FAITH and HEALTH – Dealing with an unexpected illness

“Lord my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me.” – Psalm 30:2

In early April of this year I found myself lying in a hospital bed for nearly a week due to a severe infection.  Exactly how I got the infection was never known for certain however consequential evidence suggests that I acquired the infection probably several weeks earlier while in Mexico.  Severe headaches and body aches like I never before experienced along with an extremely stiff neck, high fevers and chills accompanied me for about a week before “it” happened.  I was then unaware of anything for over 24 hours before coming to and opening my eyes to slowly start recognizing the people in the hospital room around me.  This is what happened…

I Never Get Sick

For those that personally know me, “sick” or “ill” are not words to describe me.  I eat healthy unlike anybody else I know, I never smoked, almost never consume alcohol, never even tried drugs, sleep well at night, exercise almost every day, don’t use any medications, etc, etc, etc.  Sure, I’ve had minor colds and flus or gotten sick from bad food in Mexico but those were all things that passed without treatment.  So, when I had a high fever and nighttime sweats my first night in Vegas I figured it was just another episode of food poisoning from either the tacos or salad I ate the day before at local restaurants.  After all, in the morning when I got up to go to work I felt absolutely fine.

Fast forward to lunch time.  I was working at the convention center and anxious to take a break.  My head was hurting and my joints felt stiff.  I knew for sure that it was food poisoning.  Montezuma’s revenge used to get me all the time in Mexico.  So, I wasn’t worried.  This too shall pass….

But it didn’t.  At least not yet.  Day three at work was torturous.  I don’t even know how I endured so long.  I felt totally out of it.  Extremely weak.  It was hard to hold my body up.  My skull felt like it was cracking, my fever was high and my joints felt so stiff.  The director noticed that I was genuinely suffering and kindly released me an hour or two early.  I slowly made my way back to where I was staying after stopping at the drug store to buy Ibuprofen.  I hadn’t used Ibuprofen for over 10 years.  That night I sweat heavily, literally soaking the bed sheets.  I thought I was getting over it.

Fortunately the job was finished and I was going back to San Diego.  Unfortunate was the fact that I was going to return by bus and train – over eight hours of travel time.  It was brutal.  It was during a heat wave in southern California.  I was on the Metrolink train sitting next to the window soaking up as much sun as possible but I was shivering from head to toe.  Despite being fully clothed, wearing even a jacket and beanie over my head, I was still freezing, and my entire body ached.

I finally arrived to where I was staying with family in San Diego and immediately got good quality food in my body.  I was determined to defeat whatever was causing my to be ill.  Several people suggested I go to the doctor but I knew I could turn it around by eating powerful foods.  I told my dad I would be fine in two days.  The next day I reported to him that I felt about 60% better.  The second day I was 80% better.  I even went for a short jog that day.  Then, somehow, things turned for the worse.

Over the next few days the physical weakness, joint pain, neck stiffness and headaches gradually increased.  I also had a lump under my right armpit.  It had been there since a week earlier.  I figured it was a pulled muscle from doing way too many pull-ups.  But it was really sore and had gotten bigger, almost the size of a baseball.  On a Friday I struggled to get up.  Every movement of my body hurt, especially my right arm.  The day seemed to move in slow motion.  Even my thinking was slow.  I spent the day trying to eat and drink plenty of water.  I read a little but struggled to focus and even stay awake.  I managed to get a haircut that day, which was impressive.  While crossing the street a man passed me in the opposite direction and told me that Jesus loves me.

That night I was in a zombie state.  I was staying at my mom’s place and just sitting at the table in a kind of not-quite-all-there state, sipping tea and trying to read.  My mom was very concerned and would ask me questions to test my cognitive function. I had trouble answering those questions, was very slow to respond and I stuttered.

I went to sleep very early that night, around 7 pm.  At 5:30 am I was up and once again sitting at the table trying to read while sipping tea.  My mom came in and asked me a few questions that I really struggled to answer.  She described the look in my eye as one of a person not really in his own body.  I was in a zombie state not fully aware of anything that was going on.

At around 7:00 am I lied down to rest again.  At around 9:30 am my daughter arrived at the request of my mom.  I still have clear recollection of what happened in the following moments.  My daughter walked in the door.  I woke up and struggled to get on my feet.  My mom walked up to me and asked me what year it was.  I stared blankly at her and couldn’t come up with the answer.  I remember thinking that the year might be in the 2000’s but then I thought, “no, we are still in the 1990’s”.  She then asked me who the president of the United States is and I honestly did not know the answer but somehow I still had some humor in me and I smiled and mumbled, “Jack Bauer”.  (We were big fans of “24”.)  Mom was not amused.  My daughter sat down on the sofa with a big smile on her face and started talking to me about our summer vacation plans to Cancun.  I sat down opposite her and stared at her while having a strange smirk on my face not really comprehending what she was saying when all of a sudden everything stopped.  I have no recollection of what happened afterwards.

