I have struggled with my health for most of my life. During that struggle, I have developed many practical solutions in dealing with my health. I can’t offer advice but what I do offer is my experience and tell how I was able to overcome my poor health. In doing so, I hope others will also find ways to take charge of their health care and find better quality of life.
I have experienced the following illnesses: Scarlet Fever, PTSD, Hepatitis C, Mixed Cryoglobulenemia, Cancer, Diabetes II, Fibromyalgia, High Blood Pressure,Depression, and Anxiety. I have experienced healing from these diseases. I still struggle with Plantar Facetious, Sinus Tachycardia, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Fatty Liver, and I have some Liver Cirrhosis as a result of having Hepatitis C for 33 years. I’m now dealing with hypothyroidism as a result of damage caused to my thyroid by hepatitis c treatment. I have also, developed metabolic syndrome, as the direct result of my dysfunctional thyroid gland.
I have experienced what it is like to undergo difficult treatment, the worst of which was 40 weeks of chemotherapy for Hepatitis C. The original treatment was set at 48 weeks but I experienced major side effects in every system of my body and had to cut the treatment short. However, 40 weeks was long enough and I am now free of the virus. Treatment is not easy and in my case, it made me feel much worse than the Hepatitis ever did. Enduring this treatment was well worth it as the reward is feeling better now than I have in decades.
I had emergency surgery in 2001 as a cone biopsy wouldn’t quit hemorrhaging. I had a complete hysterectomy, complicated by a pulmonary embolism. Post surgical biopsy showed that I had carcinoma insitue and was a possible explanation for the bleeding.
Enduring all that I have endured has created in me a very knowledgable empathy for others, as they struggle for good health. I’m not a doctor, but I have learned a lot and I have some very soft shoulders to cry on. I know what it is to suffer isolation and need so badly to talk to someone outside of my family and not cause them anymore worry. I hope to be able to offer some of that needed emotional support to others at Boomer Back-Beat.
My major source of support in managing my health and in gaining greater health, is my faith in, Jesus. Being weak taught me to rely upon He Who is strong. I have faced death more than once and I know what it is like to live with the uncertainty of chronic disease. I don’t have all the answers but I know the One Who does and I hope my faith may strengthen the faith of others who are now walking in the place where I’ve been. Non-believers, believers of another faith, and fellow believers in Christ, are all welcome at Boomer Back-Beat. In everything that is offered here, take what is helpful to you and throw the rest away.
I am sorry that you were so sick for so much of your life. I believe that a lot of us who are survivors of childhood abuse grow up to suffer more physical ailments that most people do partly because we have a higher pain tolerance level than most people so we tend to ignore the earlier symptoms.
My fear of authority figures also slowed down my reaching out for medical treatment when I was younger. Also being taught that my needs were not important as a child played into delayed or no medical attention in the early stages of many of my illnesses when I was younger.
When I was a child, I was rarely taken to a doctor when I got sick. An example: I sufferred from bronchitis every Winter as child. When I took my own children to the doctor, I never knew that their bronchitis was the same as the “chest colds” that I got and had ignored when I was a child.
When I left home at 19, I didn’t get chest colds again until I was doing 12-Step healing work and got bronchitis sometime in my 40′s. When I went to the doctor and he said that I had bronchitis, then I knew that I had been seriously sick and ignored when I got bronchitis every Winter as a child.
The healing of my incest issues in my 40′s brought back the emotional garbage of my childhood. I believe that is why I got bronchitis. I have had it once since then about 10 years ago. That was a very emotional time for me too. Thank you for reaching out to help others.
Patricia,
I was a premie and I nearly died right after my parents brought me home. They found me not breathing. I was allowd to eat only candy when I was a toddler and I was given alchohol (sometimes too much) in place of medication. My dad didn’t believe in going to the doctor unless we were nearly dead. I develped Scarlet Fever and was very sick before I was finally taken to the emergency room. It took a year for me to recover and I had to walk again. I didn’t have a very good start health-wise. I think I also knew that being sick was a way to get my mom to pay attention to me. I have a hard time understanding where the line is between the emotional causes of my poor health and the physical reasons. I do believe that the way I was treated contributed to my health problems. The hepatitis was a direct result of my painful childhood.
