the computer unfortunately. 

Watching the home movies, which our family did at least once a year when my mother's cousin Harmon and his family would get together -- some of my favorite childhood memories, everyone would remark how cute I was.  After OT school and learing what i did in all the courses I started seeing 'shaken baby' looking behavior which just cleared up and away once I had more time crawling. 

My mother taught me to read before I went to kindergarden and I remember thinking 'why am I in school learning the alphabet?' so it took me a LONG time, to second grade, to be identified with a reading problem.  However, due NOT to funding problems in those days (1968, things were great!) but to not having an expert on contract to interpret the very scientific eye tracking scans they did on me one day at the administration facility for the county 'down below' the mountains in west Denver, my being diagnosed and treated fell through the cracks.  My third grade teacher was maybe distracted by all the assassinations going on, or that she had a peach orchard, ironically, in Grand Junction where I now live. 

My mother became a teacher at our school and then I was the daughter of a colleague, NOT the daughter of a parent they could push pressure on.  About that time, I recall that words jumped ALL over the place when I was reading but I'd been to the eye doctor at Gates Rubber Clinic (essentially the first HMO, I heard long ago they predated Kaiser. 

My mother was an innovator in education for our little mountain school and is revered fondly by those who had her -- once a previously scary cowboy stopped me and asked me if I was her daughter (we kinda look a lot alike) and when I told him of her death many years before, he was saddened and told me how much she had done for him in sixth grade. She only taught sixth grade her first year as a teacher, so he didn't even see her at her peak.

She essentially learned about sensory integration disorder (the core of OT with pediatrics today) as soon as it was published and lectured about; she took training and basically was our school OT -- screen EVERY student for learning disabilities a la sensory integration protocol at the time. She then took the lowest 33% of the students in her class, the mediums grade and IQ-wise went to one, the highs to another.  i was always in the high but she would say later that her teacher friends always said 'you really should see what her IQ is' and she didn't want to know. 

Why you might ask? Because she wanted to stick her head in the sand about what my problems were and not have to drive me to Denver once a week for vision therapy for a few weeks and pay some money out that could otherwise go to her needs.  You'll see me commend Robin Thomas for what she wrote about taking her son to an out of state chiropractor on the Yenta piece about Kvetching I referred to above that's had so many reads.  But as I noticed my cat, who is Yenta's biggest feline fan I believe, this past week getting put off and put off to go out for a walk with me because I was busy working on ITC and cooking class followup and all the other things I do on the computer each day, I made the connection that I kept thinking 'she'll be fine, she's well put together and with this time NOT taking her out I can get THIS done by weeks end and help X people find this information over the weekend.  Which right now is at 250+ just on Yenta's latest piece about Chiropractics that went into supplements.  And she got a lovely walk last night TWICE and I'm sure at some level she might understand what this Lumigrate stuff on the computer as all about. 

So essentially everyone who should have been doing something for me (as I was a child with great friends, doing as well as they were on tests at the time) knew of my difficulties but my mom said 'if it's not a problem, why address it?'.  Remember what I said earlier about the health care workers falling apart I'm seeing because everyone feels as a professional you can't address your problems as that would be admitting you have them?  I bring it up today and reveal these things in order to hopefully help YOU, if you're reading, better understand what is going on all around us in these trying, trying times.

I feel like "I'm 51 and I need to have a LOT of answers for people, be wise about what is going on, sort through what to present and not on Lumigrate, who to bring in and not, who to move on from, how far outside the lines do I color today?  Well, tell  us please with your coming back this year, I've given some clues as to what we hope to cover more than likely.  And ITC Compounding and Natural Wellness Pharmacy and their two RPh /one with ND as well I think are going to be able to really carry us forward with the proven products and services they provide.  So please let them know you are reading and hearing their podcasts by picking up the phone and calling them to ask questions if you have any.  "It can't hurt", as Yenta says.

Systems take SO much time to change, and right now what I unfortunately am seeing is every system having the wheels come off the bus, and when enough wheels come off a bus it crashes.  I encourage people to NOT do 'potholism' and concentrate on the problems.  Figure out as fast as you can what the problem is and then start looking in the direction of the solution, putting your attention into that. 

