Freedom From Pain

Yesterday was ketamine. I was looking forward to this appointment for many reasons. For starters, earlier in the week, I got an email from Klarisana that they now accept and bill insurance directly.

This is a huge change from what it used to be. Before, you got a bills, and submitted it to insurance. The weird part, is since last August, insurance was even batting an eye at it. They approved it. I still had to pay some, but not all of it.

Starting at the beginning of the year however, they stopped approving things … out of the blue. It’s quite clear that this is medically necessary, however the robots at Anthem chose otherwise. I got a letter stating that all my submissions were rejected, and I wasn’t submitting them any different than before. Which sucks because Ketamine costs $400 per visit. It was a hard pill to swallow, but at the same time, I need this.

So whatever, I’ll just deal with it. I find it hilarious that they were fine with paying for some of it, then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, nope. Not anymore. I guess I’ll just figure this out.

The day before my visit, Klarisana reached out to have me fill out this form, take pics of my ID and insurance card, and just like that, problem solved. Sessions are now $200 per visit vs $400. I don’t know what changed, or how it changed, all that matters is I’m paying half as much as I was.

Now the next question is how to do we figure out all the sessions I had done previously, can we backdate all this? Get those at least half covered? Kind of a billing mess. I’ve asked billing several times to look into it, but I’ve yet to get a response. I guess if going forward it’s $200, fine. At least I don’t have to submit paperwork to insurance anymore.

Just like every session before, yesterday went great. As I came down, the pain was completely gone. Liberated from what I was feeling before I sat in the chair. Freedom from pain while using ketamine has been a literal godsend. The previous sessions, the effects have been short-lived. Only about 1-3 days before it all comes back. Pain puts a lot of chaos into one’s life. If anyone has ever suffered from chronic pain, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

With the discovery last week with the fungal infection, killing sugar out of my diet has got to have been one of the greatest discoveries to date. I guess it took being pushed off of the cliff again to get me to realize what was wrong. Putting this medical nightmare together has been a challenge. Doctors checked out. Not caring. Not looking to solve the problem. The thing that’s always stuck out in my labs has been:

• High WBC’s ranging from 13-20 (< 9 is norm).
• Neutrophils always extremely elevated.
• CRP/ESR (inflammation markers) through the roof.
• Glucose through the roof (taken when I haven’t eaten anything.
• Not a lab, but gaining weight when consuming < 1000 calories a day

That’s when it dawned on me. Last Saturdays “reaction” to the white chocolate mocha was enough evidence I needed. Even though I’m taking the 2nd strongest anti-fungal, on top of sucking on clomitriazole lozenges, my face continued to hurt. Only an hour after consuming the coffee, it hit me like a ton of bricks. My face felt huge, where the tumor & abscess was removed from my left frontal sinus, this “bump” got big. When you would push down on it, I would just see stars.

Approximately 2 hours after, my whole body was on fire. Every joint in my body felt like someone cemented me. My neck was impossible to turn. My head was extremely itchy. Then as always, my sinuses started bleeding. Bright red. Pain was damn near 10, Dilaudid wouldn’t touch anything. I just had to endure.

On top of that, the lumps I feel in my face and under my tongue were searing painful. It was almost if someone was jabbing me with hot pokers. Especially behind my left ear. The typical whiteheads emerged everywhere all over my scalp and face. My left ear was super red, and hot to the touch:

Then just like that an epiphany hit me like a bolt of lightning. Since this fungal infection has refused to leave, there’s only 1 thing that could be triggering it, and it’s sugar. My sugar consumption throughout the years hasn’t been “monitored” like I’ve been having to watch the amount of sodium I can have daily ( < 3000mg).

I ran to the bathroom and grabbed all my sinus rinse supplies. At this point, the inflammation was behind my eyes, and it felt almost as if it was in my brain. I grabbed the mupirocin, Flagyl, and budesonide. I mixed all of the stuff together, and loaded up my sinus rinse pump and was dreading what was to come. When things get to this point, it’s going to hurt. I cranked up the pressure settings to max because I had to get all the way to the top of my left frontal sinus, because I knew that’s where it was hiding, and between my eyes, obviously my sphenoid is still hiding something, I was just hoping that the exits weren’t closed off.

As I turned the pump on, and leaned over, I must have had the wand positioned right, because the moment I turned it on, every pulse felt like someone was stabbing me with an ice pick. Immediately, blood, and brownish/white crap began to come out. It hurt so much, but at the same time, the release of pressure felt so good.

After I finished the rinse, I immediately got in the shower to was my entire body with ketoconazole. At this point I’m desperate to get the fire out. After a 15 minute long hot shower, basically leaning over in awkward positions, it finally came out. This huge brownish blackish “mass” came out. It definitely came from my left frontal sinus, and the second hand to have come from my sphenoid. They both looked the same. Immediately after getting those out, I started bleeding. It took about 20 minutes to get it to stop. But I was gagging so badly.

