From Crisis to Expertise: My Personal Journey to Becoming a Wellness Expert

Welcome to my first Blog.

Early Life (1974)

I started life with immediate challenges, developing a rash shortly after birth. My parents were concerned as I struggled to breathe during my first months. My mom recalls a moment when she put me in the bathtub and then on a blanket without clothes. She noticed that my rash and breathing improved. The discovery? I was allergic to perfume and detergent in the clothes.

This continued as I chewed lead pencils, opened the door at gas stations to huff the gas smell that I loved, and lived in poison ivy while eating tons of bread and lying on treated lumber in my bathing suit in the summer. Riddled with tonsil infections and being an empath at an early age, my nervous system was rigged to danger hyper vigilance. By age 7, I had hyperhidrosis of my hands and feet, sweating through my papers and unable to wear flip-flops as my feet were constantly wet. Standardized tests and performances were handed in wet and wrinkled. I wiped my hands on my pants to preserve function, trying not to smear the lead.

My doctor told my parents that my sweaty hands were normal and that pooping once to twice per week was also "my normal."

Adolescence to College 1992

Adolescence brought many moons of challenges with my periods resembling the X Games of extreme sports. Like many female athletes, my period came late and with a vengeance. The first two days had me writhing on the floor in agony. This led to birth control pills, which were at least low-dose estrogen by my time. (I later found out there were no tests on birth control pills; they just gave them to women.)

In February of 1992, after two years on the pill and actively swimming more than a mile a day on my high school swim team, I ended up one Friday with a severely swollen right leg. This pain took me 45 minutes to drag my leg to the bathroom. Indescribable agony.

My doctor said I had an infection and put me on antibiotics.

Three days later, we went to another hospital and had a venogram. This test showed "the biggest blood clot we have ever seen in this hospital." My whole deep saphenous and femoral vein were occluded. My calf was larger than my abdomen. I had gone without circulation for so long that the MDs told my parents that they "may have to remove my leg."

I was put on blood thinners and bed rest for two weeks. Both my leg and I survived, and I went back to life as I could on crutches and in agony. Rhabdomyolysis is a condition that usually results from crushing injuries, but strangulation of the vasculature from the inside out also applies.

In September, I left my crutches at home to attend Physical Therapy school in Boston. No more swimming which had been a huge part of my young identity! I could walk about a block before needing to rest from the pain. I thought I was going to PT school for sports-based excellence, but not being able to walk changes perspectives.

I was able to join the crew team, which was a lifesaver to my athlete Self. Since rowing is done sitting, I didn't have the circulation issue with gravity, and I was able to use my understandable rage in the middle of the boat (where all the psychopaths sit) for Northeastern Rowing. I maintained my athlete self and wouldn't have had the emotional maturity to deal with the loss of my physical well-being and now permanent varicose veins otherwise.

Motherhood (1997)

As my gynecologist could not prescribe birth control pills since they almost killed me, I was given a diaphragm. Have you ever used one of those Kong frisbees for your dog? Fold it in half and put it inside yourself and bring sexy back. Then, leave it in there for 24 hours. For real. This is what they thought were acceptable options for women in 1996. Blood clots or frisbees. Well, that did not lead to compliance.

I had my first daughter in 1997 via C-section. Retrospectively, I laugh at myself. During labor, I was watching Tombstone, and my younger self had no idea how to surrender about anything. The day she was born, I might as well have shown up to the hospital with my cap and goggles on to race someone.

Pelvic compression and my body's self-preservation did not allow dilation past 3cm after more than 24 hours on Pitocin, so when my daughter's heart rate started to get erratic, I was rolled in for a C-section. (Although she was a C-section, she still had one amazing cone head—will blog about birth cranial sacral later.)

Having student loans and a young partner (read super low-income couple) had me back at work at 8 weeks. I dropped her off and cried all the way to work. Having blazed the way as our society was screaming at us, "Rah Rah, women, you can have it all"—move for your job, climb the ladder, have a job and a family... oh, and by the way, sit in traffic if, like me, you wanted to live somewhere at all cool. North Bay San Francisco, working as a Physical Therapist contract worker (before this had you financially comfortable) and having my daughter in a "kiddie kennel" type of place while having no emotional maturity or skills to navigate a husband (who was raised by a mom that took care of the house...) I began to have the horrible endometriosis again, now with the addition of lemon-sized ovarian cysts.

I had a crazy pain tolerance (and so do, FYI, the women working along with you with endometriosis) so worked through this and sat in traffic.

