Tag: healing

How Much of Healing Is Faith?
health · injury · mindfulness

How Much of Healing Is Faith?

MinaLeave a comment

How Much of Healing Is Faith?

The foot surgery I mentioned last month has come and gone. I didn’t meltdown or freak out, except in the moment when the physician’s assistant was trying to put in the IV port and I got so stressed out that my veins went into hiding and I started to lose consciousness. The poor PA was mopping sweat from my face, forearms and shins, as he tried to keep me awake. The surgery itself was a black box, after the anesthesiologist said the words, I’m just going to start with something to calm y ... I woke up in the operating room, while they were vigorously swaddling my foot in a dressing, thick wads of cotton batting and a tenser bandage.  

At home that evening, I kept waiting for the pain to hit, mindful that I’d been instructed to, Get ahead of the pain. There was none. Nor the next day. Or any day. There was no swelling either. The only mild discomfort I’ve had is when a shoe causes pressure or friction against the stitches on the top of my foot. I had prepared myself for immobility. Instead, after Friday afternoon surgery, I could walk around normally by later that evening on my one bare foot and one swaddled foot. If my steps were tentative, it was out of anticipation of the pain that did not arrive. I was surprised. After all of the everything around my auto-immune situation, I lost quite a bit of faith in my body’s ability to heal. With each hour that passed post-surgery, then each day, then week, now 10 days, my cup of healing faith is refilling. I wonder how much of the healing is due to my restored faith in my body’s ability to heal.   

I diligently forced myself to stay on the couch over that first weekend. With no pain to remind me of why I needed to be sedate, by Sunday night I was feeling confined and itchy to move. I rode a Monday morning loop of Central Park on Citibike. I wore a surgical boot, to be safe. On Tuesday, I wore a sturdy, regular boot when I rode the same loop. Wednesday was on the Peloton (in running shoes, not bike shoes). And Friday, a week post-surgery, yoga (with modifications to upward dog, so as not to aggravate my stitches).

To be clear, although my foot looks ugly with stitches and bruising top and bottom (be glad I’m not sharing a photo), all of this activity is pain and swelling free. I am not pushing limits. I carefully re-read the post op instructions, which clearly say, weight bearing as tolerated. I was told to expect 2 weeks in a surgical boot, followed by 2 weeks in super sturdy shoes. I was told that maybe I could think about running after 6 weeks. Was my foot doctor just setting low expectations? It hasn’t even been 2 weeks yet and the challenge now is to resist the siren call of running. I see the doc tomorrow (if you are reading this on the first Wednesday in December, when it posts). I’m guessing (please please) that he will take out the three stitches. He really adhered to the minimally invasive promise of the surgery with his tiny incisions, each of which only required one stitch. I’ve promised myself to do nothing over-exuberant until I see him.

Which is hard, because I am bursting with astonished gratitude at this moment. All I want to do is dance and run and jump up and down, to test how much better my foot feels. I can feel how much more mobility there is. How the pain that I had is gone. I can stand on my tippy toes, for the first time in several years.

I tell myself that I should moderate my hopes. After all, my toe also has a bunion and arthritis. Even as another part of me is jumping ahead, wondering, if my foot can heal like this, then what about my Addison’s Disease? Finding the balance of faith in my body’s ability to heal and being realistic about what’s possible is delicate. Some people say that faith is everything. While I believe that faith counts for a lot, I don’t think that my belief in my own healing is enough on its own.

Things I’m wondering:

  • Is faith a virtuous cycle, in which the faith in healing supports the healing?
  • Is it more than a virtuous cycle, as in, without the faith the healing cannot happen?
  • How far can faith go, as in, why does it seem to pertain to my foot and not my auto immune situation? I had a lot of faith I could be cured of the Addison’s. At first. Now, that faith has gotten complicated. How do I untangle the knotty question of whether my patience with a longer road to recovery is faith, or resignation to my fate?
  • And is this faith I’m talking about just another word for control? A veiled way of satisfying the human hunger for control over our lives?

One last wondering, can faith harm my healing? I have an answer to this one. Yes. If I use faith as an excuse to not actually follow medical protocols. I did that in the beginning with the Addison’s. Going off my medication. Against doctor’s orders. Believing that I could cure myself with infusions, supplements, meditation and a positive attitude. That didn’t work. Now I’m on my medication. Diligent and compliant. Mostly. Plus, meditation, faith, vitamins and supplements. That really works.