A Day of my Life Erased from Memory

Light slowly and gradually fills the scene before my eyes…  I’m lying in a bed…  There are people here…  I’m in a room, there are walls and a door…  I hear muffled sounds…  I recognize faces…  My dad walks up to my bedside.  “Do you know what happened to you, son?”

I shake my head and mumble, “No”.

“You had a seizure”

I wasn’t surprised.  Perhaps it was the pain meds but I felt very calm and relaxed.  My mind was still in a daze so details of this day are sketchy for me but I remember my parents explaining to me how I fell to the floor and had a seizure that lasted about 3 minutes.  My mom and daughter reacted quickly.  My mom stuck her fingers in my mouth so I wouldn’t bite my tongue and I ended up giving her a pretty deep wound on her fingers.  My daughter called 911 to report the incident (not my mom’s injury but rather my seizure).  She was in tears.  Writing this still brings tears to my eyes when I think what my mom and daughter saw happen to me.

The paramedics recorded a 103 degree fever when they arrived and then transported me to Palomar Medical Center in Escondido.  Then there was lots of chaos as the doctors tried to find out what was going on inside me.  My mom tried explaining my symptoms of the past week but the doctors were more interested in test results and analysis.  They tested me for just about everything under the sun.  CT scan, blood tests, spinal tap, etc.  All the tests came back negative.  Not being able to speak to me made things difficult to diagnose.  Somehow they completely missed the swollen mass under my armpit.  It was still there, untouched and still very sore.  I was hooked up to a heart monitor, IV’s and a urinary catheter dangled from the side of my bed.  Soon after regaining awareness I was helped up to a sitting position and the doctor came in.  Without warning he pulled the urinary catheter out of me.  The sensation of that tube coming out still haunts me!  Then came a series of questions mostly related to my sexual activity.  The doctor seemed to be suggesting that I may have some sexually transmitted disease.  Well, for obvious reasons, I knew for sure that I didn’t have an STD.  I simply don’t participate in activities that would expose me to such diseases.  For those that don’t know, I am married, faithfully married.

He told me that I probably have a staph infection acquired through a cut on my skin  He searched my arms for evidence of a cut and found nothing.  Eventually the doctor got around to the mass under my arm.  He didn’t think it was a muscle strain and ordered an ultrasound be done a couple days later.

The nurse helped me get up and pull the IV carrier with me to the bathroom.  I will never forget the sight of myself in the mirror.  I had lost about 10 pounds in just the past couple days.  I looked horrible, aged, far from the physical condition I was in just a couple weeks before.  And of course, urination hurt after having the catheter pulled out.  Ouch!

The next few days were spent receiving visitations and phone calls from friends and family and small get-well gifts.  I genuinely enjoyed the visits from people, even people I didn’t know.  A priest from the local parish of St. Mark’s in San Marcos came and prayed for me.  So did a chaplain named John.  I will never forget their visits and kind words.  The nurses were the best.  Their gentle care and kindness almost made me want to remain ill and bedridden.  I remember when my favorite nurse assisted me to walk outside to the balcony for the first time.  It was a cool breezy afternoon.  I gazed from the seventh floor of the hospital balcony and observed the hills of southwest Escondido.  Two weeks earlier I had hiked those hills and now I longed to reunite with nature.

Frequent phone calls and visitors kept my days fun

The doctors considered me to be in very good health and gave me no dietary restrictions.  However, I voluntarily chose to not eat certain things that they served to me such as sweets, cereals and pancakes.  Unfortunately, raw eggs were not on the menu.

I slowly regained strength and found walking to get easier every day.  But I was getting annoyed with being connected to an IV all the time and getting regular blood draws.  Still, we didn’t know what caused this infection.  Tuesday arrived and it was time for the ultrasound.  They wheeled me off to the lab and I watched as the ultrasound confirmed that it was not a muscle strain but rather an abscess surrounding the infected lymph node.  Then I watched as a fat needle was inserted into the mass under my armpit and a thick reddish liquid was extracted into a tube.  The pus would be tested in the lab for identification.

I was moved from the seventh floor to the fourth floor.  The infected material analyzed in the lab never grew therefore they couldn’t identify the bacteria that caused the infection.  The antibiotics given to me upon admittance to the hospital had already killed the bacteria.  So, the exact cause remained a mystery.  However, we have a theory of what may have happened and it’s really the only thing that makes sense.

