She taught me so much about medication and its side effects.  That is what got me started looking into herbs to help with M.S. pains.

When my mother-in-law told me about LDN (Low Dose Naltrexone), I looked it up by the call letters and researched the wrong drug with the same call letters.

Then someone else in one of my groups on Facebook suggested it, and then a friend suggested it.  After three suggestions, I decided I needed to seriously research it.

Come to find out that I was researching the wrong medication.  I found videos of people with M.S. who were helped by LDN.  In fact, it helps a lot of diseases, and it has no known negative side effects.  The only side effect that I have experienced is very vivid dreams, so vivid that I’ve tried having dream-related conversations with Kristi while I was still alseep.

Yes, I have been taking it for a week and a half.  I  have seen little improvements until today.  I usually have a lot of problems lifting my legs up when lying on my back.  This morning I lifted my leg up about a foot AND HELD IT THERE.  That was such a shock.  I usually could lift my leg only a few inches then let it drop right away.  Today, I actually held it up for a few seconds.

Also, my muscle spasms have been reduced, the tightness in muscles is reduced, and the pain in my back is gone.  In fact, I don’t need to take turmeric anymore, which helped a lot with my back pain.  Also I am finding it easier to push myself around in my wheelchair and stop quicker.

I’m definitely encouraged by the improvement that I’ve seen in such a short time, and I’m excited to see what happens in the future as I keep taking it.

If you know of someone who suffers from an autoimmune disease (and it can even  help those who suffer from cancer), and would like more information on Low Dose Naltrexone, I suggest these resources:

• Article on Low Dose Naltrexone on Mercola.com
• LowDoseNaltrexone.org

I remember visiting my in-laws one time, and not being able to get up off the floor after I had fallen.  We had no clue as to what was happening to me.  I was losing strength, and found myself having to rush to the bathroom.

At this point we had not accepted embraced that I had M.S.  We thought that I had just mistreated my body so badly in the past that it caused me my symptoms, and later we have decided that it caused the MS.  I have done a lot of rotten things in my life:  drugs, alcohol, eating fast food on every meal, drinking tons of soda, steroid use in my younger years, and smoking for 14 years.

The fact that my life took a downhill spiral was no real surprise to me.  Now to Kristi it has been quite a shock.  When she thought about my past, it really did not bother her.  We still did not understand why I was having so much strength issues following each meal.  It started out that we thought it was Bush’s Chicken, one of our past favorite fast food (fried food) restaurants.

Every time I ate there, I would get weaker.  We thought that maybe the food had MSG’s in it which it probably did, but that was not the immediate cause of my problems.  In fact, we went back after months of not eating there, which means we were eating a lot of Taco Bell, and the strength issues did not show up for a few visits.  It seemed to happen again when we visited a Burger King.  Yeah it is no surprise that we both got so fat.

I had just started seeing a chiropractor that my mother-in-law was so generous to send me too.  He was really into this natural healing stuff, and I told him about my issue.  He walked over to my right side while I was laying on my back, and pressed on my stomach two inches down below my rib cage on my right side.  I felt a horrendous pain shoot up my entire body.  That is when he announced the problem to me.  It was a clogged gall bladder.

This began my realization of how sugar effects my body.  I ignored his warnings and continued slurping down my 96 oz of Dr. Pepper per day.  We tried diets on and off, from the Atkins diet, to just eating at home, to only salads from Schlotzky’s.  All of those diets ended up with us crashing due to our sugar cravings.  The reason our bodies craved sugar was because I had candida issues and sugar feeds candida.

Candida and clogged gall bladders tend to go hand in hand.  The candida makes you crave sugar which then clogs up your gall bladder.  It is a vicious cycle that is very hard to break away from.

At the beginning of this year, we were able to break free from our sugar addiction.  But within the last two days, the problem has returned.  No, we haven’t started eating processed sugar or fast food.  I was eating something that I thought was perfectly healthy.  I was eating honey.  The problem wasn’t really that I was eating honey, but I started eating quite a bit of it.