So, for my foot, weight bearing as tolerated. That’s working so far. I’ll see the doc tomorrow. A little girl part of me is bringing him my foot, as if it is a drawing from school, wanting him to be impressed by my healing. Pin it up on the fridge. Give my faith a boost. What if he just says, yup, this is what I expected? It changes nothing about my condition. Puts a question mark in the power of my faith.

Maybe the trick is to have faith and hold it lightly. Faith will intervene when appropriate and only it knows when that is.

Maybe: In the Washing Machine of Life
fitness

Maybe: In the Washing Machine of Life

Mina2 Comments

Last month I wrote about healing rollercoasters. I had planned to write something less turbulent this month. Instead, I’ve gone from rollercoaster to washing machine.

As I write this, over the holiday weekend in Canada, I am surrounded by the Rockies in Canmore, Alberta. I’ve been looking forward to this sojourn for months. The gift of looking up from my computer to see mountains outside my window. And to get out on the trails every day, to trail run, hike and mountain bike.

My fourth day, finishing up a run, I sprained my ankle. Badly. I watched it swell as I hobbled home crying, as if my ankle was being inflated by a bike pump. The physical pain was eclipsed by my mental anguish. Really? Was I going to be imprisoned inside, when just out my door there were miles and miles of forested mountain trails?

What was the universe trying to tell me? What message was I supposed to receive?

I was devastated. Here I am, trying to rebuild my life and instead of three weeks of heavenly nature immersion, I was going to have three weeks of psychic torture and physical pain. Here’s the first message I received: You, Mina, are a detestable person who deserves to be knocked down, repeatedly. Your ongoing, excruciating divorce is not enough. Nor is your financial precariousness, nor the Addison’s Disease. You have still not been punished enough. Yes, even as I was hearing this particular voice in my head, I was fully aware that whether or not I was going to engage with this psychic torture was in my control. Or at least theoretically. It’s easy to say that our state of mind is a decision we make. It’s harder to actually exercise that control.

I have been trying hard to control my mental condition. And for those of you who have read previous posts from me, you know that I was already fully immersed in an effort to visualize my future health (I am actively exploring the potential to heal my Addison’s Disease with a functional medicine practitioner). In that context, injuring my ankle felt like the universe just being plain mean. Understanding that the universe is not personal was my first bit of mental jujitsu. This is not a punishment. I was trail running. And as my friend Kim reminded me, ankles get twisted. This did not happen because I am a bad person. I realigned expectations.

I put flat pedals on my mountain bike and imagined riding around very gently on the flattest ground I could find with the hard plastic sprain boot on my foot. I have some experience with sprained ankles. I’ve also broken my foot, cracked ribs and done quite a number of other things to myself. So, I’m familiar with the healing trajectories.  I was calm. Or resigned. It’s sometimes hard to discern the difference. I knew what to expect. A lot of streaming Pilates at home. A sore hip from wearing the hard boot, which makes one leg longer than the other. Enforced stillness. Restlessness.

At the same time, I redeployed the Gladiator Therapeutics far infrared wave device I’d been using to heal my adrenals, and am now wearing it night and day around my ankle. While I have no idea if it’s actually working for my adrenals, I know it’s been working for my ankle.  How? Because, as incredibly swollen, ugly and wildly-colored my whole foot is, including my toes and my lower leg, I have experienced little pain. Certainly, there’s discomfort when I walk, especially down stairs. My ankle is stiff when I get up from sitting or lying down. And, I can walk on it, progressively more each day. It’s only been 9 days, as I write this and I went out for a 30-minute walk today (wearing flip flops). And I can ride my bike. On anything. Wearing a small ankle compression support and regular running shoes.

On my bike with the Three Sisters in the background. Inspect before riding sign, which made me laugh and was also accurate. And a surprisingly gentle section of the Rundle Riverside Trail.

I have never experienced ankle healing this quickly before. So, now what is the universe trying to tell me? What message am I to receive?  

I feel like I’m living in a washing machine, being savagely bounced around from one emotion to another. I am realigning expectations almost daily.

