read Julie's full story here
The Childhood Secret that Helped Me Heal
I remember the very last time I sat with a doctor, expecting her to fix me, taking her word as the Truth. I was 33, sitting across the desk from an infertility specialist. She had prescribed Clomid for me in my previous cycle, and a pregnancy had started. I was five weeks in and having some cramping.
“According to your blood test, your hCg levels aren’t doubling the way we’d like to see,” she told me.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means you’ll likely miscarry this time,” she said.
“How likely?” I wanted to know.
“You should prepare yourself to miscarry within the next few days. You can skip the Clomid this next cycle, then call us to make an appointment for the next one.”
“What can I do? Isn’t there anything we can do to increase the hCg?” I pleaded with her.
“No. Just call us when you’re ready to come in again.” And with that, she left.
I left the office and sat in my car, afraid to call anyone. The tears were all welled up right under my eyelids. Just one word from a friend or my husband and the box deep in my brain holding all those emotions of bitterness, unfairness, self-loathing, and grief would go spilling out all over the place. Getting home would be much easier if I could keep the box shut.
Instead I felt cold and numb. It was raining and I sat unmoving, staring at the drops rolling down my windshield, trying to feel as close to nothing as possible. It occurred to me she never said she was sorry. She never offered so much as a sad smile of pity in my direction. I felt like a human experiment: case number 5734G, negative round one, round two in 45 days.
The tears started to spill over so I drove my car away, away from the parking lot of the fancy procedures, funded by our insurance - the best in the field for infertility. “You’re very lucky,” the insurance agent had told me on the phone. “You could go all the way to IVF if you’d like and we’ll pay for it.” Away from the news of failed tests, big hopes broken, and a doctor who seemed not to understand pain, but most of all, who yet again, couldn’t fix me.
I’d always been familiar with doctors’ offices, and it’s not like I wasn’t familiar with doctors who couldn’t fix things, but I’d been raised with the mentality that doctors were healers and if they couldn’t heal you, no one could.
When I was eight, my mother received news that she had melanoma cancer and that it was terminal. Other people’s mothers got cancer that responded to chemotherapy. Mine got cancer that was terminal from the day she found out. The doctors couldn’t fix her. She died six months later.
About a year after she died, I started clearing my throat every few minutes throughout the day. Then I would wrinkle my nose up and sniff loudly. Then clear my throat again. Sniff. Clear. Clear. Sniff. Clear. Sniff. Sniff.
Sometimes I would squeeze my eyes shut tight as I could. Sniff. Squeeze. Tight as I could. Sniff. Clear. Sniff.
I lived with my grandparents then, ever since my mom had gotten sick. I was at the dinner table one night, sniffing and squeezing and clearing my throat, when my grandpa had enough. He told me to quit. I was afraid, so I said I would.
I tried very hard for five minutes, but then a little tiny quiet throat clear came out, followed by a quick hard squeeze and sniff.
“Go to your room!” he bellowed. “I told you to stop. I’ve had enough!”
I went to my room, and later my grandma came in and explained to me that I shouldn’t test my grandpa like that. We all missed my mother, but he loved me very much. I should obey him.
I nodded as I cried and squeezed my eyes shut, sniffing, clearing my throat, knowing that the crying made it look legitimate.
A month later she took me to the doctor who diagnosed me with Tourette Syndrome. Incurable. Couldn’t be fixed.
Throughout my junior high and high school years, I lived with this “mild” case of Tourette’s, trying my hardest to suppress it during the day at school, which simply meant it came out ten times as hard at night. I wasn’t all that good at suppressing it anyway. Everyone at school knew I had Tourette’s. Luckily I grew up in the 1980s before cyber-bullying and mean girls became the norm in school, because the kids at my school didn’t openly tease me. They simply ignored me entirely. I had few friends in high school and joined very few clubs or activities since no one cared to be around me much.
High school wasn’t miserable for me. It was just lonely and unproductive. I spent far more time worrying about how to suppress the tics while I was in the classroom than I did learning new material or participating in anything.
The summer before I started college, I dated a boy I liked quite a bit. He was kind and respectful, intelligent, and not very pushy for a testosterone-filled boy of 18. At the end of the summer, he broke up with me, explaining that he really liked me, but the tics bothered him too much to want to keep dating. My sense of rejection was outweighed only by my sense of shame. I asked my grandma if we could see the doctor again. I wanted to go on medicine.