After the problems returned (including the muscle weakness), we decided that we need to get me back on our plan.  This means no more honey for me.  Not even a little with lemon and water.

Sugar has such an addiction in this household for far too long, but after this year, we know how to break its grasp on our lives.  I have been away from honey, and added it to my “do not eat” list, which is a bummer since I have a fantastic all-natural, dairy-free ice cream recipe that we created a week or so ago.  I am still planning on sharing that recipe with you soon, as the ingredients really are a great alternative to the processed stuff you get in store-bought ice cream.  But sadly for me, I won’t be able to have any.  At least not any time in the near future.

Since cold weather is on the way, Kristi and I wanted to share one of our favorite meals.  In fact, these lentils just might be our absolute favorite meal.

Kristi has never really been a person who liked beans.  I am a different story.  Beans have been a staple food in my life for  over 30 years.  While Kristi could never really get past the texture of beans (she has to smash them with a fork in order to be able to eat them), she still made for me because she knew how much I loved them.  She did actually come to like her charro beans, but these lentils have actually become a favorite meal for both of us.

The best part about these lentils is that they take only a few minutes to prepare (10 minutes at most), and they take a fraction of the time that pinto beans take to cook.  Kristi usually puts them on to cook about 1 to 1.5 hours before we’re ready to eat.  Here’s how to make them:

Ingredients:

• 1 pound of lentils
• 2 tsp of cumin
• 1 tsp of cayenne pepper
• 2.5 tsp of Johnny’s Seasoned Salt (we use the kind with no MSG)
• 1/2 onion
• 1/2 bunch of cilantro (about 3/4 cup)
• 5 cloves garlic
• 64 ounces of chicken broth

Directions:

• Rinse the lentils and put them in a 3 quart pot with 32 ounces of chicken broth.
• Add the cumin, cayenne pepper, and seasoned salt to the beans and stir well.
• Place the onion, garlic, cilantro, and about 1 cup of chicken broth into a blender and blend well.
• Add the blended veggies to the pot of lentils, and stir well.
• Add enough broth to fill the 3-quart pot.
• Bring to a boil, allow the lentils to boil for a few minutes, and then cover and reduce the heat.  Cook on medium to low heat for 1 to 1.5 hours, or until the lentils are very tender.

We like to eat our lentils with quinoa, but I am sure that it would taste fantastic with rice.  This is a great cold weather meal!

Exercise for people in  wheelchairs is very limited.  I have been trying to push myself around more by taking on my new gardening hobby and going outside more.  One thing that we think is vital to my success and healing is deep breathing exercises.  Kristi has noticed that I lose my breath a lot and need to take deep breaths in mid-sentence.

So I’ve started doing this exercise a few times a day:  I breath in as much as much air as I can and hold it in for 5 seconds or so.  Then, without exhaling, I breath in some more and hold it for another 5 seconds, and then I exhale slowly for 10-15 seconds.  I rest and breath normally for 20 seconds and start the process again.  I want to do this 3 times at 3 separate times throughout the day in hopes that it’ll make my lungs stronger, and allow me to speak easier, without having to stop mid-sentence and take a deep breath.

I’m also determined to gain strength in my legs.  For leg exercises, I am going to stand where I have two things to hold on to like a counter top and a towel rack (which is very secure, so it’s not a problem) that are close together.  As of right now, I can only stand for a few seconds because I have been strengthening the muscles by doing squats.  I thought that it would help me with standing too but it doesn’t.  Standing uses a different part of the quad muscle.  One interesting thing I noticed when exercising my legs is that my muscles feel like they come alive more which I think is from fresh blood flowing into my legs.

