HIDDEN 
CREEK 
HEALTH

My Story... MIGRAINES, PMS, MCS, AND ANXIETY GET UPROOTED!
Hi, my name is Chelle. Like many professionals in the natural health field, my story starts with some pretty serious health challenges that the medical community just could not help me overcome. It's not a pretty story - but, spoiler alert: it has a very happy ending. That's my passion - helping people find their happy ending and then watching the door open to their new beginning.

What My Life was Like
I had been emotionally out of control for years. I was only in my early 20's, but I struggled with a lifetime of excruciating migraines and unexplainable mood swings. Random smells, like perfume, paint fumes, or the laundry detergent aisle in the store triggered bizarre reactions. Back in those days, people smoked in the house, companies (like the aluminum smelter in our town) released heavy metal toxic wastes into the air and water, and no one had heard of MCS (multiple chemical sensitivity). There were times when I would get dizzy for no reason, or unable to focus on a task for more than a few minutes, or suddenly short-tempered. We just chalked it up to the red in my hair, or other stereotypical excuses because it didn't seem to make sense. We didn't understand that the migraines and the chemical sensitivity were interconnected with hormones. In fact, it took us a long time to recognize that my symptoms were hormonal because they were not limited to the standard three-day PMS (pre-menstrual syndrome) diagnosis. My symptoms lasted for 12-14 days. This was half of my life!

I had good weeks and bad weeks and I had learned to adapt. On the good weeks, I was a super-mom (my favorite thing!), I visited my extended family, and served in our local church. On the bad weeks, I was a couch potato, postponing family outings, and faking it for an hour at church. No one knew. I was completely embarrassed to admit to anyone that I had PMS (as if I had failed in some way). I had no daily accountability with girlfriends who could relate. While isolation seemed to protect me from making a fool of myself in front of others, ultimately, it locked me up with anxiety and hopelessness. 

I had survived two high-risk pregnancies, and after weaning my second child, my doctor immediately put me on a low-dose birth control pill. Although this drug promised to have no side effects in 99% of women, it soon became evident that I was a card-carrying member of that lousy 1%, which was no surprise to me since I had always been sensitive to prescriptions and over-the-counter medications. (I took a Dramamine in college once and it caused such a dramatic reaction that the Resident Advisor in my dorm almost wrote me up for illegal drug use!) Unable to bear the side effects of the pill, which lasted for 25 days of my 28-day cycle, I then refused to take it, trading in 25 days of misery for the 12-14 days of terrorizing PMS. 

At this point, my PMS symptoms returned at a new level of debilitation. During the good weeks, I found myself trying to catch up on all the household chores and family fun. I lived in the moment and I thought I was fine. Then the dreaded bad weeks would sneak back in again. I had extreme anxiety. I couldn't sleep. I was so exhausted that I laid on the floor all day just playing with the children. I struggled to focus long enough to prepare a decent lunch for us and it had reached the point that I could no longer stand or focus long enough to make something as simple as macaroni and cheese. I suffered from extreme anxiety and went into a panic attack every evening convinced that my husband would die in a car crash on his way home from work. Confusion was my constant companion and rendered me helpless to even handle a simple phone call. In the time it took for someone to answer the phone (this was before cell phones), I would already have forgotten who I was calling. Even if I recognized the voice on the other end, I would forget why I had called them. By the time I struggled through the call and hung up the phone, my body was drenched in sweat. 

My "problems" were beyond management. I had to face the fact that I was not functioning like a normal adult. One night in a restaurant, a lady was admiring our little family. She asked me how old my children were, and I replied, "Four and six." Being that the girls were actually only one and three at the time, you can imagine the look of bewilderment on her face. I recognized that look and realized that my answer was probably wrong.  My thought process was basically: If I could remember what year they were born in, then maybe she can figure out their age and tell me how old my children are.

The Doctor's Diagnosis

My doctor was definitely agitated by my refusal to stay on birth control. His explanation went pretty much like this, "It is imperative that you understand how serious your situation is. You must not get pregnant again. Pregnancy puts your life in grave danger. You barely survived your last pregnancy and it is nothing short of a miracle that the baby lived. Based on your medical history, it is evident that you will never be able to carry a child to full term."

He went on, "Studies have shown and it has been proven in my own experience that a woman who has pre-eclampsia or toxemia with one pregnancy can have future healthy pregnancies. However, if a woman has a second consecutive pregnancy in which pre-eclampsia occurs, she will continue to have this condition in future pregnancies growing more and more toxic with each delivery happening earlier and earlier. It was all we could do to hold you out until 35 weeks last time. You were lucky."