Crisis (1998)

My standard agony and I were at work one Friday. I lifted an elderly woman into bed out of her wheelchair (using all the biomechanics) and felt an even greater stab in my low belly. I limped back to the office using one of the walkers we had in the hallway and managed to see my last two people, lifting no one.

I went home to bed, and after being unable to find any ease in any position, I went to the ER in Vallejo, CA. The sub par MD there gave me an exam, a shot of Motrin, and scheduled me for an ultrasound on Thursday, which was almost a week away. I had a bunch of Vicodin at home since I did not take it for my C-section and started popping those every 4 hours. On Sunday, since I was still in complete agony, I went back to the ER (about 48 hours into my ovarian torsion). Again, I was greeted by a male doctor who gave me an internal exam resembling the skill of a teenage experience in some sketchy location. The insurance I had in Vallejo, CA, was with a large company, and you are only able to go to their facilities. They kept my Thursday appointment and sent me home.

Tuesday

I was bloated like a dead animal, but the pain was a tiny bit less, so I kept my pants unbuttoned and went back to work. (So stressed financially and pretty new to my employment with that company, so was doing the "where there is a will, there is a way" thing.) I finished half the day and told my boss I needed to go to the ER. Again, they sent me home. I didn't have a fever, and whatever other red flags were not there to run any tests or, God forbid, move my ultrasound!

Wednesday

I was lethargic, almost passing out. Went back to the ER. They did an ultrasound and could differentiate nothing. I was told it looked like I had rapid and inoperable cancer, but they would open me up and do what they could anyway. I had a one-year-old little girl. I lived in CA, and my family was in New York. My parents were called. As they put me under the last thought I had was that my 1 year old was not going to have a mother.

I woke up from anesthesia to the best news! They removed my left ovary, which was gangrenous and had spread infection to the rest of my abdominal pelvic cavity. While they were "in there," they cleaned off the cysts from the right ovary. I was put on IV antibiotics and stayed there for a week.

I went back to work with the staples down my abdomen. I now have a vertical belly button to pubic bone and C-section bikini cut scars and one ovary that continues to make cysts. Long story short... right ovary cysts continue, they put me on Lupron, which put me into menopause for "the great reset," meaning quiet my endocrine and hope that when it came back online, it would find neutral. The problem was, I, the Self, was so far from neutral!! Cysts came right back when I wasn't artificially in menopause. I asked for a hysterectomy, but due to my age (24) the hospital that just almost killed me with three ER trips of negligence needed hysterectomy request in writing for a year. While I was waiting I found “my people.”

Turning Point (1999)

I was working in a Physical Therapy office in Sonoma, CA, and met a couple of PTs that had gone to a class by "this amazing woman," Sharon Weiselfisch Giamatteo. One of them had purchased a book of hers. It was a strain counterstrain book that included some positional release techniques that allowed unwinding of the vasculature fascial chains. They experimented and did one of the releases on my leg that still had the intermittent claudication that resulted from the damage to the valves in my veins in 1992. He spent about 5 minutes on my leg. I got off the table and felt a huge change in the way my leg interfaced with the ground. Some ease. Amazing.

So I signed up for the first class I could from Sharon's work. It was in San Francisco and was taught by Sharon's daughter, Ayelet. "Muscle energy for the pelvis and beyond" was the class, and I ended up being the class demo model. I received all the techniques over the weekend course and had enough of a change to be able to sit and not fight with my car seat and seatbelt on the way home. I met some Soul family at that course and was referred at the end of the class to the most advanced local practitioner of the work. This is when my life changed. It had to. My daughter needed a mom, and I was desperate enough to surrender into the work that I now do with all my heart. Osteopathic Based body of work and certification 1998 to present....

- Myofascial release

- Visceral release

- Cranial sacral release

- Lymphatic drainage

- Strain counterstrain

- Muscle energy

- Somato emotional inner child integrations

- Bioenergetics

- Meditation and chakra work

- Tuning forks

- Native American based ceremony group learning in Berkeley, CA

- GYROTONIC movement methods brought to Pacific Center for Pelvic Pain and Spaulding Rehab

- Pelvic floor PT with trailblazer Jerome Weiss MD and Christe Schupe PT

- Certification in Nutrition

So I was not born into ease and kumbaya. Quite the opposite. I was dragged through the coals for alchemy.

As Johnny Cash sings, "in the mud and the blood and the beer."

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I left a map "to the other side" It is in this website. I source all the Beings that contributed to my transformation and continue to.