I am doing one more exercise everyday, and that is shoulder raises.  My right arm is very weak and I won’t do more reps than the right arm can handle.  I started doing this exercise after  my tendonitis in my left arm started acting up.  When I started doing the exercise it was very painful, but the pain has gone away since the first 5 times I did the exercise.  The cool thing about this exercise is that it not only works out the shoulder (delts) but also the traps which are the muscles in between the shoulder and neck.

Sometime in the next few weeks, I need to figure out a way for me to do back exercises and I will be starting an ab exercise with the others I mentioned above.  The thing I hate about exercising is the tremors that I get when my muscles get tired, but I’m determined to push through.  I really think that my success in regaining my health is dependent in part on my consistency in exercising my muscles and getting the blood and oxygen flowing in my body.  When I’m consistent and push through the pain, I feel like my efforts are rewarded.

I am  partially abled.  I am NOT an invalid.  I just need to find the hobby that would give me the sense of pride.  So last night I started my endeavor to find my worth, and it all started by me talking to my God.  God is the central being to my life, and this is just another part of my life that I could really use His infinite wisdom on.

I laid out all of my concerns to Him.  I told Him that I was looking for something that didn’t involve me staring at the tv all day, like watching movies or playing video games. One of my problems is that we feel that I have become too dependent on Kristi, and in the last two weeks, she has become too busy.  I have to keep reminding her to water the plants and plant the tomato plant.

She has enough on her plate and does not need more.  Besides, I really feel like I need to be outside more getting fresh air.  I woke up this morning with the feeling that I should head outside, so I did after breakfast.  I wheeled myself in front of the elevated garden tables that Kristi built for us, and looked at the radishes we planted a few days ago.  We watered them twice after planting them, so I watered them again by bringing water out with me.  I then thought that I really should get the new tomato plant planted in the elevated garden table before it dies.

It then hit me like a pile of rocks dropping on my head.  It was the resounding DUH moment.  I have two garden tables, so why am I not taking care of the veggies we are growing?   I cannot believe that it was not obvious to me prior to that moment.    Okay, now I have a hobby that has always been there.

Right now , we have kale, carrots, radishes and tomato plants.  I am going to start watering them everyday and researching how to be successful at growing them.  This will help me to feel a sense of pride and I will have something to show for it.  I am very excited about it.

We even figured out how I can get the plants watered without the hose which would require Kristi to help me.  Since the spigot is three condos down, I will be forcing myself to push myself to fill up bottles that I will then carry back to the garden to water the plants.  This will be so much better for me than just sitting in front of my tv playing video games.

After watching the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, I decided that I wanted to do a juice fast, so Kristi has been juicing three times a day.  But this week, I realized that a juice fast probably isn’t the best thing for me.  The problem is that when I’m only drinking juice, I’m not getting enough calories or fat, and my muscles seem to get weaker.

When I have bad days, like two days ago, I get so weak that I cannot transfer myself off of my wheelchair or back onto it by myself.  I have a hard time roaming around our condo, and when you add the fact that I don’t have energy because of juice fasting, it just becomes unbearable.  There are other factors at play too.  For instance, when I get too hot, I become this blob of goo that can’t be moved.  It is a heat intolerance that comes with MS, and it really stinks to be so easily affected by heat when you live in Texas.

Well this is what happened to me two nights ago.  I was not able to transfer myself back onto my wheelchair when I was in the bathroom.  It is bad enough that the toilet is a very hard surface, and it was quite late at night.  After one try of getting up, I started feeling very dizzy.  My right arm felt like is was completely numb which means I might be starting to overheat.  This is a really bad sign.

It always starts off with my right arm going numb.  Then I start to lose feeling in my legs followed very closely by my body swaying because of dizziness.  I cannot even begin to explain what I am feeling at the time except that I am afraid.  I can barely speak, my arms become useless, and my understanding of what needs to be done to get me up does not make sense to me.  Simply put, I feel FEAR!