When I got out of the shower, I q-tipped my left ear, and this brownish gunk came out. God this hurt so bad, but this just means the fungal infection is refusing to leave, and binding in the usual places. My tongue was black, again. I tried getting as much of it off as I could but the minute I removed it, I started bleeding. The fungal infection is that deep seated.

I poked my head out of the bathroom and told Anies “I know what the fuck is doing this”. It’s sugar. It makes complete sense. Sugar is basically food for fungal infections. So I then set forth the plan in my head. Eliminate sugar from my diet. Crank up my water intake. Hopefully flushing out all the garbage that’s been building since living in the mold infested apartment.

The next day, I got a tongue scraper from Target to help me get rid of this out of my mouth. I started rinsing my mouth constantly with Hydrogen Peroxide. Another thing I added was vitamin C, Qucertin, and Tumeric for supplements.

By day 3, everything started to work. The inflammation I’ve been feeling the past 5+ years started to withdrawal. The swelling in my sinuses, face and neck has started to go down. I could start to see the normal color of my tongue. Could the solution to all this be that simple? Just getting rid of sugar pushed this into the right direction. Even the severe exhaustion I’ve been combatting this entire time has come down tremendously. I actually have energy again.

By the start of the next week, I felt completely different than I did a week ago. My body doesn’t feel like I’m 80. The facial pain has actually become manageable. Normally it would take 3-4 hours to get to ready to go to work, now I can get out of bed and just get ready for work.

On top of all this, the whole time I’ve been suspecting that I’ve been biting my lower jaw. For years I’ve always grinned my teeth while sleeping. Well since losing all my lower teeth, there’s nothing stopping my upper teeth from damaging my lower jaw. So I had a special super soft mouth guard make to see if this would solve the problem of my lower jaw. I received it last week and I gotta say it’s made a word of difference. My jaw doesn’t hurt like it used to every morning. Where I would have to wake up in the middle of the night to stay on the Dilaudid every 6 hours, I don’t have to do that anymore.

If things keep progressing the way they have been, maybe, just maybe this is the end of the misery I’ve had to experience for the past 5 years. I just have to stay tuned to what my body is telling me. Rest when I need to. Don’t overdo it. Perhaps soon I can start to throttle back on the Dilaudid, and get to the point where it’s no longer needed.

It’s been nice to be able to think clearly, have my brain back. Having the energy back to where I don’t come home from work and immediately hit the couch and power nap. Being able to sleep an entire night has been a great feeling. I actually feel rested when I wake up.

Lastly, from the last few donations from the GoFundMe, I was able to kill yet another credit card off which will save $200 a month in just interest.

I’m so grateful to those people who have donated and continue to donate to the GoFundMe as everything I receive from those donations just go straight to the cards. So as it stands, what’s left?

3 Personal loans totaling $1800 a month. 3 credit cards totaling $1200 a month. Roughly about $80k left to go. Unfortunately this money had to be spent to keep me alive. To keep the ship afloat. Having to spend $12k to get out of our hazardous apartment was a huge setback to my plans of getting us out of debt. But with time, hopefully I can dig us out of this huge hole of debt that the health hazard created over the span of 6 years. As unfair as it is, I haven’t heard anything from the attorney reviewing everything. Parc at Cherry Creek NEEDS to be held accountable for all of this. They were directly responsible for my continued misery over the years and the fallout I continue to experience.

All I can say is that I’m glad we are out of that fucking place. Staying there any longer would’ve most likely killed me. It’s quite clear that that apartment directly contributed to the clots, the constant illnesses, the loss of my teeth, and most importantly, the heart attack. What they did was wrong. On so many levels. Makes me wonder how they sleep at night knowing that their direct “inactions” and carelessness with the mold issues we’ve consistently had over the years almost ruined me financially and physically. The chronic mold exposure affected all of us. I’m just glad we are in a safe place now.

Anies and I did manage to make it out a few weekends ago. I finally got to see Maroon Bells for the first time, and it was pretty cool to see in person.

I’m just glad hat some sort of “normalcy” is returning to our lives. The past 5 years have been tough for the both of us. But we got through it. I do see the light at the end of the tunnel, hopefully the fallout will be manageable going forward, and with time, will minimize to the extent where it doesn’t directly impede with our lives.

I look forward to getting back out there, and resuming “life” with my best friend and love of my life.

Sorry I’ve not been post as much as I normally have been, but especially the past 2 weeks have been pure hell.

I’ll try to do better with regular updates going forward now that things have settled down.