At this very moment, I am not hiking in British Columbia with my work colleague and friend, Michelle, who I’d planned to meet in person for the first time this holiday weekend. I was so excited to be with her. Michelle was going to drive from Nelson, B.C and we were to meet up in the middle, in Invermere. Instead, I’m alone in Canmore, nursing the enormous disappointment of not connecting with her. And then the washing machine flips me around, and I’m simultaneously ridiculously grateful for the grace of being able to mountain bike and get outside in the mountains, when I thought that would be impossible. Every turn of the pedal, every technical trail section I walk my bike, every mud puddle I splash through, I’m filled to the brim with the sheer unexpected pleasure of communing with nature.

Daily, I spin through a cycle of emotions, from devastation to elation and back again. I keep hoping to be rinsed clean, to spin into stillness, to be hung out to dry in a gentle mountain breeze. I am searching for meaning in what’s happened, for a story of why.   I wonder, is the universe offering me evidence that I can heal? To shore up my faith for the steeper climb to health I’m facing with the Addison’s? Or is the message more straightforward, simple—be grateful for what you can do, it’s not nothing, in fact, it’s a lot of something pretty joyful.

Maybe that’s the story. Or maybe not.

Michelle, my Nelson friend, reminded me of this Taoist story: An old farmer’s horse ran away, so the farmer could not tend his crops. His neighbor said, how awful, to which the farmer replied, maybe. The next day the horse returned, with three wild horses. What good fortune, the neighbor said. Maybe, the farmer replied. The following day, the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the wild horses and was thrown off, breaking his leg. What misfortune, the chatty neighbor said. The farmer replied, as always, maybe. Not long after, war broke out and the army came around to the villages to draft the eligible young men. Not the farmer’s son, who was healing from his broken leg. The neighbor, always quick with his take on any situation, said, well aren’t you lucky. Guess what the farmer replied … Maybe.

The story isn’t over. There’s no clear message. Maybe. In the meantime, I can try to minimize the frustration and be grateful for my body’s (or is it my mind’s?) capacity to heal and move.

Notes from the Healing Rollercoaster
health · illness

Notes from the Healing Rollercoaster

Mina4 Comments

I am on a healing journey (as many of you already know from my posts here and here). Or, if I can describe my current experience with more accuracy—I’m on a healing rollercoaster. Less than a year ago, I was diagnosed with Addison’s Disease. The short of that diagnosis is that I’m on 3x a day medication and I have to eat a low potassium diet, aka a pleasure deprivation regime. To keep hope alive, I have engaged with a functional medicine program to explore alternative options to healing my disease, which my endocrinologist says cannot be healed. Ever.

Right now. I need to believe otherwise.  

There are a number of challenging questions that pop up as I embark on this alternative (functional) medicine undertaking:

  1. How do I define healing?
  2. Does being healed equal being off my medication?
  3. What about supplements? Do they count as medication?  
  4. Is being healed coming to a place of acceptance around taking my medication? After all, my energy is good and I am able to do all the activities I want with my enthusiastic effort levels of old. The one thing I can’t do—eat high potassium foods.
  5. Is being healed eating avocado toast and chocolate whenever and in whatever quantities I want? Even if I’m still on medication?  
  6. What is the measure or metric of being healed? What is the function in functional medicine?
  7. Or (the big or) is being healed a state of mind?

As you can no doubt discern from these contemplations, I have not yet accepted that Addison’s Disease is going to be a lifetime companion. Nor do I have the capacity yet to see this disease as a golden opportunity to explore my patience and acceptance. Addison’s has afflicted me, it is not a cascade of liquid sunshine, showering my life with unexpected gifts. While I am no longer fighting the disease, the way I did at the beginning, not wanting to believe I even needed the medication and being uncooperative on that front, I still can’t find solid ground. Which brings me hard up against that last question.

Is being healed a state of mind?

This question is particularly nagging. One of the elements of my alternative (functional) healing program is a brain rewiring technique, by which I work through negative thought loops on a daily basis, cultivating neuroplasticity with a series of movements paired with scripted acknowledgments of my current condition and visualizations of my future. The promise is that as I rewire my brain, my body will follow.

