From Bedridden to Playing Volleyball: Healing My Auto-Immune Issues and Healthily Dealing with Trauma, Mental Roadblocks, and Chronic Fatigue with Healthy Food, Prayer, and More
/This island girl is back! Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
I Was Bedridden
Yes, I was bed-ridden! Then I was bed and chair-ridden -- swapping back and forth from bed to my La-Z-Boy recliner (I call it my healing chair travel with when we move when I can). Just months ago, I couldn’t even go outside to sit down and watch my children play without fearing my immune system would plummet and get mastitis with a fever and painful breasts just because “I did a little.”
I Feel Amazing!
Franicia playing volleyball in NW Arkansas
Now, I feel amazing! I’m probably around 95-98% where I think I could be because I’m still nursing (depending on how much sleep or overall rest time for my body I give), have only a few more warts left on my chin (yes, I just admitted that), have been able to go on walks with the family (even if I’m extremely slow compared to them), watch my children play or take them to play outdoors for the past few weeks, and have started cleaning our house and cooking here and there.
Remember, this is on top of homeschooling our 8 children, investing in our different brands, designing a ton of products we’ve been selling on Amazon or our websites, working on more entrepreneurial things that have to be explained later (basically hustling a lot with selling our own new products and used products on ebay and more, and making sure I keep the first things first like time in God’s Word and with Jesus, quality time with Tim and my children, making it to at least our main worship service on the Lord’s Day, and investing a little in relationships outside our home when there’s time.
This is an unusual post because I’m trying to explain a short bit of the huge improvement and change I’ve gone through, and thank so many of our loved ones, friends, and others who’ve prayed for us -- especially my health -- over the last few years. Only Tim and my children truly knew what I was going through, how bad I became, and the great improvements in my health and energy. I don’t want to feel bad or allow negative emotions or feelings from others further pull me down.
Not Interested in Buying Products
Please don’t try to sell me your health products. Thank you for caring, but, if you’ve read this far, you’ll see that I’m doing amazingly well. What I’m doing now is working. Please try to take what I’m about to say with as much grace, love, and understanding as you can: I’m trying to save myself time from explaining to all the friends (or those who out of the blue wanted to connect as a friend only to sell me their MLM probiotic or product and have health issues themselves) who may write to me after reading this. I just don’t have that kind of time and energy to re-explain at length why I’m not interested.
So Many Have Noticed My Improvement
I’m also sharing this introductory portion because I’ve been asked by so many people from our church and elsewhere for months what I’m doing that is helping me to be stronger and look more and more revived, have more color in my complexion, and look vibrant. So, when I write a random short post to explain things, I won’t have to list this long explanation again.
Synopsis of My Low Points and Improvements
Here is a brief synopsis of some of my health challenges as well as accomplishments:
August 2018 - I home-birthed Gabriel, but I struggled with many things beforehand that I believe caused me to have my first warts in my life and on my face (chin)!
Late 2018 - My health was still not improving and mysterious skin rashes started appearing that itched and ended up being candida-related.
Late 2018 - I started a new meal plan (AIP or auto-immune protocol) and started applying a lot of what I was learning from a functional medicine doctor I found online. We changed some of her recipes, but we mainly used ours with principles from AIP applied. Just knowing the gist of what we needed to do or get rid of along with understanding what was going on with my body was very helpful.
February 2019 - We paid to be a part of the doctor’s candida challenge so I could ask her nursing-specific questions as well as see if the lifestyle would help my son’s autoimmune disease of psoriasis in any way.
Prior to May 2019 - I suffered through perhaps 9-10 back-to-back painful and debilitating nursing infection issues of mastitis and clogged milk ducts. The first time I had around 8-10 back-to-back mastitis issues for the first time in my life was after we dealt with a lot and suffered more trauma after the Chattanooga, Tennessee terrorist attack on July 16, 2015 at Tim’s work (military installation), where he was almost killed, tried to shoot the terrorist, and sadly five loved and brave men were killed (one of the five was mortally wounded and later succumbed to his wounds). Note to that two pregnancies prior to this attack, my doctor got blood work on me and warned that I had adrenal fatigue. She warned me that it could turn into adrenal failure or worse like lupus, some other autoimmune disease, and even cancer if I didn’t make some serious changes even with childbearing.
Walking with Tim and our children to the beach close to our house in Pensacola
May 19, 2019 - I walked 4 miles (very slowly) to and from a beach with my family. I hadn’t taken a beach walk there with them in two years since we moved here!
May 21 - We drove to Chattanooga for Tim’s work trip and then to Knoxville for a friend’s wedding later that weekend. Halfway during our drive to Chattanooga, Tim asked me if I needed him to turn back around to get me home because I didn’t have a ton of strength still and had made a last-minute decision to try to walk miles to the beach with them only a couple of days before our long road trip from NW Florida to SE Tennessee with a nursing baby (so stopping every couple of hours so I could nurse). Nursing almost always doubles the hours of a trip (five hour journey turning into ten hours, etc.).
June 23 - During Sunday worship with our church, I nursed without any pillow support so I could sing as much as possible with the assembly. I also had enough strength to take little Priscilla to the restroom even after I nursed. We also had a total of 50+ people at our house after church service for a last-minute get-together (food and sweet fellowship) we put together on Saturday —- which was only a few days after we got back from traveling for a funeral in NW Arkansas! We would have invited more people if we weren’t limited by our base passes.
Still Getting Better
Tim was so sweet to buy me roses for our anniversary!
Currently, I feel great but sometimes tired (understandably) and need to nap or at least lay down in bed because of our historical house’s a/c issues as well as my getting fewer hours of sleep in the last few weeks due to all the excitement, trips, and our working on the logistics of moving to Texas in about eight weeks. There are a lot of things I don’t want to push myself to do (or certain circumstances or battles to deal with) because I know it could cause my health to decline.
You Can Try What I’ve Done Without Spending a Lot
I am grateful to God for how He’s healed me and allowed me to have shared already with so many people we care about who’ve asked! I’m excited that I don’t have to sell products to people for others to get better or tell you that you have to buy a supplement that is only to be found by one source like my doctor (you can get it on Amazon or probably in a local store).
More To Come
What I’m hoping to share in the coming weeks and months is what you can do with your own budget. You can choose where to buy your own food and supplements like garlic or collagen while working on your own walk with God. We’ve liked to say in our family that good food is medicine as well as preventative medicine and that we do all things to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31) even in fitness, health, and food.