It is interesting that my healing has been on both the physical and emotional levels at once even though, I know the hepatitis was erradicated through chemical treatment. I attribute it to God. It stinks being sick but God is good and we never know what the future may hold and today is no indicator of tomorrow.
It makes me sad that you have suffered so much also, Patricia. I also know that it is suffering that enlarges our copacity for compassion. I see that compassion in you. You have risen from your pain to support others. I am blessed by that.
Pam
Hi Pam,
You know I can hardly write this because you as well as Patricia have truely touched my heart so! May I tell you both that you are beautiful and thatthe beautiy is that God gathers kindred spirits to console one another just when it is needed.
There is so very much running through my mind and I want to thank you for coming to our blog and allowing your spirit to work. I felt you then as I feel you now and I am more than 6,000 miles away. Thank you for your caring words as today is in memory of my mom’s birthday and it was you that inspired me to write that poem and do that sketch as I read your reply telling me all about your grandmother and your life yesterday, THANK YOU! I was sitting here reading and listening to my husband and he will tell you as I was smiling I started sketching and writing. I never even knew I could sketch…hehehehe…see how good God is. Don’t laugh, but I didn’t figure out how to get to your blog until just now or I would have been sooner. It is BEAUTIFUL!!!smile
Anyway, on another note, I have not suffered the child abuse and all Patricia has and I truly admire her and will visit her blog as well. She has touched me in all she said and I am proud of how she has grown past so very much and inspire others. My childhood was quite the opposite, and all I know is love from both my parents and family.
Nevertheless, to have been close in a loving way and then suddenly hold them each in your arms literally and she them each take their last breathe a month apart can cause a part of you to die with them each as well. Had I not worked in the hospital for so many years and been able to be there when my other sisters and brother couldn’t was a blessing that I know God had prepared me for. To see your mom being severely diabetic , hypertensive and with kidney failure become totally blind and paralyzed from the neck down and literally each organ and system shut down in her body and you be the one who have to make all the decisions at one hospital; while your dad is battling for his life after suffering a stroke , a heart attack and on 24/7 oxygen and neither have any health insurance while he is at another hospital and be given only a few days to live but God give him a little longer and all you see is smiles on his face is God’s joy.
And later, you find out through it all you now have diabetics, hypertension and literally lost hearing in both your ears but somehow you were able to write a novel called , Feelings and dedicate it to your parents, family and friends and through getting it published at 50 years of age you finally find your soulmate, a fellow author and you both know it is meant through the grace of God, you accept his invitation, migrate to England, marry and now six years later with all that has happened you can write and tell about it is nothing but a miracle and only from God. This is my testimonony and it was reading the precious words from both you and Patricia that helped me to share it. I am still being healed and I am so veru grateful to know there are so many caring individuals like the both of you. THANK YOU. Whew!!! I have said a mouthful and you both know I had not planned on saying or writing all that but thst is the power of the spirit.
I will be back to visit often but for now, have a wonderful day…
Blessings,
Tempie
of
Albert and Tempie Williams
Tempie,
I was very excited to see that you left a comment. Thank you and welcome!
If there is anything we human beings have in common, it is suffering. We all suffer on some level and no one form of suffering is greater than another. I’m so glad to hear of the loving relationship that you had with your parents. I’m sad that you had to watch them go and I know you will always feel that loss. I’m also sad to hear of your health problems but very encouraged by how God has also blessed your life. I’m also a late bloomer simply because God appointed this time to me. We’re part of the same garden!:0)
I’m so looking forward to getting to know you better.
