Healing MS Through Paleo: Part I

We have interviewed many different people with a number of different stories. We have interviewed people with Ulcerative Colitis, Hashimotos, and Raynaud Syndrome. We have seen people lose two hundred pounds in a year and reverse years of joint pain, IBS and inflammation. Every time we interview someone, we think it's the most inspiring story we've ever heard, and no other story could beat it.

So we have a story like this.

V of PaleoBoss Lady was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in her early twenties. She was bedridden and suffered from paralysis in parts of her body for years until she began to follow Wahl's protocol, a modified version of Paleo. Now in his fifties, he has dedicated himself to the community and is traveling around the country teaching people about the life of whole foods. Four years ago, she could only drive five miles a week, and today her conversations have led her to fourteen states and more than fifty events. Read on to hear his incredible story of healing.

Let's start from the beginning. When was he diagnosed with MS?

I was 23 when I was diagnosed. When I look back on my childhood, I always had health problems. I was always a happy, smiling person, but strange things kept happening. I could not go up the steps, I had trouble carrying books, I had IBS, But the doctors could not figure out what it was. At age 17, I was losing my voice and I went to speech pathology.

I married very young, with a neighbor of our family. Six weeks later I got married, woke up and had lost the feeling on the left side of my body. I was on aerobics at the time, and I thought he pulled a muscle. They knew me as a drug addict in the hospital where I worked, and the nurses agreed. When I finally saw a doctor, he told me to stand on one leg. I slammed into the ground immediately.

I was sent to another hospital for a cat scan, where they thought I had a brain tumor. For six months, we could not understand. Finally, a friend called in favor of a neurologist. I paid eleven thousand dollars for an MRI (in those days, it was not covered by insurance).

MRI showed that he had MS. There was no treatment, no drugs, no cures. They said, "Do not get pregnant, do not go to the sun." Here is a bottle of valium for pain.

What did you do after being diagnosed?

I had only been married six weeks when this happened. My mom is a drug addict, so I said no to valium. After living with a junky pill all my life, I opted to start my holistic health trip with essential oils.

I always wanted to be a mom, so when the doctor said, "No kids," I immediately went to my mother-in-law. I asked him, "If this happens, will you support me?" In June, I was pregnant with my daughter.

I conducted a death sentence to life imprisonment. The doctors thought I was going to die, not to become a mom. After my diagnosis, I had facial distortion, terrible fatigue, and trouble speaking. Once I became pregnant, the symptoms began to reverse. He stayed like this for ten years.

With your symptoms under control, what happened over the next decade?

For most of my life, MS was invisible to the outside world. For ten years, I allowed myself to be a drug test. I was on the National Board of the MS Society and was the number one fundraiser in the state.

MS was too much for my first marriage. I came from an addictive family, I got sick within six weeks of our wedding, and we were just kids! I built an international company and traveled 222 days a year. It was a dysfunctional marriage, and we got divorced after five years.

MS can represent Multiple Sclerosis, but I call it Matrimonial Illness. After a decade of few symptoms, I remarried. Within six months of my second marriage, she returned. He returned with a vengeance and did not stop.

How did your symptoms increase during your second marriage?

MS is presented in three stages: preclinical, recurrent and secondary recurrent. Recurrent remission is like the hype: it comes, it's a pain in the ass, then it comes out. With progressive secondary, it comes and never comes out. Just attack.

I became an American with the legal disability once I lost the ability to make a repetitive movement. With multiple sclerosis, muscles and limbs become stuck. You will see someone with your leg out, and you can not bend it. Sometimes a muscle relaxant will make the leg flaccid but not under control. He had stiffness in his hands and throat and difficulty swallowing. A significant number of people with MS die asphyxiated.

Once I was diagnosed with progressive secondary sclerosis, my husband retired from me. He took me home from the doctor, said he was going to the movies, and never came back.

At that time, our family had a home on the Jersey Shore. My husband used to go to the movies alone. When he left, he said, "I'll be on the shore, I'll see you at your appointment in Philadelphia on Thursday, then it's Memorial Day, and we're going to the beach house.

I've never been to neurologist appointments alone. I hated waiting in the lobby for an hour and a half, seeing the other patients and knowing where I was going. It made me lose my head.

I introduced myself to my appointment and he was not there. For thirty minutes there was no trace of him. This was before I sent text messages, and I was worried. Finally, when he was in the doctor's office, he showed up. He sat down beside me and said, "I'm out. I married you for the business woman in you, and when that was gone, there was nothing left for me. We had a prenuptial agreement, and the divorce was final in thirty days.

How could anyone do that ??? What did you do?

I lost it. For months I could not take care of myself. I believed in my heart that this was a thing forever. Never, never, never saw this coming. I thought we were soul mates. The night before we left, we organized a dinner for twenty-five of our friends. He handed me a toast saying, "To your girlfriend, your pride, your wife for life."

It was just working. I took 24 medications, had a sixteen-year-old daughter, and out-of-pocket health care costs were increasing. By the grace of God, the community was my ground until I could see straight, think straight, and walk without having a box of tissues.

The day my daughter moved to college, I packed everything and moved to California. This was the second time I tried to question the status quo. My body responded well to the weather, and I began to heal. I became a spin instructor and a yoga instructor. He did not have to drive because he could walk everywhere. 

What did you do when you realized that your symptoms were changing?

When I moved to California, I went to social networks to ask for help and community. As my world began to improve and I began to heal, I went through the psychological rarity of, "Well, now what?" MS had always dictated what he could and could not do.

When I met Dr. Wahls, I said, "You need to investigate type A and MS." I was a sick child but a survivor of my whole life. In 2008, I went back to college. I know I am the psychic person who decided to go back to school while they were disabled. I took things slow and steady and graduated in 2014. I was not in control of my hands, and I could not hold a book. I had to talk to a computer. I have followed my Masters in Community Psychology to help people with disabilities learn to survive in the community.

Once you moved to California, how long did your EM stay under control?

When my MS returned, there was no way to stop it. There was nothing I could do but feed myself and use the bathroom. I had chest compressions so badly, I stayed in bed praying for him to stop. I was in so much pain, and I was scared all the time.

In September 2010, I went to Burning Man. This is going to sound insane, but I felt like I needed to go to a spiritual place. The people there looked after me, even though I was on a completely opposite schedule. They left at eleven at night and returned at seven o'clock to sleep, just as he woke up. I was hooked with EMT workers, making sure they were comfortable and taken care of.

Every day, I walked to the temple and prayed. I'm not religious, but I was praying ... life? Through those prayers, something told me that I had a toxic life. To heal, I had to cut myself off from that life, and from everything and everything in it.

So when you came back from Burning Man, did you cut the whole world off your life?

I call it my Hibernation Year. I did not socialize for a year. I was desperate. There were three things in front of me: I was going to kill myself, be homeless, or be institutionalized. When you consider those three things, cutting people was not so difficult.

I used to be the person who drove along the road, giving the finger to anyone who cut me. Never once have I considered what the driver was going through, or the kind of day I might have. People who got angry and did not talk to me anymore considered the shit they were dealing with. God forbid, just needed time.

MS took all of me. He took me to my house. He took me to my company. It took millions of dollars. I have a living will in the place, I have spoken with my daughter at one point, I even had a suicide plan in place. During the time in Burning Man, and in previous times, I made all kinds of promises. These are the promises I now have a moral obligation to fulfill.