Dr. Kyle Warren, DC, CFMP of Restorative Health Solutions shares a heart-wrenching patient story...
We have a patient who really struggled for five years with this mysterious illness. She’s a highly educated professional, holds an advanced degree and was in her business, has started her family, and all of a sudden started to get ill. She went to see lots of doctors, very expensive, down to The Mayo Clinic; very common when something gets mysterious that we’re down to The Mayo Clinic. About a third of our people (patients) have been to The Mayo Clinic, and still couldn’t quite grab the answers.
And five years into this program, her husband comes to her and says, “I’m out. Im done. No one knows what you have, I don’t know if you’re making it up, I can’t function like this. I’m sorry but I’m leaving." She did what she had to do, she just moved forward. She’s got two kids, so you have to handle that, and her husband is going… "I can’t do it.” So she lost her family, kind of, at least that was not how she expected it to go, she’s seeing her career slip away because she’s missing work. She’s going to her car to take two naps a day, just to get through a workday. And then when she gets home, she can’t really be the mom she wants to be.
So this is a person, like I said, extremely well accomplished and educated before this all happened. And her story just kind of broke my heart, because I’m going… "Okay, what happened?” And she found a Lyme functional medicine person in the cities, three years ago, diagnosed her with Lyme, and then started some stuff for her. And I met her, and we started talking and I said, “Well, how long have you been working on this?”
She said, “Three years.”
I said, "Well how are you doing, that’s kind of a long time."
She asked, “Is it a long time?”
I said, “ Well we tell people 12-18 months you really should be quite good.”
She says, “Well it’s been three years!”
I asked, “Well, okay...are you better?!”
She replied, “I’m worse than when I started.”
I said “well maybe you need a second opinion.” I took a look at her protocol… she was taking 46 pills every day, which is somewhat common, you know, you’re on 12-15 different vitamins. A lot of times when you are sick they start to pile up. So it was 46 pills…and I looked at this and I said “Of your protocol…44 of 46 pills are just trying to ‘help you keep it together. Two pills [vitamins] a day are really in my opinion trying to move you forward from point A to point B. And I said that I thought this is really a disproportionate amount of what you are doing. I tell people, we really want 80% of what you’re doing to be moving you forward. And we want 20% to be helping you get by, so you don’t have to suffer. I used to say “100% of the root cause!” That’s a mistake that an early doctor makes; 100% of the root cause means you are miserable while you’re going for the root cause; 80% means you’re making progress and the 20% helps people smooth it out.
But she started working with us about 6 months ago, and I’ve got to tell you, the last three months have been some of the best months she’s had in ten years!! And that’s some pretty quick results, although, she’s had some things going for her…but the last appointments were these kinds of “boring appointments” I’m talking about. “How ya’ doin?”
“Doing Good.”
“What are you doing?”
"I’m doing all this stuff with my family…trips with my girls. I haven’t had to take a nap in a month, I just work the day.”
“And then what do you do?”
“Well then I go home and I’m Mom to my girls.”
And I go…”Well Good!”
[She asks] “Well do you want to change anything?”
I say “Uhhh, not really!!”
If it’s going that good, my general rule is let’s be patient, when it’s going good! The better it’s going, the more patient I am, the worse it’s going, the more I want to fiddle and change and alter things. She’s the patient that, I saw her a couple week ago and I’m seeing her again in a few weeks…that, I’m thrilled for her ability to engage in her career because she has career aspirations and her ability to engage as a mom, because it’s been 10 years of her going “I can’t do the things in life…I can’t live the life I want to live because I don’t have the health to do it.
So, she is one of my patients we’re getting good results with it and I’m excited for her to get all the way through. There are some other people too who have similar stories; those are the [patient] stories that tend to get me when “I have career goals, I have family goals, I have these things, and they are just not happening because I have this illness. Can you please help me re-gain even the option of being able to work in my life? And that’s really what we want to help people do, is re-gain their life, re-gain the health to at least engage in their life!