Pam
God has heard and His physicians are at work Good health is our birthright and education is liberation regarding health issues. I have been listening and have been noting the drop in spirit when we look back at early years of abuse and ignorance.This is a tactic of the evil one. Physical illness maybe or not be connected to past experiences. Bronchitis is connected to pollution. Amy Carmichael a missionary of a previous generation fell and broke her hip she was confined to bed for 20 years and most of her books were written during that time. To-day had that happened she would have been on her feet and possibly had the Martha spirit and never found the time to write. Someone somewhere saw this situation and sought a remedy and someone somewhere has listened and the whole scene in medicine is changing slowly. Let us throw aside every weight that clings the weight. http://femmeinternationale.sharepoint.com
Mary, Welcome to Boomer Back-Beat and thank you for taking the time to comment. It’s true that when God has a purpose for us to fill, He doesn’t allow illness or anything the evil one throws at us to prevent His Will being accomplished through Him. He doesn’t desire evil for His Children but He really does work the evil to our good.
Some of the illness I’ve had, I can trace directly to abuse. The scarlet fever for instance was a direct consequence of my parents neglecting to take me to the doctor. I was sick for a year and had to learn to walk again. I can also, trace the hep c directly to my self-abuse through drugs, I was sick with that for 33 years. I could have easily died or lived a totally useless life but God gave me the strength to overcome and avenues of service to Him. I would not appreciate His goodness so much if I hadn’t experienced so much evil. In all things it is possible to give thanks to God because He never abandons us. Whatever we have to endure, Jesus endurs it with us.
Love,
Pam
Hello Pam and others. On a daily basis health issues and chronic illness absorb a significant amount of mental, emotional, and depleted energy reserves generally speaking. The Lord has brought me through an onslaught of multiple physical diagnoses and treatments over the last eleven years. The loss of home, careers, financial stability and savings, social and relational contacts, self-confidence, and confidence in my own mental and physical functioning at times propelled me to a living in a subsudized studio apartment relying each month on social assistance. This of course is not the life I envisioned at this stage of my life. I am grateful for my humble abode, it is much preferred to living out of my car or on the street which seemed to be the logical conclusion had my present housing not become available. My income each month is enough to get by on…no frills and I am confined to the parameters of a town I had to move to by default because of the financial losses related to ill health. This town is not my kind of town as the lyric to the song indicates. My heart is set on living in much more desirable locations where the options and quality of life over all would likely contribute to improved health overall and maybe even opportunities to supplement my income by working a few hours a week. I feel like a bird confined to a tiny and foreign cage. Certain freedoms of movement and mobility are no longer mine to enjoy and to feel empowered by. In fact feeling disempowered personally has been one af the most difficult aspects of living with chronic illness day by day. My body has not been producing adequate strength and energy to make social or any other connections outside of these walls. So again on a daily basis it is a matter of accepting a myriad of limitations that I wish were no there. Yes, I have learned patience to a degree and to be thankful for the smallest of accomplishments during a day, or for the completion of a string of quite ordinary tasks. Like simply getting up, getting dressed, bathing, attending to eating in one way or another, making sure my bills are paid. Yes, the simplest of tasks cause me to thank God throughout the day. Hey, Lord look what I did, or rather look what we did! Thank you for the strength and ability. The other day I applied myself to completing 2 housing applications for towns that would allow me to bust out of here. Patience again required because the wait list can be years long. God does specialize in miracles does He not? Here I was making copies of various documents required to complete the applications. What a muddle. Okay, now I have copies of this and this yes,and those over there, but, which ones go where? A simple task such as sorting papers and attaching them to the right document can seem like doing a mathematical equation way beyond my abiliy. Even so I do persevere to the conclusion and then I try not to judge myself for getting so confused and for tending to take possibly six time longer to do a simple task that someonelse can breeze through. As is also typical I don’t alway seem to be able to place all the pages in the envelope without forgetting something essential before sealing it up. So I had to post the page I forget to attach to one of the applicions by seperate cover. It was the page with my signature on it which I had forgotten in the printer.
To be candid about this here is quite a step for me because in the past I would have done all I could to hide my weakneses from others. I believed that it was not acceptable for me to make mistakes or to be slow at performing tasks.
Regarding powerlessness, something I dread beyond knowing. I am now learning to, accept my powerlessness and most of all not to judge myself but to offer myself self-compassion, acceptance and approval while reminding myself of God’s acceptance and approval of me despite my shortcomings, and failures.