Whenever we went to the Tourette Syndrome clinic to see the doctor, I always suppressed my tics as much as I possibly could. I knew this man was studying me to see what I was doing. He was watching every move I made. I must be still, perfectly still so he wouldn’t catch me. We would get to the elevator outside the clinic door afterwards, and the tics would nearly explode. It was so hard to suppress that long.
This time, I vowed to not give into the urge to suppress the tics, but to let them be as they were, perhaps even step it up a bit on purpose. My plan went over perfectly.
“Wow. Usually we see improvement in the late teens,” he told my grandma, “but hers seem to be worse. I’d say this case has gone from mild to medium and I’d like to see how she responds to a small dose of Haloperidol daily.”
On the way to the pharmacy, my grandma and I talked about how I probably should have shown him my “true condition” a long time ago if he had actually misdiagnosed me as mild this whole time.
When I started college that Fall, I had a new lease on life. For years, I had followed the hand-written diet the doctor scribbled onto a sheet of notepaper the day I was diagnosed. For ten years it had hung on the side of the refrigerator so we could always remember what was off limits: NO monosodium glutamate (MSG), NO red or yellow food coloring, NO milk, NO nuts, NO sugar, NO caffeine. I followed the diet as closely as I could - as closely as we knew how - eliminating such things as trick or treating for Halloween candy and stopping for treats of ice cream after a long day.
But now, for the first time in a decade, I could eat whatever I wanted with no ill effects. Five cups of coffee in one day? Great! MSG-drenched Doritos? Bring ‘em on! Mountain Dew at lunch time and Skittles as a snack. Foods from the “NO” list were no longer my enemy. I took a pill in the morning and one at night.
I was relieved to finally be able to go about my life with no tics to suppress or hide or find a good place and time to indulge. I could go anywhere, in any public situation, without feeling eyes on me, judging and wondering. I stopped telling anyone I even had Tourette’s. Occasionally, I would divulge my secret to hear their predictable response: “So do you yell out inappropriate things in public?”
No. No, I’d never done that. I’d never had a severe case of Tourette’s, which is characterized by these vocal outbursts. This predictable question both embarrassed and insulted me, so I learned to keep my secret close to my chest.
For 15 years, I lived like everyone else and loved it. I planned to take Haldol forever. I was on a small dose and, although it was classified as a potent sedative, I’d adjusted to the sedative effects of the drug long ago. For the first month I took the drug, I’d noticed I was constantly tired. But then I didn’t notice the tiredness so much anymore. The tired feeling faded into the background until it became my new state of normal. Besides, I was now allowed as much caffeine as I could drink.
I didn’t realize, however, that the whole time I was on Haldol, it was significantly affecting my hormones and ceasing my ovulation each month entirely. I had three or four long-term boyfriends during college and my use of birth control was spotty. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking, even hoping perhaps, that I would become pregnant. I’d always wanted children, more than a career or a perfect love affair or international travel or anything else. But it never happened. I worried that I might have difficulty becoming pregnant when I married and the time was right to begin trying, but then I logically countered to myself that I was just lucky it wasn’t happening when it was unplanned. I never realized that the reason I avoided becoming pregnant during the time I was on Haldol was because it was making me infertile.
The Tourette Syndrome clinic didn’t inform me of this little side effect of daily Haldol until I was 29 years old, married, and explaining to my doctor that I’d had a hard time getting pregnant. It was now 2001 and drug information was readily available on the internet. A quick search had told me that some women taking Haldol were unable to conceive.
My doctor finally explained the connection to me. Haldol apparently increases your prolactin levels, which can trick your body into thinking that you are nursing a baby. Your body can respond by not ovulating. He suggested I try taking the Haldol on an “as-needed basis” and see what happens.
I followed his instructions, and successfully conceived my eldest daughter, Sydney, in August of 2002. Like everyone else I knew, I saw an ob/gyn who gave me the various tests and smears and checks and procedures they required. I was given the go-ahead to continue on the Haldol, so I ate and drank whatever I wished - within the standard pregnancy guidelines of course. According to our American pregnancy diet guidelines, it’s OK to have as much Sprite as you wish, but never a bite of soft cheese. Genetically modified, chemically sprayed and processed high fructose corn syrup is perfectly safe, just beware the Listeria! I obeyed.
