RE-Group

The Long Road Down

I tend not to dwell on ‘what might have been.’ But if you have struggled through chronic illness, that thought can creep into your head when you least expect it watching other people do what they think of as normal. A short trip to visit family, maybe a fun lunch with a friend, or on most mornings waking up feeling rested and ready to tackle the day. Funny how we gauge how we feel and think by comparing ourselves to what others feel and think. So, what is normal? Actually, it’s whatever you want it to be.

Many alarm bells which should have caused me to change course in my life, didn’t. My early career as a professional musician and recording artist was hardly a lifestyle conducive to health or emotional stability on any level. So at 30, with my 1st marriage in shambles, I left the high pressure music business of Nashville, TN and attempted to transition to a more ‘normal’ 9 to 5 world. That proved to be much more difficult that I imagined.

Five years later, I married again and within a year had a beautiful baby girl. This is when life got real, so to speak. My mother who had early-onset dementia came to live with us. All the red flags were waving. A 5-week-old baby and an uncontrollable mentally unstable mother. What could go wrong.

My 2nd marriage, shaky at best, was strained to the breaking point with Mother’s progressively erratic, suicidal behavior making caring for her at home impossible. So for her sake and ours, I made the heartbreaking choice to place my 60-year-old mother in a nursing home. Three short years later, I had to tell her that her youngest child, my little sister, had died unexpectedly at only 30 years old. I’ll never forget the look on her face. The decisions I made concerning my mother and unresolved negative feelings between me and my sister caused a persistent voice of guilt to become stuck in my head. “You didn’t do enough. You should have done more.” By age 39, I began to lose my joy.

But life doesn’t pause when we need a breather, so I continued on in a challenging career trajectory as a business owner and training consultant requiring extensive travel, deadlines to meet, and training manuals to write, all while trying to stuff my free spirit into a corporate world for which I was not suited. One opportunity after another came my way adding to my career credentials but causing more and more exhaustion, more and more pain.

Doctor after doctor had no answers for me until finally, in 1994, I was diagnosed with CFS or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. And because CFS was not known at the time as having an underlying viral cause, I was misdiagnosed with a mental illness, flagging me as a psychiatric patient and beginning over 20 years of prescription drugs.

Throughout my 40s, I continued to function mentally at a high level. To drag myself out of bed and just make it through the day, I lived on coffee. It became my ‘normal.’ All kinds of new symptoms continued to appear, but I plowed on and went after what I thought was my dream job. I was hired by a major developer and builder of new home communities in the U.S. to take their new design center project from blueprint to completion and through all facets of finishing interior design. My long term plan to build a better life for myself and my daughter–without her dad–had begun to come together.

I became a single mom. Ashley was eager for college, and I continued to build a more secure future for both of us. But as the momentum for my personal success moved me forward, my body was barely holding together. My medical history with 2 major in-hospital surgeries, then one as an out-patient just before I turned 50, greatly contributed to a physical breakdown which was becoming more and more difficult to hide. My heart was a ticking time bomb waiting to blow. And that’s exactly what happened in December of 2002.

Boom!

The physical and emotional aftermath of emergency heart bypass surgery at 53 was devastating. I could no longer work at the same level as before. I lost everything: my home, my rental properties, even my car. They all disappeared. The professional and financial stability that had taken years to build for myself and my daughter was gone. I became paralyzed in a way I couldn’t understand or comprehend much of the time.

Hours and hours of talk therapy with psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists only resulted in new drugs and more coping strategies listed on a blackboard or the next handout, but nothing that stopped my downward spiral. I couldn’t seem to make sense of what had happened to me. I had bottomed out with no where to go and looking upward seemed beyond impossible.

My very actively creative mind felt imprisoned in a body that had failed me. It was a nightmare which I finally gave up trying to escape. Instead, I accepted the diagnoses of multiple mental and physical conditions and popped pill after pill prescribed by multiple doctors until I no longer recognized myself. It was many years before I understood how much my nightmare was fueled not only by the number of drugs I was prescribed, but the number of times the drug protocols were changed by the next psychiatrist or therapist.

Throughout the next 5 years, I continued to write music and play the occasional church service or gig, then the inconceivable happened. I stopped playing my piano. Like turning off a faucet, the newest drug took away any desire I had to sit on the bench, position my hands on the keyboard, and play simply for the pleasure of it as I had almost everyday for over 50 years. I no longer had a reason to get up in the morning. What was left of my life, along with my music, vanished.

Why is fear rarely a motivator? Why do some folks thrive, while others only survive? Could it perhaps be a completely random, unplanned, didn’t see it comin’ kinda’ thing that propels us into motion? What was that one moment that magically changed the very trajectory of my own life? Here’s what happened to me.