Training hard and in the best shape ever at a gym deep in southern Mexico

The doctor said it was probably a staph infection caused from a cut on my skin.  Thinking back, there were two times in the past few months that I received a bleeding cut on my body.  Both times were at the gym – the gym in Mexico – in southern Mexico where high humidity and temperatures cause everything to rust, especially in a gym without air conditioning.  On two occasions I had cut myself on the equipment in that cramped gym, once on my back near the shoulder blade and the second time on top of my right shoulder, right above the infected lymph node.  Thus, it seems likely, very likely, that the cut on the shoulder delivered the bacteria that caused the infection.  I will never know for sure but a hot humid gym in deep southern Mexico is the perfect breeding ground for nasty bacterias.  Although the area of the cut healed beautifully the bacterial infection would have drained down and met my lymph node where the scene of the infectious battle took place.  But, again, I don’t know for sure.

Getting Well Again

Morning after leaving the hospital I was visibly much thinner and still had the painful swelling of my lymph node under my right armpit

On day six in the hospital I was getting anxious to leave.  The doctor walked in the room in the morning and found me doing lunges in front of the window.  He knew I was ready to leave.  I was discharged from the hospital almost 7 days after the seizure took place.  The doc prescribed to me an anti-biotic medication and a pro-biotic.  He examined the swollen lymph node again and told me that he was almost 100% sure that I would need to have it surgically removed.  He didn’t think it would go away with anti-biotics alone.  I didn’t like the thought of surgery but if it had to be done, it had to be done.  He told me to have it checked out again one week later.

I left the hospital and went straight to the health food stores to stock up on the best foods I could get.  I had lost a lot of weight and also had an infection to fight so I bought lots of eggs, raw milk cream, garlic, ginger, cabbage, sweet potatoes, wheat grass, dark leafy green vegetables and also acquired powerful wild edible plants such as Plantago lanceolata.  I ate well and regularly and began exercising right away.  Although I was still quite weak, I did what I could.  Some pushups, stretching and short jogs most of the time.  I had a lot of pain in the area where they did the spinal tap.  It caused jogging to be very painful and that concerned me.  I love running.

Also, I was unable to fully extend my right arm.  The inflammation in the area of the lymph node seemed to have affected the tendons and muscle tissue of that region and when I had done the pull-ups before getting sick it caused the tissues to stretch and become damaged.  Even my left arm felt pain.  This lasted a long time.

Many people had been praying for me, both during my time in the hospital and after.  I am eternally grateful to those that including me in their thoughts and prayers.  I believe in the power of prayer, and it works!  God is all powerful!

Going back to the doctor’s orders of a follow-up one week later, due to insurance issues it took me two weeks to see a doctor.  I had finished my medication and there was no longer any visible swelling.  The doctor ordered an ultrasound done just to be sure and that was it.  No surgery!

Around this time I received a notification from the DMV that my license had been revoked due to an unfavorable medical report.  Even though the seizure was caused from a sustained very high fever and infection the medical report was written in such a way as to suggest that I am susceptible to future seizures.  I was diagnosed with encephalopathy (a disease or disorder of the brain).  I have to see a neurologist to confirm that I am not in danger of having future seizures.

DMSO is a liquid solution that has been shown to accelerate healing. Google it for more information.

As time went on I continued my strict diet which will surprise most people.  I really do eat an average of 15 eggs per day.  Surprisingly, I regained my strength quite quickly.  But even a few months later my biceps were still very tender and painful when fully extended however the use of DMSO and performing curls with weights accelerated the healing process immediately.  After one application of DMSO I had far less pain in the area of my lower biceps and elbow.  After doing curls with an EZ bar five months later the discomfort was almost completely eliminated after just one workout.  Before this I had been only doing bodyweight exercises but this proved the benefit of weight resistance training.  My running progressed so much that I now run longer distances than ever before.  21 miles is my new best, and the pain in my back is almost completely gone.  It only hurts in a certain position and surprisingly doesn’t affect at all my ability to perform deadlifts or squats.

Once again, I’ve been actively exploring the wilderness, camping, taking photos, and eating less popular foods I find in nature.  Yes, some think I’m crazy for going out alone into the jungle wilderness of Mexico…  Maybe I really do have a brain disorder….

Lessons Learned

 While I did not have a life threatening illness, it was the first time I had ever been hospitalized.  It was a phenomenal experience and although I would have preferred to not have gone through all of this, there were wonderful things that happened as a result and I also learned a lot because of this.