It is my PERSONAL wish to not have to have exhumed all this history I reveal today and the last several years to teach about fibromyalgia's complex facets, but I find it helpful to use myself as an example for people, which naturally has pressure on it like in a time like this past season or three where things went backwards for me a bit while I am transitioning to different health providers and that just takes time, energy and money so it takes a while for the end results to end up more positive than when you started sometime. 

I'm convinced that I was born an Aries to parents that brought me ALL the genetics/nature and environmental/nurture lessons that lead me to have to have patience. Fibromyalgia too. And to become an OTR JUST as I did -- having dropped out of business college beating my broken and undaignosed scrambled brain against the wall of statistics, accounting, physics just too long, but having interviewed with someone who saw my abilities and background in schooling favorably and gave me a job which literally set the backdrop for my knowing how to do about doing Lumigrate. 

I get asked a lot 'how did a nontechie occupational therapist think to do this?' and it was a matter of my seeing the problems going on today and that I knew the information about integrative medicine would help people with fibromyalgia and then we just expanded that to be about anybody with anything which causes fibromyalgia, which is basically everyone -- they're just with the wheels on their bus going round fine because they have enough positives in their favor.  That's why the rates are rising so quickly now, just as all the other rates of everything 'bad in the world' are rising -- pollutant stress, psychological stress, financial stress, etc.

By the time I was starting to fail in academia for what my goals were, which were to be a veterinarian she was mired in alcoholism. My father was a very good and consienscious man but he had an aversion to conflict and despite that had a second career after early military officer retirement (USAF) and turned down a vice presidentship maneuver at Gates Rubber Company. 

He was mired at that time I was growing up (I was born when he was almost 40) in what I now recognize and others of his health providers of the past years agrees was likely fibromyalgia, so I understand the family system effects that can happen with this disease.  My beloved grandmother had gone through a short period of failing health and died when I was a teenager -- she didn't understand his condition so much as she stood up for her daughter who she saw working and coming home and smoking with her and drinking lots of martinis and maybe not having the most helpful partner in life with him.  I was too young and she too strong to talk with me about anything left for the adult world, thankfully, but she was not a drinker and I would imagine she was concerned about all of us after she wasn't going to be there to intervene.

He didn't know he had the same thing Florence Nightengale did (hence FMS Awareness is on May 12th every year now) -- none of us did.  It just was constant migraines and work to do on the mountain property. His back would go out from laxity of the connective tissues and spinal / disk issues. Fortunately the chiropractor he went to would see the whole family for $3 on the day he'd go in so I'd drive down and started adding chiropractic to the MDs and DDS and DOs that were not doing so well for me overall.  I now recognize from reading "Beat Sugar Addicton Now!" by Jacob Teitelbaum (see the Lumigrate Bookshelf, it is now my #1 priority read for anyone with a body and brain who eats food or has loved ones who do).  (that means YOU)

I did my best to fill the shoes of my sister when she went to college EARLY, escaping the dysfunction as a teenager is wise to do.  She's gotten into horses as a child in order to do the same but she did her share of work, particularly after she got over rebelling things, and in the end did the majority since -- she's older so she's retired. 

I created Lumigrate with the knowledge that my dad had a progressive neurological condition that he was stubbornly refusing to let me take him to the doctor or have him move in with me and go to the doctors I was lining up for him to be seen by here -- I'd created a bedroom for him and pulled strings with the head honcho of the big building I contracted with when I explained my situation as doctors were not taking new patients in our booming city at that time. When it was clear he wasn't going to come here even to visit, I started preparing to work from a computer at his house, putting in a wireless router and making sure I had cell phone coverage in his canyon of rural Colorado. 

Ironically, that never happened -- he had The debacle I'd been waiting for -- found on floor, almost dead, hospitalized, I couldn't get out of town due to snow for many days (remember the fears about my birth day?), missed diagnosis, mistreatment and then thankfully home to my sister and her husbands and then HIS house, with 24/7 supervision and moderate to maximum assistance generally. I only had to do a total assist lift on him once and it was a pleasure to do so, after his last 'shower' and transfer to bed, where he peacefully died less than 48 hours later.  I learned much from that time and have as a result gotten the hospice-qualfied and experienced spirituality writer in Beth Patterson writing for us with the Virtual Teahouse and Common Ground, and have MORE in store, it just all takes a long time and things fall into place when it is their time to do so, not mine, I'm now well aware.  (Or fall out, too by the way.)

