Memo: Above comes from my erstwhile “Healing Journal” – written/compiled on a foggy meandering journey to various countries (Pacifica, Phitsanulok, Cochin, Pokhara, Dikwella/Galle…) visiting all manner of hospitals, clinics and exploring various healing modalities and techniques.

Shared here more-or-less unedited for posterity (whatever that is) and to shed light to those struggling who might come across this riff. Please watch the “Healing Ramble, introduction”” video for context on this series.

Importantly, this is not meant to be a travelogue or creative writing exercise, just laying out my experience as it came to me. I may include some links to other projects or creations that came out of this, maybe… I’m not there yet.

This entry was in Pokhara, Nepal, early 2017, written as a letter to someone i met along the way facing health challenges of their own. I never heard back but whatever…

(finally) organized and published spring 2022 – i now live in Japan, am stable if far from “normal”.  No comments, sympathy requested or accepted. Carry on. Note: There’s another post with a review and brief introduction to Ayurveda Health Home as well. 

daveo

Dear [Redacted],

I’ll speak frankly and candidly from my own experience, all of us are different of course – for the record I am at an Ayurvedic clinic in Pokhara, Nepal.

Background:

Like you, and most everyone else with a chronic complex medical conundrum, I’ve spent all the time since my “trigger event” seeking out various treatments.

From overmatched GP doctors, to the anticipation of finally getting into see a “specialist” and the disappointment crash following when they still have more answers than questions, spending everything you got to see various naturopaths, chiropractors, reiki practitioners, massage therapists, nutritionalists… with little to no long-term benefit, spending sleepless nights reading medical abstracts & journals as though you understand them, seriously considering going in significant debt to go to a “fancy famous” hospital, putting up with family and “friends” advice (occasionally well-meaning) but always useless and often completely disrespectful, using up every bit of energy reserves on a daily basis just to get through the day and hopefully feel some vague sense of satisfaction or accomplishment when really you’re just spinning, seeing the stress it causes on lovers and partners who try their best to understand but crack under the pressure from time to time, and acknowledging your own mental well being — which starts to fragment from exhaustion, frustration and so many (often professional) people telling you that it’s “all in your head”.

I made a penciled flowchart of my various options before I headed out this last time, ergo:

Shall I do just what the Western doctors and insurance companies want me to do hide myself in a rainy apartment with old folks down the hall filling the lobby with smell of soup?

Go down in flames with late nights of parties and decadence pushing myself to the very limits knowing that it doesn’t really matter if I wake up tomorrow (I’m just not that self-destructive)?

Or, beg borrow and steal to see the litany of well-meaning but wholly ineffective naturopaths, chiropractors, Reiki practitioners, nutritionists blah blah blah? (I have largely done this and have fallen deeply into debt as a result)

Or do I continue this sorta strange wandering life of seeking healing in foreign lands while playing the “cat and mouse” game with the insurance thugs who wish to control me? I guess this choice won for the time being so i’ll break down the problems in the categories:

• Financial (the cost of simply living coupled with the cost of getting treatment)
• Treatment (access to reliable and useful services when you need them)
• Climate (some of us do better and different weather, as well the “political” and social stress of environment)
• Community (the first year or so it can seem that you have a support network but as years go on, this breaks down and begins to vanish having a net negative affect)

My experience:

My “western diagnosis” is fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome/M.E. This all started in May 2013 so I’m coming up on four years. My diagnoses usually affects women and there is support groups etc. have been primarily women, bless their hearts.

Continue reading Healing Ramble: Pros & cons of living or seeking treatment abroad with a chronic illness →

What follows comes from my erstwhile “Healing Journal” – written/compiled on a foggy meandering journey to various countries visiting all manner of hospitals, clinics and exploring various healing modalities and technique dealing with #MECFS.

Please watch the “Healing Ramble, introduction” video for context on this series.

This entry from Phitsanulok, Thailand  Oct. 2016 riffs in between 2 extended parts of the trip while flashing back on a few parts which we might get to (chronology be danged).

For reference, its now June 2021, i live in Japan, am stable if far from “normal”.  Carry on.

Phitsanulok, Oct, 2016

I wrote this declaration upon waking up,

“This past summer after literally losing my mind {long story, didn’t end well, not recommended}, I decided to step into the abyss, bravely, intrepidly and without compromise.

While holed up at a mountain cabin while chaos swirled around my life, I’d listen to the messages from records stashed in a basement 25 years before like an unintentional time capsule. I hotboxed my beloved old VW bus, which is now a sauna, where so many memories – happy memories – happened. I reunited with charming characters from my past and even better, met their children who were adults, moreso than me anyway.

Then with a solid head of mushrooms and MDMA (therapeutically), a plan came to me. So on this psychedelic carpet, i clicked enough buttons on the internet to purchase an abstract variety of plane and train tickets to send me around like a manic board game in such of a new flavour of truth and reality >> Salt Lake City to Las Vegas to Pacifica to Chaing Mai and now to this rather-anonymous-work-a-day city Phitsanulok where I’m practically the only foreigner in a city mourning the death of their beloved King. I’m finding comfort and solace and healing.

In scant days, I will leave again into (for me) un-charted territory beyond what science and reason says it’s capable of this haggard body, but I refuse to accept anything but finding some sense of joy.

I can live with pain, i accept this (i suppose, begrudgingly but practically), but i cannot accept living without my brain and without my heart and soul. I am born to give, i exist to share and i am empty without these.

Without a safety net, without an emergency escape route, without language skills, without the strength to punch my way out of a wet paper bag, i built a tiny universe and painted the walls just the colour i chose.

So, who will return to the West Coast on December 6th? Will i return? What will i look like? Who will i be? I am indifferent to all of these questions as the destination is simply a byproduct of the journey.

The journey is me and I am the journey, brick by brick, stride by stumble, i will gently apply the mortar to rebuild, to renew, to replenish and regenerate from the very mitochondrial cells outward.

Whatever the results, it will be me.”

See also: Thunderstorm in the Crash Years & Story of a bath and more to come… next stop: India, come along