1.  Don’t delay in seeing a doctor when unknown symptoms occur.  My symptoms actually began at least a month earlier when I was still in Mexico.  I felt perfectly fine but I had noticed a slight swelling under my armpit.  I figured it was just muscle strain and sure enough it went away within a few days.  But when it returned, and much larger, a week before being admitted to the hospital and accompanied by headaches, body aches and fever, that should have been my clue to have a doctor check me out.  This whole situation could have been avoided simply by taking antibiotics.

My evil adversary – the mud pie!

2.  Strict adherence to a healthy diet is very important,…always.  As I mentioned before, I have an impeccable diet plan,… most of the time.  The week before the symptoms of fevers and headaches started to manifest I had just returned to California from nearly a 6 month stay in Mexico.  I ate incredibly well while in Mexico and was in the best shape of my life.  However, when I returned to California I went out with friends a few times and was a bit negligent with my eating habits.  I had a couple drinks, probably ate more tacos than I should have one day, and gorged on a massive mud pie while celebrating a friend’s birthday at a restaurant.  If you follow me on Facebook you may see reference to that mud pie from time to time.  It is known as the dessert that put me in the hospital.  It was foolish for me to eat that and I’m not saying that is why I had the seizure.  No, I had a bad infection in me that my body was keeping at bay for quite a while but honestly, a mud pie offers no benefits for the body but rather harms the body.  So who knows, perhaps had I not eaten that mud pie nor had those drinks and too many tacos, maybe my body would have eventually rid itself of the infection.  Why give the enemy an opportunity to attack?  I will always remember this and keep my defenses always on high alert.  In summary, foods to always avoid are anything with added sugar, processed, fried, packaged, most vegetable oils, and anything with synthetic preservatives and flavors.  I prepare everything from whole foods, ferment my own sauerkraut and juices, eat lots of eggs, consume plenty of healthy fats, eat garlic and/or ginger every day, and almost always eat raw leafy greens (often wild edible plants too) with every meal.  Trust me, it works!

3.  Prayer and faith are paramount.  As soon as it was known that I was in the hospital people were praying, even people I didn’t know.  Nobody knew what was wrong with me but God did and lots of people prayed to Him in the name of Jesus Christ.  After leaving the hospital I sought prayer at a nearby church.  I absolutely did not want to have surgery and they laid hands on me and prayed for complete healing.  Despite the doctor being almost 100% sure that I would need surgery the infection went away quickly and surgery never happened.  I had lots of faith that I would be back to running the trails, climbing trees and swimming in the ocean again soon.  That faith was manifested in my daily efforts to eat properly and to exercise and remain active.  Yes, it hurt.  Yes, it was very uncomfortable.  Even sleeping was painful for a few months because of the spinal tap.  But every time I pushed myself a little further and within about 3 months after leaving the hospital I ran my longest distance ever, a little over 21 miles, and of course, in sandals.  Since then I’ve hiked and camped alone in a beautiful tropical forest in Mexico, hiked and camped Red Rock Canyon in Nevada, swam in cenotes (sinkholes) in the Yucatan, explored a coral reef in the Caribbean, hiked and camped alone a few days on the beautiful coast of Maine, and traveled to many other wonderful places both alone and with my family.  My zest for life is stronger than ever and I am now preparing for the trip of my life to spend a month exploring the South American country of Brazil.

This is for You!

For months I had been thinking about sharing this experience with everyone.  While in the hospital I didn’t publicly share what had happened.  Not because I was ashamed or anything.  I keep my life rather private and find it beneficial to not just publicly post everything that happens because often we share things when we shouldn’t.  But I felt the time had come when I learned that a friend’s 17-year-old son was in the hospital fighting for his life due to a serious infection and high risk Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.  His challenge is far greater than mine but I remember well my experience and I wanted to show support and encourage him and his family to continue the good fight in faith.  So, I wrote this for you and in doing so I found it extremely beneficial for me.  I feel humbled by the outpouring of love I felt while I was down.  Anyone facing a health challenge or even those that simply want to improve their health can do so but only with faith.  With faith a person takes the necessary steps to achieve the desired result.  Without faith, there are no desired results.  Prayer without faith is not enough…  It is foolish to pray for good health while eating a mud pie.

“But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.” – James 1:6

In closing I thank all of those close family members and friends who took time out of their busy days to visit me and send messages.  That was the most wonderful experience and I will always be grateful for having you all in my life.  Also, a special thank you to that man on the street who contributed to my faith with the simple words, “Jesus loves you”.  Most of all I thank God, the Creator of all, and His son Jesus who was sent for our salvation.  May we learn to follow His ways.

My adventurous spirit is alive and well thanks to the excellent health God has blessed me with.