I cannot even imagine what Kristi is feeling at the time.  It seems that it is almost entirely up to her to get me on the wheelchair.  She’s not a tall girl, but I will tell you that she is by far the strongest woman I have ever met.  Now as you know, I am not a small guy.  I mean I ate complete garbage over the last few year.  Kristi has no problem picking me up from my wheelchair and throwing me on to the bed.

She does have a problem getting me back onto the wheelchair in the bathroom.  We have a very cramped bathroom as you can imagine with our condo only being 834 sq feet.  How did we get me on the wheelchair?  We started by giving me a B-12 supplement.  B-12 gives me a lot more energy and seems to “wake” me up.  Then we added turmeric (which seems to loosen my tendons up) and ascorbic acid.  She then brought a fan into the bathroom and had it blowing directly on me to cool me down.  On top of all of that, we did a lot of praying.

After taking that stuff and waiting about an hour, we were able to get me back on my wheelchair.  The next transfer onto the bed was a breeze.  Needless to say I slept very soundly that night.  I was exhausted from that event.  That day was a horrible day.  We both thought those days were in the past, so it was a bit discouraging to have to deal with it once again.  I was thinking so much about how horrible that day was that I forgot about the awesome day I was about to begin the next day.

This happens every time I have a bad day.  The next day always turns out to be a stellar day.  And it was a great day!  I had no issues with strength.  I did not get tired as much.  I was very energetic.  The best part was that I had a great attitude and I was happy.

I wanted to share this with you because I want to be as real as possible about our journey.  I don’t ever want to give the impression that this whole “getting healthy” is simple, and that we never have any frustrating moments.  And I would never want to give that impression especially if someone is reading this who also deals with MS or a similar disease.  But even though we still have those frustrating moments, Kristi and I try to look at the big picture.  My overall health has improved dramatically since the end of last year.  Overall, my quality of life is 150% better than it was just four months ago.  Things are getting better.

There may be frustrating and discouraging moments, but we’re determined to push through, because tomorrow is a new day.

(And yes, it’s always that messy. That’s where I drag my saws, hammers, glue, and other tools to in order to work on projects for our condo and for my A2D blog. Anywhoo…)

In the past, I’ve always had to help Matt get in and out the door. He simply didn’t have the strength to do it himself. But now that he’s getting stronger and healthier each day, he’s been able to do it himself more consistently.

So the other day, we went outside to look at our gardens. I headed inside, and he followed about a minute later. I was already sitting at the table poking around on my computer, and I heard the loud scraping sound of metal against paved sidewalk…perfectly normal. But that sound was followed by another loud bang sound, and then Matt making an “Uuugggghhhh….uuuggghhh…” sound in a very strained, faint voice.

I rushed over to find Matt’s wheelchair tipped over backwards, Matt lying on his back, with absolute fear in his eyes. He was trying to get air into his lungs, but they simply weren’t cooperating. The force of the fall had knocked the wind completely out of him. I was absolutely struck with fear, not knowing what to do, or how to help him breathe, or how badly he had hit his head on the sidewalk.

The next few minutes were a blur. I remember kneeling beside him, yelling, “ARE YOU OKAY?! CAN YOU BREATHE?! WHAT CAN I DO?!”

After what seemed like an eternity, Matt was finally able to take a breath. He had hit his head pretty hard, but it only left a small knot. He was fine. I wasn’t. I was completely shaken, thinking that that could happen when I’m not home. Then what? The thought made cry.

Fortunately, one of our neighbors came out to see if we needed any assistance. Of course, we did. There was no way I could get Matt back in his wheelchair by myself. I also asked another neighbor if he could help. Both of them were able to lift Matt up, and I slid his wheelchair back under him. Then I pushed him inside.

Needless to say, that scary event made us realize that the ramp we had was simply not adequate. It was fine as long as I was doing everything for Matt, including pushing him in and out the door. But now that he’s gaining more strength, and able to do more on his own, safety is a priority.

A new ramp is on the way.

