Far Reaches Farm

This has been the most difficult year in terms of health for us.  We put on a game front during sales day and trudged through the critical work as well as we could but it was all we could do.  I spent 2-3 days each week from spring into fall either in bed or unable to function.  The other days I was perhaps 30-40%.  Sue was not much better but she is made of sterner stuff.

So what was going on?  Sue had chronic headaches, intense fatigue, memory loss, foggy thinking and general malaise and I had the same less the headaches but with edema around my eyes.  Got ringworm which became strep-infected signaling a compromised immune system.  There were other lesser symptoms but these were the biggies.  Last year in 2007 I had little energy or clarity of thought.  Hiking in the Olympics was a trial rather than a joy.  This year I couldn't even walk the dogs let alone hike.  Various doctors suggested anti-depressants, vitamins, supplements, test for thyroid, iron deficiency, cancer, etc.  No suggestion seemed right and no one addressed the cumulative symptoms as a whole and were quite dismissive of particular symptoms.  "People get allergies"  "You're not so young anymore"  "Stress does funny things"  "Nothing seems wrong - take a vacation"

Meanwhile I'm getting worse and Sue is catching up to me as well.  I start researching obscure cancers, environmental toxins, mercury and lead poisoning, early Alzheimers anything I can think of but nothing fits.  Maybe I am just really old before my time and this is going to be the way of it.  Which didn't help the crushing apathy one bit. 

Finally in August a friend came over to show her mom our shade garden.  We hadn't seen her for probably a year as we had little energy for optional socializing.  She hopped out of the van and it wasn't "Hi - so good to see you" but it was "I've got to talk to you about parasites - we found out we have them and if we do, then you have to have a bunch of the them the places you have been".  She and her husband had been so ill that they were barely able to function the past year.  Her husband was unable to work.  I asked her what the symptoms were and it was spot on with what we were going through. 

They had gone through the same laborious and expensive and fruitless attempts at diagnosis that we had plus some.  In desperation, she went to a acupuncturist in Seattle and told him her symptoms and he said "You have parasites.  I travel a lot in Asia and have had them 9 times."  He then said that finding help for this is very difficult and referred to her to a doctor in New York City who is known for his work in this field.  They went and saw him and he found a protozoan and a bad bacteria.  They got treated, took months to start gaining strength back and are finally starting to feel like themselves again.

So I went to a naturopath they recommended who does testing as we couldn't make trips to NYC and sure enough the results came back positive for Blastocystis hominis.  This is a little protozoan-like thing with several life stages including some cyst stages where it is pretty much bomb-proof.  It is the most common parasite and found literally all over the world including here.  It is transmitted via poor hygiene through food or water most often.  Looking back on symptoms and exposure, our plant hunting trip to India in 2003 seems most likely.  With this information in hand, there was still no acknowledgement that this is even a problem from the medical community in this country.  So we go online.

We find a site parasitetesting.com which is is in Arizona and is a lab dedicated to parasite testing.  Lots of good information on effects and symptoms.  We learn that this thing has been found in joint synovial fluid and linked to infectious arthritis.  That it can move from your gut to your liver and cause serious damage.  That its metabolic byproducts are toxic and can cause brain damage.  All good stuff.  The chief parasitologist at the lab encourages a herbal treatment as conventional weaponery is very hard on your system.  This dovetailed with our philosophy so we embarked on a 75 day diet and herbal treatment regimen.  Basically a Mediterranean type diet eliminating sugars and minimizing carbs which the blastocystis thrives on.  The herbal therapy was very expensive - we were close to a thousand bucks when I got a bowel obstruction from the treatment.  Talk about pain.  Couldn't eat more than a thimblefull without excruciating pain and gastric distress.  So pretty much just quit eating which worked.  This went on for a week during which time we went to Bellingham and gave a lecture to the Whatcom Horticultural Society.  They always host us to a nice dinner prior but needless to say we declined.  Finally I quit the herbs and slowly got better.  Blasto still going strong.

Back to the web and found a website in Australia www.badbugs.org run by this woman who suffered for years from blasto and finally was cured through the efforts of a clinic in Sydney.  She started this site to help prevent others from years of fruitless treatment and spending tons of money.  Lots of good info on this site linking blasto to depression, food allergies, chronic fatigue syndrome, colitis and irritable bowel syndrome among others.  Lots of testimonials and personal history from around the world which all corresponded with our experiences.

So we sent a small donation and she gave us the name of the drug cocktail the clinic in Sydney came up with and a link to an online Mexican pharmacy where we could get the drugs as two of the four are not available in this country and one of the ones that is available would cost us at least 1500 bucks.  She also gave us some personal diaries of a couple of folks who went through the treatment and their experiences with the side effects as well as some good info on rebuilding our beneficial flora after we killed everything off.

We ordered 4 different drugs and just finished 17 days ago.  It was gawd-awful but I am already feeling better and have a clearer head than I have in at least a couple years.  Sarah came to work last week and saw me on the tractor and said to Sue "What's with him?"  She has only been here since March and has rarely seen me do anything resembling much work.

I'm posting this personal info because I am convinced that this type of thing is an unrecognized epeidemic in this country.  I presented as a classic antidepressant candidate.  Sure I was depressed but it was because the life was being sucked out of me.  Everyone knows someone with irritable bowel, depression or chronic fatigue and who have not been told a definite cause.  There is a fellow in the Willamette Valley trying to get the Oregon Legislature to classify Blastocystis as a reportable disease as he had it, checked around and found 35 cases in the Valley in fairly short order.  It is widespread in this country and more so in third world countries and with all the travel and access to remote areas, it makes sense. 

So if you are not feeling quite right and are not getting the answers, welcome to the exciting world of parasites.  There are a lot of them, especially if you like swimming in fresh water outside the temperate zone.  But it is fixable with some difficulty and discomfort and I AM BACK, BABY!!!!!