I’m torn between the part of me that thinks the practice is kooky, possibly even hokum and the part of me that knows that the practice can only work if I throw myself into it wholeheartedly. That part also knows (and research shows that) our bodymind does not necessarily know the difference between a role we play and reality. So much so that playing the role of believing in the practice may be enough for the practice to work, if I play the role of engaging with wholeheartedness. As I do the movements and speak the script with the conviction of the role I’m playing, the change will begin to happen. This will lead me to believe in the practice, amping up my wholeheartedness. More change will happen, deepening my belief and engagement and so on.

A virtuous cycle. Which risks sounding as loopy to some of you, as it does to that part of me, who I mentioned a moment ago, who is on the lookout for snake oil sales people.

I started less than a week ago on the brain rewiring practice. And two weeks ago, I embarked on the supplement regime and using a device that emits far infrared to boost stem cell production and reduce inflammation.  

Here’s how everything is going so far … during the first two weeks of supplements and far infrared therapy, I swung between the conviction that I am on the road to healing, which was boosted by the fact that my tweaky hamstring healed in record time (for which I give credit to the far infrared) and the conviction that I’m a fool who just wasted money on a functional medicine guide to cure a hamstring injury that would have healed in a few months anyway. In other words, I was high and then I was low and then I was high and then … After two days of the brain training, I felt a full body thrill of optimism. That was last Thursday.

Last Friday, as I was setting out for a hike, I got the results of a blood test I’d taken the day before (so, for perspective, less than two weeks into my new supplement and far infrared regime and two days into brain training). The results were, at first glance, not what I’d hoped. My potassium was back up to the highest end of normal, despite medication, diet, supplements, far infrared, and brain training. All the everything. Yes, I know, I’ve barely started the new regime, what did I expect? Still, I expected.

I was devastated and cried sporadically while hiking, when I wasn’t furious with the world and myself. Overcome by hopelessness and self-pity. Why does nothing ever go right for me? Which then plunged me into the steeper drop of, why am I never the right person? And so on. All of which was a nauseatingly precipitous drop from my I’ve-started-brain-training-and-I’m-going-to-heal-myself-with-my-mind optimism from the day before.  

Later, looking more closely at the results with my endocrinologist and my FM guide, there was actually more good news than bad. My cortisol has gone up to “very normal, even high,” as my endocrinologist said. My ACTH, the hormone which stimulates the release of cortisol into our system, was down into normal mid-range, the lowest it’s been in at least a year. A year ago, my ACTH was at 15x the current level. My body was screaming at the top of its lungs for more cortisol production. To no avail. This normalization of my cortisol production, according to my FM guide, is, at least partly, thanks to the licorice root I’ve started taking. Plus, both DHEA and Vitamin D, which were concerns for my FM guide and are part of my new regime, are now in healthy ranges.

I took the weekend off to put myself back together after my vertiginous mood plunge, followed by the upswing of the closer look. Optimism returns. Cautiously. And then yesterday and today with more vigor, as I renew my commitment to my brain training.

Photo of rollercoaster by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

The questions I listed earlier continue to rattle around. I have no idea of the answers. And I know (really, I do) that it’s too early to have any idea if anything is working. When I signed on with the FM guide, I strapped myself into a rollercoaster. I don’t know how long the ride will last. I can’t see the full extent of its climbs and plunges. I could get off, but then I’d probably just be on a different rollercoaster and this one comes with a dose of hope. I’m choosing to keep my seat belt on.

In the meantime, out for a ride this morning, I indulged in the enormous pleasure of setting my gear at a harder level than usual for the uphills and feeling into the power of my legs and the joy of movement.  

Can 180 Seconds At −245°F Improve Your Health?
fitness · health · injury

Can 180 Seconds At −245°F Improve Your Health?

Mina7 Comments

Cryotherapy is a new-to-me wellness trend. Easy and scary, cryotherapy is a process by which a near-naked human spends two to four minutes standing in a cold chamber cooled to below −100°C. The protocol claims to reduce tissue inflammation, which aids in sports recovery, alleviates diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and MS, increases energy, enhances sleep and focus, assists weight loss, brightens skin and reduces anxiety and depression (17 ProvenBenefits of Whole Body Cryotherpay + Side Effects). Better to ask, what doesn’t cryotherapy promise?

I decided to give it a try.