But that wasn't all, "Furthermore, these women all had severe PMS cases which progressed over time. You will be on depression medication for the rest of your life, and it is most probable that you will be institutionalized at the time you reach menopause." 

My Response

Surprisingly bold, especially given my mental state at the time, I refused to accept his prescription for my future. Oh, I knew the diagnosis to be true - I was already swirling around in the hellhole he described. I just never realized the depths that hole could take me.

But in my heart, I knew that I could not be medicated. My concern was heightened by the fact that within three years I would be on experimental medications and still be facing a future in a psychiatric institution. 

I challenged his pharmaceutical prescription and insisted that there must be a safer way to manage my problem.

My Doctor Gave up on Me

Frustrated with my refusal to cooperate, my doctor looked at his watch and gave me this curt response as he closed my file, "Alright, Mrs. Carter, I know what your problem is. In fact, my wife has PMS and experiences some of the same symptoms you describe. The problem is hypoglycemia which causes an increase in insulin, which intensifies your already erratic hormone level ultimately causing a decrease in seratonin to your brain. I have no doubt that you have a severe case of hypoglycemia, so severe in fact, that testing you would be too risky.

"It is possible to reverse the symptoms through a change in diet. First of all, no caffeine. Secondly, no salt. Thirdly, absolutely no sugar, at all. 

"Let me be very clear here. You have to read every package and every box and every can of everything you buy. If you see the word sodium-anything, or the words corn syrup, fructose, sucrose, etc., you do not buy it. You must write down everything that you eat and you cannot waiver from this diet."

Finally! Something that sounded reasonable. I asked him why he never mentioned this in all the time that I had been coming to him for help?

"Mrs. Carter, I have been in the medical field for over twenty years, and I haven't met a woman yet who successfully managed her health through diet. Hang on to that prescription I gave you. You're going to want it."

God Never Gives Up on Me:

As I walked out of that office into the bright light of day, I called out to the Lord. "Oh God, what am I going to do?" I was overwhelmed by information and hopelessness. "Please help me. Lord, I know this isn't the Garden of Eden, but you did not create me to be sick. You did not create my girls to have a sick mother. I want to be well!"

My family couldn't understand how I felt. My doctor couldn't help me. When I had no one else to turn to, I finally turned to God. 

Over the next two weeks, God brought three ladies across my path. The first lady was about ten years older than me. She shared with me that she, too, struggled with PMS. This was the first time I ever heard anyone talk about it. It was the first time I didn't feel weird and alone in the world. The second lady was about 20 years older than me. I went to her car to tell her how much we enjoyed her bringing her teenage son to youth group and that we would like to see him more often. She hung her head and pulled me close and shared with me that she was struggling with PMS symptoms so severe, that she never knew if she would even be able to leave the house to drop him off. I was shocked that she had PMS at her age, and she told me, "Oh, honey, it just gets worse!" The third lady was about 30 years older than me. She was a family friend from church and the librarian in my school who had always been very kind to me. Now, she was being placed in an institution. My mother said, "Nobody knows what's wrong with her." But in my spirit, I knew. Had this sweet lady suffered in silence her entire adult life? It was beyond coincidence - I believe that God was painting a picture of what was in store for me if I did not change my life.  

When the doctor told me he had "never seen a woman manage her health with diet," he wasn't being condescending or flippant. There was a sorrow in it. I felt challenged by his statement - like I NEEDED to be the WOMAN who would do it! I knew he believed it would work. What I didn't know, was where to start? 

It All Started with Prayer

I recognized something different about the prayer I prayed that day when I walked out of the doctor's office. It came from somewhere deep in my spirit. I bought a book called "Praying God's Word," and I prayed the prayers out loud. It changed me. 

I bought every book I could find about PMS and in my two weeks of sanity each month I studied and took careful notes. One book said never eat avocados because they are all fat, and another book advised to eat avocados because they are a good fat. I sorted through the conflicting advice and at one point I had 23 self-conflicting books written by "experts" in a stack and I noticed that they all started with, "How to manage your disease," or "coping with chronic illness," or "you can live a normal life in spite of your condition." In another stack there were three very short weird hippy books, but they all started with the same message: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE SICK.