I chugged along for nine months in a weak state of health with a diet barely adequate to support a growing baby. For ethical reasons, I was trying to remain a vegetarian; however, my eating patterns were not that of a balanced, whole-foods vegetarian. I was what I now describe as a “junk-food” vegetarian. For example, I considered french fries from a fast food restaurant to be a perfectly fine food choice as long as they weren’t fried with any meat products. By the third trimester, I was constantly craving meat, and would sneak off to Wendy’s to buy a chicken sandwich, eat it in the car, and throw away the bag before my husband (also vegetarian at the time) could find me out.
Still, the majority of my diet consisted of simple carbohydrates, lots of sugar, and foods that were barely recognizable from their original state. Fast foods, cookies, bagels, breads, canned soups, sugar-free yogurts, Cheetos, sodas, and frozen dinners were my mainstays. My body rebelled at 35 weeks with pre-eclampsia, a condition that often occurs in a pregnancy where the expectant mother is not meeting her protein needs and is consuming a diet high in processed foods that are taxing on her liver. I was sent immediately to the hospital, where I stayed for two weeks, waiting to be induced, waiting for the doctors to fix me. At 37 weeks, they induced me with ample pitocin, which left me begging for an epidural. Fortunately, I was still able to birth my daughter vaginally.
After her birth, and after they spent 45 minutes sewing me up while she sat waiting in a warmer, I was allowed to hold her for two hours. Then, they took her away because I was on a catheter for 24 hours and wasn’t able to get up to care for her. My husband had to go home and I was all alone. She was in the nursery 20 feet down the hall, but it might as well have been 20 miles.
I stayed awake all night, crying silent tears off and on for my baby I so desperately wanted to hold and comfort and discover. I watched the clock until exactly 5:04, the time she was born, the 24-hour mark on my catheter. I called the nurse to have the catheter removed, and walked the halls to regain my strength as quickly as possible so I would be allowed to have my baby back.
They advised me not to nurse her. “The benefits of breastfeeding do not outweigh the risks of the Haldol.” This was the official decree. Well, the doctors were there to help me, so they must know. Right?
The only problem was how much I longed to nurse her. My body wished to act independently of my brain on this point. My brain knew fully well that the doctor had deemed it too risky, but my body said, “Nurse her, nurse her, nurse, nurse, nurse.” A month in, I could no longer ignore my body, so I tried. But it was too late for us. She didn’t understand latching onto a breast and I didn’t understand how to coax her. My milk had come and gone, so it seemed, and I was alone in these waters. No one I knew at the time had nursed a baby. Sadly, I gave her another bottle of formula and resigned myself to this fact of our lives. When she was a year old, we decided it was time to try for another baby.
We quit using birth control. Nothing happened.
We tracked ovulation. Nothing happened.
Finally, we decided I’d take the Haldol on an “as-needed basis” again. Voila! Pregnancy!
Eleven weeks of joyful, expectant pregnancy until the news came that “I’m sorry, but your baby stopped growing at six weeks.”
This began a chain of losses, one after another, most very, very early - eight, nine? I lost count. I questioned myself more than I ever have during that time. I distrusted my body, and became convinced that it was inherently flawed. I knew my husband wanted another baby and considered leaving him so he could find a woman who wasn’t inherently flawed. I read all I came across on infertility, which seemed to come from exactly two camps: the first said it was all luck of the draw, unexplained, but possibly treated with aggressive infertility treatment. The second preached that it was all in my head. My problems were all coming from my negative thinking and if I would just think better everything would be fine. So each time I lost another baby, I blamed myself for not thinking right. It was all my fault.
I blamed God for giving all these other women babies, even women that abused their children or would rather not be pregnant at all. One day when I was out, I went to the bathroom to find I’d started bleeding again although I’d had a confirmed positive test a few days earlier. I drove home saying perhaps the truest prayer I’d ever prayed in my life. Why are you doing this to me? What have I done? You think I’m a bad mother, that I don’t deserve more children? Well you’re wrong! You’re just wrong! It’s not true and I won’t accept it.
Finally, it culminated that rainy day in the office of the infertility specialist. I had at last sought what I considered to be “aggressive treatment,” but when it failed again, I realized that she couldn’t fix me, she wouldn’t fix me, and she really didn’t care one way or another.
