February, 2006
Wellness Achiever, Patricia Kavulic
I am not someone who is “into” healthy eating and exercise. I am your average person who likes her coffee, carbs and fast food once or twice a week. I don’t come from a “health food background” and, before my experience with Ziquin, I was never in the habit of drinking lots of water or taking over-the-counter vitamins. However, up until about 12 years ago, I felt generally healthy.
I had three kids, a good husband, two dogs, a nice house in Southern California and I felt pretty good about my life. Then a not so big auto accident brought on the onset of some monster which at first had no name. My body screamed at me on a daily basis and I was brought to tears by the constant pain. I was stricken with extremely tender muscles, sore pressure points, depression, horrible sleep and other symptoms that blocked me from experiencing the joys in my life. I was in so much pain my husband told me that I would literally cry and whimper during those brief periods when I could actually fall asleep. I needed to do something.
I went to a variety of doctors, literally dozens of them, to find out what was wrong. In doing so, I went through X-rays, MRIs, chiropractors, neurologists, internists… you name it. During this time I was prescribed dozens of medications as these doctors struggled to find me a way back to feeling good and a decent night’s sleep. The doctors gave a variety of diagnoses: I had the onset of menopause, I was just depressed, I was developing arthritis, my body was reacting to stress, et cetera. Some doctors thought I was just a complainer. That wasn’t it, but not having a name for this monster only made it more difficult for me to cope. I felt helpless. This went on for years.
Finally I went to a doctor who able to correctly diagnose my condition. I had fibromyalgia. However, with the diagnosis came a litany of new medications, each of which created its own problems.
Over a period of six years I was prescribed 8 to 10 different anti-depressants. Most of them just made me feel worse. I also was worried about becoming dependent on them because they were masking the real problem. I was also prescribed a variety of medication for the pain I constantly felt. None of which worked very well. One doctor told me to take 800 mg of Motrin three times a day—that actually helped--but my stomach became very upset and I found out later that taking that much ibuprophen is damaging to the liver and kidneys. Some of these pain medications also made me feel ‘drugged out’ and didn’t allow me to function very well. The doctors told me I would eventually build up a tolerance to them. The thought of this made me nervous. Why would I want to build up a tolerance to something? It made no sense to me and I knew that none of these drugs were doing a thing to solve my problem. They just masked my symptoms and, for the most part, did so poorly. I also started developing ulcer-like conditions in my stomach due to all the medication I was taking. I was miserable. There didn’t seem to be a solution.
I began to feel I just had to learn to live with my situation and I did my best, but I became less and less hopeful about life. I was bitter about working in pain, living in pain, always being in pain. It just didn’t seem to be worth it and I felt very hopeless. Some days I would wake up from a night of tossing and turning through broken, fitful sleep and I would cry and scream out of complete frustration. My body constantly ached. My mind was constantly exhausted. I felt like I was being punished for something and I didn’t know how to make things better. I just suffered and suffered and no one really understood what I was going through. Deep inside I was very angry at having the joy of my life taken away from me. What had I done to deserve this?
The way the doctors wanted to treat me was to have me build up a tolerance to drugs that made me feel drugged out, take sleeping aids that made me depressed, vitamins that made my stomach hurt or cause me to vomit, all of which were adding to my ulcer-like symptoms which were getting worse. It didn’t make sense to me, but I kept doing it because we’re told to do what doctors tell us to do and I didn’t feel like I had any other real options. It all made me feel incredible helpless.
Desperate people do desperate things, so when my son started working at Ziquin and strongly encouraged me to try the Fusion Collection, I thought “It’s probably not going to work, but I’m willing to give it a shot.”
Not having ever taken supplements regularly the products seemed very difficult to take at first, but I made a commitment to give them a fair shot and take them faithfully for six months. Why not? I had tried so many prescribed medications and nothing worked, I thought I should at least give this a fair shot.
Within the first month, I started feeling better. I was sleeping and had more energy and less pain. This is was really something for a person who has not had a good night of sleep in twelve years. Twelve years is a long time when you are constantly exhausted and in pain. Twelve years.
The first night of good sleep was absolutely amazing and I literally started looking forward to being able to go to bed. I actually enjoyed going to bed for the first time in twelve years.
Then the retracing that the Ziquin coaches told me about started. During retracing, my fibromyalgia symptoms felt exaggerated. The poor sleep returned along with legs that ached terribly, overall soreness and pain and the general feeling of inflammation throughout my body. It felt like the monster had come back with a vengeance.
It was tough, but it is important to remember that when one is sick, even if your partner doesn’t share your pain, they suffer along with you. For twelve years, my husband suffered with me and it was difficult on my marriage, I knew I had to hang in there for both of us.
I just kept remembering how good I felt during the first month. I told myself, “This will pass.” Well, the doctors told me that fibromyalgia wouldn’t pass. Now, for the first time, I had hope that there might be a solution. So, I was willing to tough it out and get past the re-tracing because now my hope was back.
After slowly coming out of retracing, I experienced improved sleep, improved energy levels and have lost 18 unwanted pounds. My fibromyalgia symptoms are generally in check… Ziquin has tamed the monster.
I recently went to my neurologist. He grabbed his chart and looked at it, looked at me and looked at his chart again, then said, “I wasn’t sure it was you. You look great.” I said, “I feel great!”
Then I told him, “I thought about not coming because I didn’t want to waste you time.”
Then he got this big smile on his face and said, “You don’t need to be here. I might be wasting your time because it looks like you are feeling good enough to go do something fun.”
I believe God has put a lot of things in Nature that we have yet to understand how they work to provide us with the properties to heal ourselves. It may be that on some level Ziquin has tapped into that.
I believe God blesses us with many things in our daily life, but when you are filled with pain and sadness you tend to not see those blessings. Feeling healthy cleared the pain-built wall that blocked me from seeing God’s blessings and allowed me to experience all the wonderful things that I had in my life.
Living in constant exhaustion and chronic dehabilitating pain makes it difficult to appreciate the good things God has put into one’s life. I now feel that perhaps through a chain of events God led me to this vitamin/mineral supplement to help me appreciate the good things in my life again. Oh, I still need to drink more water, not eat so many carbs, eat less fast food and exercise more, but at least now I’m laughing about it and have the energy to do it if I put my mind to it.
I went on a long walk yesterday with my husband for the first time in many years. It was a good day. I’m taking baby steps forward, but after a while they add up. Life is good again and I’m thankful for that because for a long time it was difficult to be thankful for anything.
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