That actually sounded too good to be true. But I remembered that prayer in my spirit... "I WANT TO BE WELL!" Suddenly, I shoved all 23 of the "expert" books off the table, and in one fell swoop I joined the hippy movement, accidentally becoming a "granola girl" at a time when we didn't have organic options in grocery stores and cauliflower wasn't cool. These three little books agreed with the doctor's recommendation to remove processed foods from my diet AND they showed me how to do it. 

I followed the cleanses and natural health plans outlined in the books. I began getting physically stronger, but fear and anxiety constantly held me back. Then one night as I lay awake in bed battling insomnia, I felt my chest beating so hard that I wondered if I would die. I prayed to God, thanking Him for helping me and showing me a way out of sickness. I said, "If I have to lay here awake all night, I will find You." Immediately, I had a vision of a rope coming from Heaven. In the vision I started climbing that rope knot by knot into the darkness above. Then the sky opened and there was a great mountain before me. On that mountain was a man. Even from behind, I knew that man was Jesus. He turned and looked at me - a look that said, "Are you coming or not?" Without hesitation, I leapt forward and began clamoring up the mountain. I didn't really understand about visions and I wondered if this was real. I mean, I never wanted to go to die and leave my family and young children behind, but in this moment, I was completely captivated. There was no way I was not going to follow Jesus wherever He led. So I followed. Climbing and climbing. Not knowing where we were going. This seemed to go on for hours. Then suddenly, it was as if He pushed me into the rock - like a cave, maybe. In that place, I instantly fell into a deep sleep. 

When I woke up the next morning, I felt different. So alive. So free. I sat straight up in bed and asked God, "Where was I?" Then I saw where I had been - in the crook of His arm! He had held me through the night like a loving parent cradles a newborn baby. Experiencing God's love in such a real and personal way changed me. The fear was gone. I was filled with hope. 

Things happened fast from that point forward. The words of my doctor trickled out of the locked doors in my mind like clues and I stopped hyper-focusing on the PMS symptoms and dealt with the deeper issue of hypoglycemia. This propelled my health forward, but also made me want more. I kept pondering the doctors' diagnosis of preeclampsia and toxemia until it finally connected for me that my body was just toxic. This opened the door to cleansing. That's when the complications with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) became evident. So I cleaned out every potentially toxic chemical in our home, including skin care products. Throughout all of this time, the Lord was ministering to my heart and the Word was coming alive in me. As I received His love and mercy, so many hurts and disappointments were released. Could it be that emotions were also at the root of it all? Certainly, they were an integral piece of the puzzle. 

Within six short months, my hormonal cycle was in balance, migraines were a rarity, and chemical reactions were minimized! God gave me the super-power to make hard changes, He guided me in the knowledge to dig for treasure all the way down to the root cause, and, BONUS, He used the changes I was making in our home and family diet to also heal my then 3-year-old daughter from hearing loss and earaches along the way! (Here's a Ta-Da picture of my girls when they were actually 4 and 6. Tap, ballet, jazz... now we were living life to the fullest!)

Remember how the doctor told me if I ever got pregnant again I would die? Well, nine years later, I had a healthy pregnancy and delivery of a healthy baby... Then another one... Then another one. Not one, but THREE VICTORY babies! Although now I was into home-birthing, I still thanked God for the obstetrician who gave me three simple pieces of advice that completely saved my life, AND for challenging me to do it! Did you know that doctors are not allowed to give dietary advice? (Crazy regulation that dietitians banned together to get passed.) While it may have seemed at the time like he didn't care, the truth is, my doctor actually went out on a limb for me! 

Then one day, after 10 years of living life and basking in my "Happy Ending," God compelled me to "Tell My Story." So I did. One thing led to another... I started teaching classes... I was invited to speak in churches... I opened a health clinic... I even got to travel the world with the message of hope and healing. When God taught me His Ways for health, the course of my life for generations was altered, and He has been using me to catapult others into their "New Beginning" ever since. 

HOPE

Constant confusion, excruciating pain, paralyzing fear, and hopelessness for the future... That is not my reality anymore. I KNOW what I was delivered from. I believe there is no diagnosis that God cannot overcome. The body is designed to heal itself. For example, if you get a cut, the body begins the process of scabbing over to stop the blood loss and protect the wound from infection. Sometimes it's not as simple as a flesh wound - it can be complex and debilitating. But nothing is too big for God. I know He created you for a purpose, so I know He will give you what you need to be whole and well!