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Mostly I think I just can't face everything quite yet.
I've been sick a long time, had just about given up, and then of course I stumbled onto the guai protocol. I wasn't even looking for anything for myself. I think I'd already given that up.
I was actually afraid to use the Internet to seek out help for my health problems, because of what I had found, or actually not found so many times before. But a friend of mine had been
diagnosed with fibromyalgia and she couldn't get out onto the Internet, so whenever I saw anything that might help her, I checked it out, and compiled a list of sites for her.
Then one day I saw a link at one of the fibromyalgia sites that said "the connection between salicylates and fibro". I knew I had a sensitivity to aspirin (a common salicylate) so I followed the link. The rest, as they say, is history. I found a perfect description of my medical history in the material on that website (the original guai-support website in Geocities).
I wish I could tell you I immediately jumped into the protocol. I've done a lost of sudden things in my life, but I was in such shock, I frankly couldn't really comprehend it all.
The site confused me. It seemed to say that there was a treatment for all of the varied symptoms which had plagued me all of my life. I just couldn't figure it out, or believe it. Perhaps I had firbofog, as we call it, or maybe I was just too shocked. It seemed to me at the time that I would have to subject myself to the whole round of medical interventions all over again in order to even try the guai protocol, and that really put me off. I have spent decades going it alone with alternate therapies and they had certainly helped me more than anything that the conventional medical profession had offered me . So I left the site confused and a bit dazed. I came back a few months later when an incident reminded me again about my sensitivity to aspirin. This time it all seemed so simple. I could take this simple nostrum (the guai) and just by avoiding sals (which I did already), I would get rid of the deposits which had been in my body for so long. The fact that the therapy is not for the wimpy didn't scare me. It sounded like a detox to me and I had already done that in many different ways over the years. I could handle it one more time.
Actually for me the the protocol has been easy, certainly far easier than what I had suffered through before finding guai. I'm not well yet, but I've been on the protocol now for about 8 months
and I've made a lot of progress.
The description of the DD (Damn Disease) fitted my whole medical history perfectly; I simply couldn't believe at first that everything I had suffered throughout my life was really only one major illness and all of it's various manifestations, but this has turned out to be so. That, and the fact that things stated happening to me right away (5 minutes after my first dose of guai - I'm a fast responder. this means I get to suffer even faster than most. Ha!.Ha!), made a believer out of me right away and I started looking for a way to contribute to the guai effort. I've been a computer programmer for 25 years, and a web designer for 2 years, so this site was a natural thing for me to do. I think of it as putting down an anchor for the guai protocol on the Net. I've worked with many really huge computer systems over the years and I know that over time the guai effort on the Internet will be huge too, so here I am, doing what I can do best.
I promise to eventually get down to the business of writing my own bio for the site. It will probably be very long, so it will take a while, but for now I want to tell you just two short stories
which will help to explain why I chose to do a bio website and not something else
The first story is really about my state of mind right before I found the guai
support site. I had been on the web for about 2 years then, and I had picked up the knack of things. I'm trying to support myself now by working on the
web because I can't work in an office due to my allergies to perfume, chemicals, etc. So the Internet is another chance for me, and in all modesty I
was born to be on the web. Sometimes I even think maybe it was developed just for me. I have designed and executed more than 25 sites, some small,
some larger, some complex, some not. My very first site was in Geocities, actually as it turns out, really in the some community as the original guai
support site. We were neightbors and I didn't even know it. Anyway, I loved Geocities the first time I saw it. I really liked the idea if people going to a
place like that, and expressing themselves for all of the world to see and enjoy. I'm pretty eccentric, and have expressed myself in a lot of crazy ways over the years, so GC is a comfortable place for me.
I had looked through Geocities and noticed that people made good sites, and bad sites, and silly sites, etc. After a while I got this idea that I wanted to put
up a site about my illness. An anonymous site, something like a diary, with no e-mail connection back to me. I thought it might do me good to just sit
down and tell my story to someone, really anyone, anyone at all who would listen. I do not normally need others to validate me. I have no close family,
and it has perhaps been a fortunate thing that I am so self-reliant and emotionally self-sufficient. I knew that my story was considered crazy. I also
knew that I wasn't crazy. My own theory about my ill health was that I had sustained damage to my immune system from an infection at 17. I never
really recovered from that mysterious infection. I knew that no one seemed to understand my illness. Who could understand it? Even I had to admit it was
all so wacky. Symptoms changing at the speed of light, no detectable damage to my body considering how really sick I could feel. Years of pain,
but somehow surviving it all with no permanent damage. Who could believe it? Would I, if it hadn't happened to me?