I did lose that pregnancy, as she predicted, two days later. I had a few hours of terrible cramping that ended up in two embryos being expelled. I thought, had I not taken that Clomid I would have lost one that month. Instead I lost two. Somehow this felt so wrong to me. Guiltily, I dwelled on the fact that I had caused a second embryo to die by taking this medicine.
I decided I wasn’t able to distance myself emotionally from the procedures, and that this is what seemed necessary when pursuing infertility treatment. I was either going to have to “harden up,” emotionally speaking, or I was going to have to stop infertility treatments. I wasn’t all that interested in hardening my emotions toward my potential children. The specialists might have seen me as just one more woman with embryos that wouldn’t stay put, but I saw each and every embryo as another little soul that wouldn’t be joining our family. I made the decision to seek natural treatment instead of technological treatment.
It was in this moment that I began to take control of my health, my body, and ultimately my life. Nothing would ever be the same again.
In 2004, I took my last dose of Haloperidol. I looked for a naturopath who could help me treat my Tourette’s naturally so I would no longer have to take the Haldol, since it was causing significant fertility issues. A friend recommended a naturopath who, amazingly, had a son with Tourette Syndrome. In fact, it was his struggle with the disease that had drawn her to naturopathic medicine.
We first did an intense liver cleanse. For three weeks, I choked down over 20 huge pills a day - colon cleansers, massive doses of fiber, concentrated green foods, and a high-potency vitamin and mineral mix. I was allowed to eat nothing but fruits and vegetables and a small daily protein allowance. I never knew until then how addicted I was to the Standard American Diet. I never knew withholding carbs and sugar would make me light-headed and quick-tempered. I certainly never knew I would cry over wanting a bowl of plain brown rice I couldn’t have.
My naturopath told me about Weston A. Price (http://www.wapf.org) and the Nourishing Traditions diet book by Sally Fallon. Weston A. Price was a dentist in the early 20th century who was interested in researching the connection between diet and dental health. He traveled the world studying the teeth of native populations who were still subsisting on their ancestral foods and food preparation techniques. He found that all the native populations he studied who had not begun eating processed Western foods had no cavities, excellent tooth structure without overcrowding, and a well-proportioned bone structure. In addition, they had an amazing resistance to disease as compared to nearby populations who had switched to a more processed diet.
Each of these groups had adapted their food preparation techniques to take the most advantage of the foods found in their native environment. Grains were soaked to maximize their usable vitamin and mineral content. Milk and vegetables were fermented to preserve them longer, and these fermented foods were culturally revered as healing foods. Pregnant and nursing women were given special priority to certain foods, such as the fatty organ meats of animals. Nutritional analysis shows that the organ meats have more of those Vitamins A and D we are all told to consume. Interestingly, each of the native cultures were preparing their foods in very similar ways, and valuing the same types of foods over others, regardless of how many continents separated them.
The book resonated with the education I’d received as an Anthropology major in college, and the principles behind the food preparation made good common sense. I strongly believed in its principles, and gradually incorporated the new food preparation techniques.
I eliminated all chemicals, both in my diet and in my environment, whenever I noticed them. MSG, food coloring, artificial sweetener and strange ingredients I couldn’t pronounce were the first to go. Next came harsh household cleaners. As my system was cleansed and the chemicals eliminated, the tics became a little less frequent, and I was able to recognize more insidious triggers by reviewing what I’d eaten before a sudden outbreak.
I continued identifying and eliminating until my tics were no longer a daily fact of life, but instead an irregular, and therefore quite noticeable, occurrence. Out went the high fructose corn syrup. The yeast extract. All meals from chain restaurants. Sulfates. Nitrites. Vanillin. Ultra-pasteurized anything. Almost all bottled vitamins. Non-organic chocolate. Non-organic cocoa. Green tea, watermelon, and other foods high in natural salicylic acid. Soy sauce, tempeh, nutritional yeast, and other foods high in natural glutamic acid.
The list started with the foods normally recognized as junky in those infamous “middle aisles” of the grocery, and ended with much of the conventional produce section, the organic boxed foods section, and even the organic dairy section. I visited a Tourette Syndrome forum on a website dedicated to the natural treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorders (http://www.latitudes.org) so I could read the triggers others had identified and test them to see if I reacted to them. I didn’t find a single trigger noticed by another Tourette’s sufferer that I could tolerate; it turned out that I reacted to nearly everything.
