An adventure in belief.

I find myself living more and more like a hermit.
I'm by myself, and any friends I have are from high school, (save my neighbor from when we lived in Arizona. She's twice my age, and a wonderful person to talk to.)

But I have fears of going out and meeting people. I used to conquer awkward situations with ease; my excitement for life was a nectar everyone seemed to want. Now I'm in an awkward situation where I can't tell if I'm welcome in a conversation. If I'm overstepping with my excitement, or if people just generally don't care about me and my opinions.

The sad part of it is, I really feel I have some cool and interesting things to say. Things about health. About life and spirituality. About herbs. About the true feelings that accompany being a new mom and those changes therein. I'm not bitter. I just don't know how to find people that could relate and be my friend.

There's a mild fear that our society has now come into its new way of receiving guests by first checking facebook pages. (Which I don't have, for reasons of my own.) The mentality that we cannot open up and be encouraged to think a little differently. I, for one, consider honesty and open conversation a very gentle and safe place. But I can't say I'd expect it from most people out there. Is a blog venue the only place I may or may not find like minded people out there?
The thing is, since becoming a mom, (and really before then), I've just become such a lonely person. I'm afraid to go to new mama group things because I can't tell where the interest will lie. In the enjoyment of being a parent? Cause quite frankly, I'm not so sure I like being a mama as of yet. I like talking about my son, but sometimes it's more in sheer lack of anything else to say. I have so many thoughts and contemplative tangents, I guess I just wish I had someone other than my husband to share them with. Don't get me wrong. I love talking to him. But I need new people in my life.

I suppose that's all I really have to say in that regard.

Love.

how i am defeating staph

Let me preface by saying that I am, in fact, not a doctor. But I have a passion for learning and try to research as much as I can on any given topic I feel an interest.

Second, I will mention that I am nursing my 14 month old. So a lot of what I decided to do was a balance of what I felt comfortable with. I think I have a little bit of a unique situation in that, I was very healthy prior to birth, but after a bout of ringworm that turned into staph on my leg, PPD, a sudden overgrowth of candida, sickness every other week, and a following course of seven or eight months where I was exhausted, depleted in my immune system, had a constant feeling of itchiness that would not subside, (to the point of sleeping with ice packs encasing my leg, it was so bad), alone with my husband and first born for a portion of it, and quite frankly, poor, it was, to say the least, a challenge. As a last ditch effort after I had contracted impetigo, and feeling like I failed in every aspect of my life, I took a course of antibiotics, a z pack, that gave me an allergic reaction and blew my lips up three times their size for about a week and a half. (It was during this depressing time that I couldn't talk, kiss my husband nor my son, and had to eat from a straw because my lips hurt so bad.) This was followed by thrush and the staph still not taken care of. After moving to a different state to live with my parents for help, my mother bought some colloidal silver for me to take. I was still nursing every two or three hours around the clock, and I'm small, so my colloidal silver dosage stayed small. One tablespoon, twice a day on an empty stomach. I had also applied goldenseal powder topically, held on by a pad and tape which I wore for months under pants in the heat of the Arizona summer because I was ashamed. (I didn't initially know it was staph, so I tried an embarrassingly large list of things which included an herbal salve (the oil reacted poorly with the staph,) aloe vera, (which technically worked but I was in panic mode,) grapefruit seed extract, (which did minimal to nil) and various other things. In retrospect, I think it was my complete exhaustion that did me in. I also got a prescription from my midwife for a topical mupirocin. It helped but didn't fully clear it up. I even mixed it with goldenseal at one point.

I'm sure a lot of you will  be asking, why didn't you just stop nursing? Well, quite frankly, my son was adverse to eating solids, and not only did we not have money for formula, I was adamantly opposed to anything but nursing. It put me through hell, but I knew the hell would be ten times worse if it was expounded by the guilt I would heap on myself every day I didn't nurse him. (I'm actually having a bit of weaning guilt now and we're still nursing about five times a day. This includes night nursings.) I know everyone has their own directive, and I appreciate that. But for me it was not an option.

I took a multivitamin when my parents could get it for me, and my mother also got me vitamin D to take. I tried as hard as I could to drink herbal tea every day, (3 or 4 cups daily which generally consisted of any combination of: astragalus, nettle, red raspberry, dandelion, lemon balm, chamomile, etc.) I kept it at safe and nutritive herbs that had some nervine qualities. (I can explain each one further if you'd like). My diet was shoddy to say the least. Prior to moving in with my parents, I had restricted as much sugar as I could, because I didn't know what else to do to curb the candida and staph. (All of which I was learning from research on the internet. I had no formal diagnosis, though I'm certain of my conclusions. While having a first born. Guys, I cannot stress how little I knew about babies. It was a hard time frequented with thoughts of suicide.) So, I wasn't eating enough already, and when I moved in with my parents, I had to incorporate flour and starch back in because it's what they would cook. My mother also got me a protein shake mix to try to keep my energy levels at bay, and I blended fresh ground milk thistle seed in with it as a small effort to help out my liver of the ridiculous levels of hormones, stress, and toxins my body was trying as hard as it could to eliminate.

Through some miracle, possibly the colloidal silver that I took for a few months, possibly the heavens opened and shone some miraculous light on my leg and decided some mercy was in order, the staph on my leg cleared up.