Anyway I wanted to create a site at Geocities to pass on the many things I had learned about what was happening to my body. I knew for instance, about
the strange hard deposits which had formed all throughout my body. I knew that as they cleared from an area (I had tried many alternate therapies), that I
would feel better there. I knew that what was called chronic fatigue syndrome (which would fit me) was really the same as fibromyalgia, was really the same
as Epstein-Barr, was really the same as multiple chemical sensitivities (which also fit me). I knew that these things were somehow all connected, even
though not many others seemed to know this. I met so many people who would say that they were diagnosed with this or that. They usually would feel
that by getting a diagnosis they were somehow better off. But these illnesses had no really effective treatment, so what was the point of a diagnosis? Also,
most people I met with these problems were almost proud of their diagnosis. Feeling very separate from others with different diagnoses. No, they would
say, I have Epstein-Barr and not fibromyalgia; or maybe I have CFS and not Epstein-Barr. Mostly people didn't seem to make the connection between all
of these conditions. So it was very frustrating for me to talk to people about my illness. I just had gotten so tired of it all over the years.
I wanted to do the Geocities site just to let people know about me and about what I had suffered and learned. I knew that eventually some people would
stumble onto my site even if I didn't publicize it. I know that the Internet will be around a very long time, and like old silent movies, we don't know yet how
long a lifespan some Internet web sites may have. I didn't know what else to do about the isolation caused by my ill health; except to do a website in
secret for a few others to find. No one seemed to want to hear, or to know. Those that were ill with this same thing mostly gave up or wandered from
doctor to doctor. There was no one for me to talk to, thus the site. It seems a pretty hopeless and forlorn thing to do, but what else would be effective?
Everything else I could think of seemed even more hopeless.
Planning to set up this other site someday was the very best thing that I knew how to do before I found the guai support group. I was always doing things to
improve my health, but I didn't have any other idea about how to share my insights or frustations with others. Even my efforts to find a support group for
my environmmental allergies had been thwarted; I was told that we were all too sick and allergic to one another to meet together. It was true.
The other incident I would like to tell about happened when I was 15. I have
always described my health problems to people as starting when I woke up one day at 17 with a sore throat and flu which just simply never went away. It
was two years before I could get back to school. This was the start of chronic illness for me. But actually my first real illness, and what I now know was my
first real flare with the DD, happened when I was 15. I was in school, an honor student, doing well, everyone thinking about me, "she will be doing great
things in life". Then one morning out of the blue, I had a panic attack. I was at school, went to the nurse and got sent home. When this happened to me
everyone thought that there was no real problem, or perhaps there was a minor medical condition that a pill or something would fix. Since I was such a good
student, literally the best in the school, the authorities decided I was bored. They offered to let me drop some of my 'boring' classes. Anyone who has ever
had a panic attack knows that the one thing they are not is bored. The attack rivets the attention like nothing else can. It simply compels attention. You
can not ignore your body when it is having a panic attack. If you think you have had panic attacks, but the attacks did not have this all compelling focus, it's anxiety, but not a panic attack.
I remember that first attack so well. I was the only one who knew how serious it all was. My mother, who was usually home, was out somewhere that day
and she couldn't pick me up. The school wanted to keep me there, but I desperately wanted to go home. I was in mental agony. They let someone in
the office drive me home only because one of my teachers vouched for me. She knew who I was and that I wasn't just trying to get out of class.
When I got home I was there alone. That was no problem, I'm comfortable being alone. It took several hours before my mother came home. I remember
that I paced the floor all day long. I knew I was in deep trouble. I knew how really bad I felt. I knew that I had never heard of anyone having this kind of
feeling. This was still the early and very conplacent 1960s. And I suppose I knew even then how little others would understand about all this. That turned
out to be the case, and the first major nightmare of my life began that day.
The reason I'm telling this particular story is this. There was nothing to help me that day. No one to talk to who would understand, No books to read, at
least that I could find. No Internet. No resources to fit my need. We have the Internet today. It have everything laid out for us, it's all there for us to use. I
have described the Internet to people who have never surfed it, as being like standing in the doorway of a library that contains all of the answers to the
questions that, in fact, have answers. I think what my life would have been if I had had access to the Internet that day. If there had been a guai support
group I could have found. If there had been a protocol that could have actually given me help, real help. What it would have been is this - HOPE. If I would
have found myself on the web that day, when I was 15, my life would have been oh so different. Don't get me wrong, my life has taken me to so many
places within myself where I needed to go. I can't regret the way that things have turned out so far in my life. I wouldn't know myself if I had become
anyone else but who I am right now, but I do sometimes think - what if? What if?
And I think what about the others? The others who will need these resources today or tomorrow or even in hundreds of years. I have benefited so much in
so many ways from the legacy left by others who have gone before me. How much suffering could I prevent by helping to create what would have made
such a difference in my own life? That's why I'm writing this, and that's why I've chosen to put together this particular site. That's why I don't need to do
an anonymous site in Geocities or somewhere else. I found myself in the writings and posts of the guai support group and support sites. I've found a place for my story.
I know that there are many others who need to see themselves too. They need to hear our stories, and we need to sing our own personal songs for them
to hear. If you have a story to tell, please join us and submit it. If not, please enjoy and benefit from what we have to share with you. Rita Wondrak
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