I like to remind myself that in my weakness He is strong! My options for life
have become narrow and limited I do have the riches and wealth of trust and faith in an all Powerful and Compassionate God. Will He make a way for me to follow my heart to the community with all of its promise that I dream of moving to? If yes, then when? If no then what? Back to surrender to God’s
will, timing, and provision. I must surrender my powerlessness to His Powerfulness and the belief that as He knows the beginning from the end that I am safest and most protected depending on the Goodness of the character and nature of God even when I am tempted to think otherwise. God is Good all the time!
Thank you for being there.
Laura,
I’m sad to hear that you are having such a difficult time. Loss of independence with an uncertain future is a hard pill to swallow. In know though, that your future isn’t uncertain in God’s eyes. His plan for you hasn’t changed. He’ll lead you where you are to go and you’ll be made better for it. One thing for sure, when we are in, Jesus, we are assured a bright future.
It’s so hard to deal with one bad diagnosis after another. I know that everytime I get a new diagnosis, there is a period of painful, adjustment. When they come one right after the other, or in clusters, it can seem like every time one manages to get back on their horse, they get knocked off again. It can also, make you want to give up. I too, have been very discouraged about being sick again. For awhile, I was asking God to please, just take me home. I don’t get to decide those things though. I have to tough it out and look toward a future where I’ll never be sick again.
I hope you are able to move where you want to be. I’ll be praying for you and remember, you always have sympathetic ear and a sounding board here. It was really good to hear from you again, Laura. God bless you, keep you, and lead you.
Love,
Pam
Thank you Pam for your compassionate response which is especially meaningful because of your own battles with health and life. The idea that with each passing day I am one step closer to my permanent dwelling place with God is a comfort and offers some consolation. At my age I am at least 2/3rd’s through the journey. Scary thought, each of my dear grandmothers lived into their nineties. I sometimes joke that I am holding God to the threescore years and ten time frame. I don’t want to go beyond seventy years at the most. Within that time frame I have seven more to put in on this old earth.
All I can say is Lord may it be so! I can only hope that what most often feel like feeble prayers for my family members and others do have an impact for the Kingdom of God. That is a contribution I can make although I often feel it is such a puny offering. Not so in God’s economy I am encouraged to think as I write.
Excerpt below taken from The Secret of Guidance by F.B. Meyer Part Seven (free online) He offers a profound undstanding on the topic of sorrow. May it provide some comfort and consolation for those in need of such…
“Be sure to learn God’s lessons. Each sorrow carries at its heart a germ of holy truth, which if you get and sow in the soil of your heart will bear harvests of fruit, as seed corns from mummy cases fruit in English soil. God has a meaning in each blow of His chisel, each incision of His knife. He knows the way that He takes. But His object is not always clear to us.
In suffering and sorrow God touches the minor chords, develops the passive virtues, and opens to view the treasures of darkness, the constellations of promise, the rainbow of hope, the silver light of the covenant. What is character without sympathy, submission, patience, trust, and hope that grips the unseen as an anchor? But these graces are only possible through sorrow. Sorrow is a garden, the trees of which are laden with the peaceable fruits of righteousness; do not leave it without bringing them with you. Sorrow is a mine, the walls of which glisten with precious stones; be sure and do not retrace your steps into daylight without some specimens. Sorrow is a school. You are sent to sit on its hard benches and learn from its black lettered pages lessons which will make you wise forever; do not trifle away your chance of graduating there. Miss Havergal used to talk of “turned lessons ! ”
Count on the afterward. God will not always be causing grief. He traverses the dull brown acres with His plough, seaming the yielding earth that He may be able to cast in the precious grain. Believe that in days of sorrow He is sowing light for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. Look forward to the reaping. Anticipate the joy which is set before you, and shall flood your heart with minstrel notes when patience has had her perfect work.
You will live to recognize the wisdom of God’s choice for you. You will one day see that the thing you wanted was only second best. You will be surprised to remember that you once nearly broke your heart and spilt the wine of your life for what would never have satisfied you if you had caught it, as the child the butterfly or soap bubble. You will meet again your beloved. You will have again your love. You will become possessed of a depth of character, a breadth of sympathy, a fund of patience, an ability to understand and help others, which, as you lay them at Christ’s feet for Him to use, will make you glad that you were afflicted. You will see God’s plan and purpose; you will reap His harvest; you will behold His face, and be satisfied. Each wound will have its pearl; each carcass will contain a swarm of bees; each foe, like Midian to Gideon, will yield its goodly spoil.
