epitomeofhealth

Ever since I was 14 years old, one of my biggest life goals was to join the Peace Corps. However, four days after fulfilling my dream and arriving in Nicaragua at the age of 23, I woke up with an indescribable fatigue, as if I hadn't slept at all. For three months, I fought and fought and fought through this miserable fatigue, seeing developing country doctors, having countless blood tests, and even ending up in a Nicaraguan emergency room. Finally, I was medically evacuated, forced to come home and give the American medical system a go. No luck there either -- after a month in the States, I had a host of completely normal blood tests and a normal colonoscopy, but a host of terrible symptoms -- horrendous fatigue, unrestful and fitful sleep, chronic diarrhea, dizziness upon standing, a flare-up of my lifelong OCD, and serious health anxiety/hypochondria.

At this point, I was spending hundreds of hours on the internet, and I diagnosed myself with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) (I couldn't have the formal diagnosis since it hadn't yet been six months, but I knew this was it.). I absorbed every morsel of information from people's CFS healing stories and tried about a zillion healing protocols in the course of a couple of weeks -- cutting out gluten and dairy, taking weird and expensive supplements like D-Ribose, paying $200 to see an herbalist, lying on a PEMF magnetic mat, trying qi gong, implementing insane sleep hygiene protocols, etc. etc. etc, but I wasn't seeing any changes and I was driving myself crazy.

It was at this point that I discovered a review on Amazon of Sarno's The Divided Mind by someone who cured himself of CFS, and I got it from the library that very day. I have finished nearly the entire book over the past five days or so, and I have definitely experienced a reduction in symptoms (my GI system seems nearly back to normal!), but the terrible fatigue--especially in the morning upon waking--remains. I am incredibly determined to beat this, so I'm here beginning the SEP. Here's to beginning recovery!