Matt had quite a bit of soreness the next day, and he still has a knot on his head, but a major crisis was averted. We won’t be taking any more chances.

So what’s our problem?  We stopped juicing for two days, ate mostly cooked foods, and had some bacon.  Well that’s not too bad right?   There is one problem.  If we had eaten the all natural pork from the farmers market , we would have been fine.  How do I know?  We actually eat all natural pork a few times a week with no issues.

Yesterday we didn’t eat free range pork though.  We ate store bought pork that is loaded with sodium nitrate, and I speculate that it has MSG even though it is not listed on the ingredients.  According to Kevin Trudeau, there are 20,000 ingredients that are not required by law to be listed on a food label.

So how did we know that was a no no?  Our bodies told on us, meaning that they did not like us after we ate it.

A few minutes after Kristi ate it, she started feeling like she was going to throw up.   In fact, it came on her so quickly that she made it to the kitchen sink right before her first purge.  She had a little time after that to get to the bathroom for round two.  After that, she still had severe stomach cramps, and decided to lay down on the bed.  She ended up sleeping for 3-4 hours.

I noticed a problem with it shortly after Kristi had problems, but I had different issues.  I did not get ill or tired at first.  Instead my right arm started to get very weak.  I had to take a niacin just to have enough strength to sit up while Kristi was sleeping.  Even today, my right arm and back are not back to normal in spite of me drinking more water to wash it from my system.

Today, Kristi is still not a 100%, but she feels much better and is able to function.  As for me, I have struggled with weakness, exhaustion, and numbness in my arms and legs.  Needless to say, we will not be eating store-bought pork again.

Now to go off topic, I am asking any of you to send me links about sprouting grains, seeds, and beans.  Pretty please with turbinado or stevia on top.

The truth is, I don’t feel sick because I don’t understand I am sick.  In fact, I have to ask Kristi often what the symptoms are that she sees in me and if they are improving or not.  Recently, I thought that maybe my legs have been getting worse, but there are a few factors I have to consider.  Like the fact that I fell within the last day, and that is hard on my legs and back, or the fact that I am I working myself too hard with my TENS unit.

So here is what I go through on a typical day.  Remember, I have better days and worse days, though the better days are now more often than my bad days by a ratio of 2 to 1.  And my bad days now are very similar to what my good days were at the end of last year.

I wake up every morning very groggy, just like any other normal night person.  First thing in the morning, I have a lot of strength, but lose most of it when I lay in bed trying to fully wake up.  There does seem to be a good connection between my brain and extremities, but some days my tremors do the thinking for me.  During breakfast we watch a Netflix show, and on my bad days, I will fall asleep about halfway through the show.  On my good days, I will not struggle at all, and on my typical days, I get tired but can stay awake.   My speech is generally very strong every morning.

Around lunch time, I am still very alert and decently strong on a typical day.  During lunch, we watch another 40-minute show, and I never seem to get tired during it even on my bad days.  My speech might be a little slurred if I don’t consistently drink 4-6 ounces of water every half an hour.

In between lunch and dinner, I start degrading pretty fast.  I have to take niacin to start getting my strength back in my back and neck muscles.  I often have trouble with my speech, but my breathing stays strong if I keep drinking water.  After I start flushing from the niacin, which I absolutely love to go through, I begin to feel rejuvenated.  My muscles become very responsive, and I wake right up.  I even get a second wind that not only affects my muscle strength, but also affects my mood in a very positive way.  As an example of the strength I get from niacin, yesterday I was able to go outside and then get myself back into the condo (up the short and steep ramp) with no problem after I took niacin.  Before I took the niacin, I would not have been able to get outside, which is easy to do, and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to get back inside by myself.  I attribute that muscle strength to the niacin.

By dinner time, at 8 pm, I am laying down on the bed again, and strength, speech, and alertness come back very quickly.  There usually is a short period of time around 10pm where I begin to lose strength, but it comes back an hour later.  Generally after that time, I will have no more strength issues the rest of the day.

