The two most popular questions I get asked are, “Why did you get into Alternative Medicine?” & “How do you know it works?” My answers are always the same, “Because I was diagnosed with Leukemia when I was 11 years old” & “Because I’m still alive!”

I had always been very healthy growing up until I turned 11, then things started to change drastically… I was always tired, getting infections & bloody noses all the time, and then I started bruising everywhere. A visit to the doctor revealed the worst diagnosis any parent could ever hear, Leukemia!

Oddly enough, I had a classmate named Charlie who was getting Chemo for Leukemia at the same time I was sick and he was not doing well at all. This made my parents hesitant to do anything extreme. My mom was also into doing things naturally, so we started there, against the doctor’s wishes. After several months, I finally leveled off and wasn’t getting worse, but I wasn’t getting much better either. More tests were taken and this time the results came back mixed and not favoring Leukemia as much, but some kind of virus that was messing with my blood.

That started four years of battling infections & sepsis with antibiotics and just treating the other symptoms with whatever we could until I started having reactions and could no longer take the meds. I was now 15 and had blood the consistency of kool aid! Charlie had also died the previous year so that just made things seem more hopeless.

At this point the doctors were out of ideas, so my parents turned to a family friend who owned a health food store for help. Nancy’s solution was the obvious one, I just needed to rebuild my blood. So we did that using blood building & blood cleansing herbs, and treated the infections naturally with herbs and probiotics since I was having allergic reactions to all of the antibiotics I was taking at this point… six months later my bloodwork was finally back in the normal range.

This lit a fire under me to start learning everything I could about herbs and alternative therapies, not only for myself, but for the many animals and pets we always had in our care as my mom was a wildlife rehabber since I was little. Nancy was always my mentor, teaching me to keep an open mind (I’m very analytical) and always pushing me to learn more… I am forever grateful to her for doing this.

What’s interesting is after going through all of this, I was diagnosed as being Hypothyroid after high school. Like everything else, I had to learn how to manage it naturally cuz I couldn’t take the thyroid meds without having reactions. I did well until I had a major flareup with my thyroid after I had Covid in 2021. Even though my blood work showed my T3, T4, & TSH as being normal, my thyroid antibodies were high which points to having an Autoimmune Disorder. I will always wonder if an Autoimmune Disorder is what I had the whole time I was sick as a kid, cuz I sure had all of the symptoms.

In spite of my unhealthy season when I was young, I still believe that life happens for you, not to you. If it wasn’t for those experiences, I would not have the knowledge I have to help so many today. I have lived a wholistic lifestyle for over 40 years now, and as long as I have two brain cells in my head to rub together, I will keep on learning how to live it better… for my pets and for yours, and for anyone else who can benefit from it!