Ironcally, I chose to NOT get into horses as my sister did because I saw that it put more on my dad's plate and I didn't want to add to the burden nor did I want to be around him when he was having to do something when he didn't feel up to it, which was a lot of the time by the time I was of horse-riding age.  Because I was the the 'good and helpful one' that was really industrious and looking for what I could do to contribute .. clean, work to reduce the burdens on the parents, I really feel for kids in families with ill parents, whether it a physical or mental illness, the results are the same. 

Out of self preservation before my mother died from her alcoholism I started stepping aside as a young adult and letting my parents become autonymous as they should be as parents and a married couple with adult children.  My mother was also a smoker, you can see the evidence in my heavy metals in the types of metals in cigarette paper were very high in my body.  There are plans in place for us to develop information this spring about the connection of these types of stressors psychologically and development of chronic illness in adulthood, please bear with me. 

That's one of the reasons I'm going to talk to Paula King today about HeartMath® at the Japan Fundraiser.  I'm then going on to talk with the local compounding pharmacist so as to better connect her with ITC, though they are very aware and supportive of each other but then how that relates to people routing to them from Grand Junction from Lumigrate's marketing is another matter.  People need options and with Lumigrate we need providers who have been established and proven to be helpful to people across the US.  It's a lot of work and it takes a lot of time, so I'm sorry if the content takes so long to build but after 700+ days it's getting quite robust and I hope is a blessing to YOU

But I also want to weave Lynn Hellerstein, OD, in here -- her book See it! Say it! Do it!! and companion workbook about Organize It!! are valuable tools for YOU which you can have much of what she does with people for a the price of a book or two!  She became my optometrist in 1997 when I was a new OTR and about to be fired for bad performance on paperwork because of the way Medicare can deny a WHOLE claim if just one initial is put in a billing grid in the wrong space.  My manager's husband had learning disabilities and went to her, THAT is how I met the Grand Poobah of this type of stuff in the US, and an International celbrity in her field! 

I emailed extensively with her this last week about collaborative stuff related to Lumigrate and happened to strike upon the fact that her husband helps people around the world with financial planning/estate matters and can possibly help with our 'life planning' section I started last fall in honor of my father's life's passing from Lewy Body Dementia and funded by contributions from my friends who want to see such content on Lumigrate so THEY know what to do and 'get it done'.  Face it, we're middle aged and I've had one friend who was 'healthy' drop at the end of the ball game.  Five years ago today I had a conversation with my 'aunt' who was my dad's cousin, who always called to wish me a happy birthday and the next day she had an AAA and that was it for her.  What a blessing to be seeing many of them today or in recent weeks, and others donated to the memorial bench fund we set up at a local bank near the open space park he liked to hike/walk/shuffle in over the last 20 years of his life.  It was a relief to have him doing so where if he fell he'd be found but they removed the bench he relied upon for resting not too far up the hill. It will be a blessing to provide relief to others in his honor once those are in place, which should be this season I'd think. It'd be in favor of it coinciding with Father's Day and have a picnic, that might be kind of fun that time of year.

If I didn't have so much going on here, I would have attended the Rockies season home opener with Lynn's husband if he was going (he's a Rockies / baseball nut I guess), which I used to do on my birthday over a decade ago when I was first an OT and we didn't have much work so I had lots of time off for two springs. (I recall only having 7 hours of work one week, my income dropped from $1,000/week if I chose to work or had to work overtime to $125/week.  So trust me, I'm committed to helping in ANY way I can with the people who seek this type of information and find Lumigrate.  So, for my birthday and into this coming year, please remember that my wish I make before blowing out my birthday candle today will be that Lumigrate "Lights the Path to Health  and Well-Being" THROUGH You helping us get the word out any way you can and want.  

And knowing that so many do and have and will, is really the most important reason I feel so blessed today.

~~ Mardy