We’re definitely seeing improvements.  For example, all throughout my day, I never have any dizziness anymore (which I used to experience almost non-stop all day long), and I never feel exhausted, just sleepy.

To make sure I drink enough water, I have set an alarm on my phone to go off every 30 mins.  I started this 3 weeks ago, and had big problems on only one day in which I ignored the alarm.  I know I used to have back problems with my MS, but any of the pain I feel in my back these days is only from my tailbone hurting from sitting in my wheelchair.  Boy I can’t wait to get out of this chair and start walking again.

If you know of anyone who suffers from MS, here are a couple of links I recommend:

Multiple Sclerosis and Diet Facebook Group
The Wahls Foundation Facebook Page

Every day is still a struggle, but it’s getting easier and easier each day.  Things will only get better from here.

For a while, we contemplated the idea of building raised bed gardens at my parents’ house.  They have a very large back yard with plenty of room for a garden or two.  But that would mean driving over there several times a week to tend the garden.  They don’t live too terribly far away, but making that drive a few times a week is something that could easily become so burdensome in my schedule that I’d find a way to drop it, and I didn’t want to take the chance of my garden responsibilities ending up on my mom.

So the only other option we could think of was to get permission to put two elevated gardens in the patio area that’s just outside our front door.  In the almost-six years that we’ve lived in this condo, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen anyone use that patio area.  So we asked, and we got the go-ahead!  Yay!

Originally, we were going to purchase two elevated garden tables from North Haven Gardens.

The plan was in place.  My stepsister Cathi was coming down on March 10th, and she was going to swing by North Haven Gardens, pick up our garden tables, and bring them to Waco.  We were so excited!!  Then the week before, we called to pay for the garden tables, and they were out of stock.  They wouldn’t have any in stock in time for Cathi to bring them to us.

Bummer.

So on to plan “B”.  I decided to make our own elevated gardens.  In the end, I’m actually glad things happened that way, because not only am I pretty darn proud of the fact that I made the garden myself, but I think I like the look of mine better AND we ended up saving about $100 per table by having me make it.  (I’ve only made one so far.  I’ll make the other one this weekend.)

I wrote a full step-by-step tutorial on how to build an elevated garden bed on my other blog, Addicted 2 Decorating.  So if you want the details to build your own, you can check it out over there.

I admit, I feel much more confident about the building of the garden bed than I feel about the planting of the garden.  I’ve never been good at growing plants…or keeping them alive.  So this is a pretty big step for me.

We’re in the planning stage right now, trying to decide what veggies to plant, and where to plant them.  We’ll have a total of 24 square feet of planting space.  It’s not big, but we can do quite a bit with it.  Matt’s dad bought him the book All New Square Foot Gardening, so Matt’s been studying up on how to make the most of our small gardens.

It’ll be so nice to be able to walk out our front door and pick some fresh veggies for our meals.  Here’s the current view from our front door.  Please try to contain your jealousy at the fact that we have a handy dandy bike rack right outside our door. 

Isn’t that convenient?  I almost feel like our purchasing this particular condo wasn’t merely chance.  If we had purchased any of the other two-bedroom condos , we wouldn’t have this convenient access to this patio area, and there’s not really anywhere else in the courtyard where we could have put two garden beds like this.

In this area, they’ll be tucked away behind the hedges, and the only people who will see them are the handful of people who live right around us.  I used to get frustrated that those hedges were so overgrown and getting so tall.  Now I’m kind of thankful for that.  They keep our little gardens hidden away from the eyes of curious neighbors.

So this is our next little adventure — chemical-free, organic gardening.  We’re excited!

So do you garden?  What kind of garden do you have?  In-ground?  Raised bed?  What do you grow?  Also, if you have any great resources for us (books, websites, etc.), we’d love to know about them!  We need all the help we can get!