I WAS NEARLY DEAD...
I had gone septic from the PICC line they had put just above my heart to keep me alive. I wasn't able to eat for months and my body was shutting down. I had gone from being a National Champion Ballroom Dancer on the best ballroom team in the world to the brink of death from a staph infection that had entered my PICC line. As the nurses franticly tried to find a good vein to start the strongest IV antiobotic they had available, I thought of my wife and 1 month-old son born 6-weeks early from the stress of my illness on my wife.
It turned me into a ghost of myself and almost killed me several times. I was hospitalized for months at a time and was fed exclusively from a PICC line placed in my upper arm and snaked through my veins to a position just above my heart. I eventually underwent a procedure to try to enable me to eat, but instead of creating a pathway for food it created a pathway for bile to back flow into my stomach. My stomach became paralyzed and I was still unable to eat, but I was now vomiting up to two liters of bile every few hours. Eventually I was released from the hospital with the PICC line in my arm and a backpack carrying the solution that was keeping me alive. As we collapsed on the couch relieved to finally be home my pregnant wife began to bleed and we returned to the hospital (my bag was still in the car) and my wife gave birth to our oldest son, 7 weeks early, and he was immediately whisked away to the NICU. Gratefully he did well and was released after about a month, but the PICC line was keeping me alive soon became contaminated with Staph and I was hours away from dying due to Septicemia.
I tried everything that the doctors gave me; from all the biological treatments available to chemotherapy (methotrexate) and everything in between. Steroids were the only thing that allowed me to walk and so I spent several years trying to be the CEO of a venture-backed software company while raising a family and destroying my mind and body through the chronic use of steroids. I no longer recognized myself mind or body. I was angry and aggressive from the constant flow of synthetic cortisol through my body and my face was swollen in the typical "moon-face" fashion.
The dr's said that they had run out of options for me. In one of the darkest times of my life, a voice came to my mind, "Your health is up to you now". This is where everything began to change, my wife packed up me, with my cane, and our three boys, just two weeks after the birth of my youngest and we moved to California to try medical Marijuana for my condition. I began doing cold exposure and breathing exercises. I began to change my mind and body through Family Systems Theory, EMDR, Yoga, meditation and mindfulness. I began to resolve my past trauma caused by the death of my parents when I was young and I learn the science behind the autonomic nervous system. I am now in complete, drug-free, remission of my disease. I am alive again and I've learned that my mission in life is to help people in their health and healing journeys. That is why I started What Magnificence. I wanted to share the wonders I discovered from an evidence based approach.
As scary as it was for me to hear that voice tell me that my health was in my hands; it was always the truth from the beginning. Your health is in your hands! It's time to take it back!