Yet, instead of feeling discouraged by this constant diet elimination, I felt freed. With each new trigger identified and eliminated, I noticed less tics. Using my Tourette’s to guide me, I was becoming clean, and I finally started to think of myself as having been broken for many years rather than inherently flawed.
I held hope that I might one day conceive and carry to term again. I was no longer dependent on doctors or drugs. I was in charge now. I was fixing myself.
As I began to distrust doctors to always tell me the Truth, as I’d naively and unquestionably accepted in the past, I also began to wonder who else I was intrinsically believing that wasn’t necessarily spouting the Truth.
The child that had always bent to authority simply because they demanded it, now - at 35 - questioned everything.
Who says I have to work to keep a good credit report so I can borrow money? Who says I even need to borrow money? Who says cable TV is a need? Who says electric is even a need? Why can’t I live without a car? Why can’t I have chickens in my backyard? And why do I need a permit to build a simple patio?
Why can’t my daughter sleep in our bed until she’s five years old if she’s happy there and we feel safer with her there? Who says only licensed teachers can educate children? Why can’t I homeschool my child away from the kitchen table and more in real life?
Who benefits when my child receives 40 vaccines in her lifetime? Who benefits from claiming as fact that all children should have a college education? And who really benefits from having our 401k money left in the bank while we borrow money over 30 years to build a house?
Do genetically-modified seeds really feed third-world countries? Is RoundUp really safe? Are GMO plants well tested? Why can’t we make money farming organically?
Is the news real and, if it is, are they really reporting the most important new events out there? Do we really have so much to fear, or might we get along just fine if we turn off the news?
Finally, at 37 years old, my body was clean of chemicals, free of drugs, no longer suffering from Tourette’s, and healed by a Nourishing Traditions diet and a regimen of Standard Process supplements created specifically for me by our Weston A. Price chapter leader based on nutritional response testing. I decided the time was right to try again to conceive and the first month was a success.
I didn’t miscarry.
This time, I followed The Brewer’s Diet for healthy pregnancy (http://www.blueribbonbaby.org), counted my protein to be sure I didn’t lazily falling into my carb-heavy habits, ate daily green foods, and carefully supplemented my diet based on my nutritionist’s suggestions.
Nine months later, after being well cared for by a homebirth midwife and my wonderful nutritionist, I had our second daughter, Mazzy, at home, in the water, where she nursed within an hour after her birth, and no one took her from me until I was ready. I was truly healed, inside and out.
When I look back on the naive way that I followed the status quo in the years before my infertility issues, I see a completely different path than the one I’m on now. I no longer trudge down the road, occupied by mundane, fearful, or helpless thoughts fed to me by billboards, television, radio, and even the people I love - all of them being fed the same unending messages.
You have reason to be afraid, but we can protect you. We will fix you.
Instead, I am my own leader, forging my own path that doesn’t include billboards and television news along the way. Often, I even lead others, and they join me on my path awhile until they realize they can make their own paths too.
And when I can turn around and look at that long and winding path behind me, I’m thankful for all the bumps and ruts and heartache it held. For so many years, I was too ashamed to even admit to anyone but my closest circle that I had Tourette Sydnrome; yet, without it, I never would have had reason to so radically alter my diet and the built in gauge to help me to do it. Every day, now and for the rest of my life I expect, I must be meticulously careful about keeping chemicals from my diet and environment. One cup of non-organic coffee ruins the rest of my day. Two straight meals from a chain restaurant can make me miserable with tics for up to a week.
I am now so adept at recognizing chemical triggers that I can detect if something has added chemicals when none are listed on the label. I’ve never felt so in control of my own nutrition and that of my family.
What state would my body be in with a Standard American Diet? Where would my Mazzy be? I can’t imagine my life without her beautiful toothy smile.
When Mazzy was 8 months old, I had a sneaking suspicion there might be something going on. I took a test and lo and behold, two lines again. As I sit here writing this today, this new little soul is wriggling and squirming and kicking inside me, reminding me how fortunate I feel to be carrying another baby past the scary first trimester.
The infertility doctor was right when she walked out of that office: there really was nothing medical she could do for me. But as it turns out, walking away was the best thing she ever could have done.
...
Julie Stockman
lives in farmland, Indiana where she homeschools her children and helps build a little organic homestead with her husband, Jeff. She spends her days baking, gardening, keeping chickens, exploring the nature around them, practicing gratitude and mindfulness, and writing about it all on her blog:
http://heirloomhomestead.blogspot.com.
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