The way of the cross, rightly borne, is the only way to the everlasting light. The path that threads the Garden of Gethsemane, and climbs over the hill of Calvary, alone conducts to the visions of the Easter morning and the glories of the Ascension mount. If we will not drink of His cup, or be baptized with His baptism, or fill up that which is behind of His sufferings, we cannot expect to share in the joys of His espousals and the ecstasy of His triumph. But if these conditions are fulfilled, we shall not miss one note in the everlasting song, one element in the bliss that is possible to men.
Remember that somehow suffering rightly borne enriches and helps mankind. The death of Hallam was the birthday of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam.” The cloud of insanity that brooded over Cowper gave us the hymn, “God moves in a mysterious way.” Milton’s blunders taught him to sing of “Holy light, offspring of heaven’s first born.” Rist used to say, “The cross has pressed many songs out of me.” And it is probable that none rightly suffer anywhere without contributing something to the alleviation of human grief, to the triumph of good over evil, of love over hate, and of light over darkness.
If you believe this, could you not bear to suffer? Is not the chief misery of all suffering its loneliness, and perhaps its apparent aimlessness? Then dare to believe that no man dieth to himself. Fall into the ground, bravely and cheerfully, to die. If you refuse this, you will abide alone; but if you yield to it, you will bear fruit which will sweeten the lot and strengthen the life of others who perhaps will never know your name, or stop to thank you for your help.”
F.B. Meyer wrote on the subject of sorrow with his profound understanding I will include an excerpt here.
Laura, Thank you for sharing this. I know it isn’t God’s Will for us to suffer from evil but He does govern over evil, as He works for the ultimate good of all. He does this personally, in our individual lives, as well. Every evil He allows, is for the purpose of causing us to turn back to Him. In this way, He shows us how to overcome evil with good. We can only do that when we trust in Him and cling to Him, through the suffering that all of us experience in life. I know, Jesus is all that has kept me from giving up or becoming overwhelmed with hatred and bitterness. He preserves me and keeps me whole in the face of everything that has threatened to tear me apart.
As for the lenght of life, I know God has numbered our days and we will live every last, one of them! When it is done, we will be glad for it because everything we suffer, gives us a deeper understanding of what, Jesus went through so that we could be reconciled to God. No matter how hard life has been for me, I have no regrets because it was in this life that I met, Jesus. Sorrow is sweet in His presence. Living always, with the awareness of His presence, is what I long for. Right now, I live in that awareness for awhile and then the world distracts me and when it does, I either experience pain or cause it. When we enter the new world that is to come, there will be no pain because our awareness will always be in tune with our Father. That is a wonderful time to look forward to and to also, enjoy now. In Christ, we are eternal beings and days have no number in eternity. We can enjoy that perfect world to come even, while living in this upside down place. The new world is our home, our destination, as we pass through this world that man has built by his own understanding, which is corrupt, painful, sorrowful, and ruled by evil through the power of fear. I can’t imagine that I would have survived such a world without, Jesus in my life. My heart breaks for all of those who live in such a world with no knowledge of God. They are the reason we are left here, Laura. The only difference betwee you and I and any nonbeliever is, Jesus. If I had survived, I would be hardened by evil, if Jesus hadn’t reached down and rescued me. We have so much to be thankful for. What we are going through now is just a small speck, in comparison to the fullness of our eternity in, Christ. We will endure with our eyes set on, Jesus.
Don’t stay away so long, Laura. I would still love to have you write a guest post for me. You express yourself beautifully and there is nothing like sharing one’s faith and life with others to heal our hearts and strengthen us to fight our personal battles. You are a dear sister and also, a warrior woman in Christ.:0) Bright days are ahead!
Love,
pam
Thank you for your encouragement and for sharing your heart and thoughts.
Warm regards.