However, it was still consistently itchy, for what reason, I do not know. It was bad, guys. I haven't even touched on how my husband was still living in Arizona for a few months till he could get transferred to where I am now, how we had to sleep in the living room of my parents apartment for months before they were able to get a house, how my son had some colic, or any of the other ridiculous and mildly laughable things that decided to grace us over the course of the year.


So.
Here I am, fourteen months after birth. About two months ago, I got another bout of ringworm, this time on my arm, and I quickly put on some allopathic topical antifungal stuff to try to take care of it. And, lo and behold, it turned into staph. Again.
Repeat initial panic and crying and losing my mind.
I know I'm dealing with candida, and I read that frequent staph and strep can be a symptom of a candida overgrowth. Guys, there are so many symptoms of candida overgrowth. I was opposed to trying antibiotics again because it's pretty much the worst thing someone with candida overgrowth can do and considering my prior allergic reaction. So I decided to build up my immune system and treat it a different way. I put on it some mupirocin that my son's midwife lovingly wrote me a prescription for before we moved for the prior staph infection, (the one that didn't fully clear the staph up), and started applying that till we figured something out.

I started to get a quality probiotic and by taking that at the minimal dosage, and incorporating one large salad in every day, I started getting really bad candida die off waves. The first one had a bad headache, extreme anger and irritability, a small minor rash on my arm and some other things like inability to sleep. It cleared up but the die off kept happening again when I'd increase the probiotics or added more supplements to my diet. Really changing it in any way. I didn't add any antifungals internally though because I know that most of the antifungals are contraindicated while breastfeeding. (This is a reason why I kept chamomile in my tea.) I kept increasing this all, trying to figure out how to beat the staph. I read about how important vitamin D is, so I went back on that, started to take a tincture of astragalus and reishi that I made, drank a ton of water and so forth.

I got colloidal silver again, took the low dosage, then decided, this isn't affecting my son in the way the antibiotics did, (I could tell it went through to him), so I got more bottles and did a heavy dosage of an ounce and a half four times a day for three days. It did not clear it up. It helped, but did not clear it up.
So my current intake daily is as follows:

• One dropper full of Astragalus reishi tincture and echninacea angustafolia four times a day
• 5000 IU of Vitamin D once a day
• Over 75 billion probiotics three times a day, As directed really, but an increased dosage that I built up
• Chlorella as directed built up from less as well
• A little over a teaspoon of ground milk thistle seed that I put into capsules. Today I started taking three instead of just two double 'oo'
• Two self made capsules of slippery elm powder to help heal up any possible leaky gut I may have from the candida
• Two self made capsules of Vitamin C double 'oo' which should equate to about 3400 mg. (If I remember correctly)
• Whenever I can make tea, it'll usually have: nettle, dandelion, marshmallow leaf, chamomile, and rose hips. Sometimes maybe alfalfa or something else. 
• Two glasses of 100% cranberry juice not from concentrate (diluted half, cause dannng that stuff's strong. haha) Cranberry juice, while being an antioxidant, is also found to help break up the biofilms that bacteria like staph and e coli create. 
• I also just got today a capsule of garlic with other immune boosting things like astragalus, more vitamin c, some immune mushrooms like reishi and shiitake by a brand called Kyolic.

I've been applying topically a mix of aloe vera gel and goldenseal and covering it with a pad. The aloe vera is an antibacterial, (as per Buhner: Herbal Antibiotics), and it's an anti inflammatory. The redness is starting to go away and the wound has actually turned into a peeled sort of skin healing. Sometime when I got this staph on my arm, I also got a bout on my leg which I've been treating as well, but it's been slower going. Though I can say that the bubbles that were there from the staph have flattened and subsided, and it seems to be mostly just a very red skin patch that I can only assume is going to follow the same course the arm patch is going. 

I recently read an article that I found interesting, and want to research further about how it actually is possible to beat MRSA, not to have it just go dormant. So I thought I'd post that link just so you guys can see here. 

The protocol they have isn't all that dissimilar from what I'm doing. And they explain the necessities so I can tell where I have certain bases covered. They suggest dosages for a berry nectar, bee propolis, garlic thyme mix, and echinacea. 

(Hence why I got garlic. I had been considering it for a while and figured after my colloidal silver was up, I'd try it.) I plan to get more colloidal silver come our next pay to give my body as much of a shot as it can get. 

It's also interesting that I've been meditating more, deep breathing exercises that increase the oxygen levels I'm getting. Panic attacks and short breathed living only increases the poor quality of our insides. 

My diet is essentially gluten free. I eat oats and have naturally fermented sauerkraut or kombucha. I do eat fruits, because I feel the benefits outweigh the downfalls of reducing my food options that much more. I would follow a strict candida diet, however, I am still nursing and consider my change in food to be a healthy build up rather than a toxins cleanse. Notice I am not specifically taking herbs that cleanse the liver, though there is liver support. I'm not taking specific antifungals. I am generally eating better by cutting out gluten and yeast products that can deplete the immune system. 

It's been a slow process. It's been long and arduous. But I feel so much more powerful and in charge of myself after such a defeating past year. I feel so much more knowledgeable. I feel safer knowing that I can handle something like staph without having to resort to antibiotics. And I no longer feel suicidal nor as ultimately depressed.

Having gone through such a low point in my life caused me to have an existential crisis right in the middle of it which only worsened everything and my feelings of failure and my desire to give up my life. I was completely ready to have God strike me down. 

It finally seems to be turning around. I hope this has helped someone. And if you have any questions at all, feel free to ask. I hope someone gains something from my experiences. 

Love.