My Pivot Point

In August of 2012, I was admitted into the hospital so that my psychiatrist could purge me of all the psychiatric drugs I was on for chronic depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, anxiety disorder and panic attacks. His plan was to then start over with a new drug regimen he thought would be more effective. He ordered a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) to explore the possibility of a Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis, but what happened next was a total surprise to everyone. Unknown to me, I had been offered a pivot point. I had been given a gift, the beginning of a hunger for knowledge that would propel me toward fulfilling a purpose I was completely unaware of at the time.

I woke up the next morning with no headache after years of migraines and new daily persistent headaches or NDPH. Until that day, I had forgotten how incredibly wonderful I could feel without a headache. I was still quite physically ill, but the high I felt from no head pain was a peek into a ‘high’ I wanted to keep experiencing. I literally woke up. Even with the new drugs I was given, I had glimpsed enough of the old me to know that I could rise once again out of the fog of the previous 10 years.

I was so driven in chasing that ‘high,’ the feeling of being in control of my own life again, that I talked my best friend and his mom into pooling our resources to build a new house not far from the one I had lost 10 years before. Sherry was back and moving forward once again with the firm belief that I could purge myself of every drug I had been prescribed. I was on a mission.

The Road Back

I read books and researched every breadcrumb I came across, made a few missteps, got back on track, and gradually progressed. When my psychiatrist refused to help me become drug free through diet, I did more research and read more books. It wasn’t until Feb. of 2015 that I was finally able to taper off Zoloft, the last anti-depressant I will ever take, and 15 years of levothyroxine for thyroid disease. I was no longer on insulin for type 2 diabetes. Gone were the cholesterol and high blood pressure meds, inhalers for asthma, opioids for migraines and severe anxiety; medicines for heart disease, GERD/acid reflux, bi-polar disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome (now known as MECFS), fibromyalgia, and for several other disease labels I’ve thankfully forgotten. But that wasn’t enough to get me where I wanted to go.

In November of 2015, I received an email from Dr. Deanna Minich, founder of the Food and Spirit Practitioner Program from which I received my first practitioner certification. Dr. Minich was holding a book in the email. I read that the forward was by Dr. Alejandro Junger, M.D., a high profile cardiologist and detoxification specialist with a dynamic healing story of his own. The book was Medical Medium. I immediately ordered it based on her recommendation. Little did I know the impact the book would have on my life when it arrived on November 10, 2015.

The author, Anthony William, clearly explained why I was ill. But most importantly, he gave me answers as to how I could get better. Within 6 weeks after starting his recommended targeted supplements along with eating much more highly nutritious food, I had spurts of renewed creativity, clarity in my writing, and a newfound sense that something good was about to happen in my life.

After a few more weeks, I began to regain my lifelong joy in music. I started playing my piano and guitar, composing and singing again. As an intuitive as well as classically trained musician, I found that the creative space I ‘tuned’ into to receive inspiration for my music, was exactly the same conduit I could use as a practitioner to ask and receive answers for others who struggled with physical and emotional challenges. For the first time in my life, I understood my purpose and the answer to why chronic illness had been a necessary part of my life path.

My Life Today

Today, as an Energy Healing Facilitator/Practitioner/Medical Intuitive, I use several modalities along with the ability to psychically hear, see, and scan the body to detect and visualize areas of imbalance, clear what’s necessary, then align and bring the body back in balance. Prior to November 10, 2015, I was still struggling to get through each day of pain, exhaustion and the constant gnawing of “Why am I sick? Why can’t I think? Why can’t anyone tell me what’s wrong?” I no longer have to wonder. I found answers.

There’s no quick fix for regaining health. In order to truly heal your physical body, you must heal your spirit. How? By choosing to be happy, no matter your situation. No small ask, that. And it has little to do with wishing to feel better, but everything to do with believing you are in control of your own thoughts. And most importantly, redefining what ‘normal’ is for you.

The infinite wisdom that is God or The Universe or Source, however you wish to identify the mysterious realm of the non-physical of which we are all are a part, is available as guidance to all of us. And a big part of that guidance is to keep asking questions, read books, do your own research, and find a physician who will listen to you. I remain open to the expertise and experience of my doctor for the necessary medical tests and medication I may need for acute conditions. And so should you.

My novel, WHEN THE EXTRAORDINARY BECOMES THE ORDINARY, includes much of my journey as a professional musician and survivor of dark times. My hope as a practitioner and a writer of words is to assist others who have been profoundly and chronically ill in finding a level of hope and health in which they can again live their lives and fulfill the purpose that awaits them.

My road to recovery was long and at times exhausting, both physically and mentally, but it doesn’t have to be the same for you. So as life happens, we must live, adjust, evolve, then live some more, and constantly create a ‘new normal.’ It’s the dance of life. Your dance and mine may be different, but along all our paths are pivot points, chances to choose the next fork in the road. Prepare to be surprised!

 “Life’s A Journey” ©2006 DEMO for Purple Garage Publishing (Words/Music/Vocal and Piano Performance by Sherry King)