Despite the skeptics at The Guardian (Whole-bodycryotherapy: what are the cold hard facts?) and US News (ShouldYou Try Whole Body Cryotherapy?), there are a lot of celebrity fans (pro athletes and movie stars, including the reigning, though retired, James Bond, aka Daniel Craig) who swear by it. The skeptics make the point that cryotherapyis not a magic bullet (despite James Bond’s endorsement). The protocol does not eliminate the need to take care of oneself. Well, why would it? Seems obvious that cryotherapy is a therapeutic technique (like every other) meant to support and boost a healthy lifestyle, not replace it, or be a hack that enables a casual or reckless approach to wellness.

A quick online search gave me CryoHealthNY only a few blocks from my apartment.  The cryo-office was ultra clean and new looking, but the space also has an unpeopled feel, too. The General Manager, Sujellee, alone at the reception desk the first time I went, was glow-y and enthusiastic.

As instructed I took off all my clothes except bra and underwear and put on the robe, white gym socks and pale blue nurse clogs provided. At the gateway to freezedom, Sujellee gave me earmuffs, a pair of liner gloves, ski gloves and a surgical mask. At the place I went the set up is this: There are two adjoining cold chambersabout the size of a large telephone booth. The first is the pre-freeze chamber, where you take off your robe. From chamber 1, you step through an inside doorinto chamber 2, the cryo-chamber, which, in this case, is cooled to a cryogenic temperature of −245°F. The attendant presses play on the music you’ve selected from Spotify (David Bowie’s Space Oddity) and your three minutes begins.

Temperature gauge of cryotherapy chambers, showing minus 125, because the session is over and the chamber has “warmed up” from minus 245

From the moment I stepped in, I was petrified. Panic nearly drove me from the Dr. Who telephone booth of deep space frigidity. Filled with cold fog, which makes it hard to see anything more than the shadowed specter of the attendant’s thumbs-up outside the window, I was claustrophobic, my breathing hard and choppy. I can’t even be sure how many times Sujellee’s disembodied voice piped into the chamber to let me know how many minutes and seconds were left. Three interminable minutes spent petrified. I had my hand on the door handle to the pre-freeze chamber when she gave me the five-second warning, and I busted out of there like a horse at the Derby when she announced “you’re done.”

The whole rest of the day I was exhilarated. Was it because I felt like I had dodged death? I may well have been experiencing some brush-with-mortality energy. All the way through to the next morning, underneath the warmth of my skin, I felt like I was wrapped in a hair’s-breadth-thick sheath of cold, a pleasant and tingly sensation.  

I also slept better than I usually do and felt springy and resilient on my run the next morning. That’s subjective, I know, but in the end, isn’t that what matters with any therapeutic protocol? Whether we perform better and feel better is the standard and goal, isn’t it?  

I am a willing guinea pig for so many new (and ancient) protocols. I’m curious about my mind and body. I have the good luck of being able to try things (at the place I went to an intro session is $55, a single session is $75 and a 5-pack is $300—I won’t detail the Black Friday specials). As to how often to cryo, I’ve seen recommendations of as many as 5 sessions a week, to once a week, or as needed when you’re feeling physically sore or depleted. At the price, I can’t imagine I’ll ever go 5 times in a week!

That said, I did go for my second session the very next day and took my partner with me. It was a lot less scary with the two of us in the Dr. Who chamber together. Neither of us experienced the same exhilaration I’d felt the day before. But then, he didn’t feel like mortality was an issue, since I’d made it out alive once already. In our US Thanksgiving double spin class the next day, I had strong energy. My partner wasn’t sure what benefits he felt, if any.  

A few days later my partner discovered he had e-coli. His bout was unpleasant and scary, but didn’t stop him from doing any of our usual activities, like going for runs and out for dinner. When he’d recovered a few more days later, we wondered if the cryotherapy had helped reduce the severity of his symptoms. We don’t know.

My third time (my partner’s second), I was still scared, but less so. My partner had a calf pull that felt particularly frozen after the cryo session and he said there was a healing heat sensation afterward. He said he felt more alert that evening and into the next day. I slept better than usual and though not all my sporting aches and pains disappeared, I feel more physically chipper. The next day at aerial yoga I felt more limber.  

My partner and I are going to go back a couple more times to see how we feel. Then we’ll decide if the therapy is worth integrating into a regular regimen or using to heal injuries.

What are your cryo-thoughts? Skeptic, curious or convert?