Lauren, a young adult living with multiple health conditions, shares her experiences with medical treatments, physical symptoms, and the challenges of being in a wheelchair due to Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). Lauren also suffered from Fibromyalgia, and sensitivities to food, light, and sound. Despite these hardships, Lauren found a path to recovery through DNRS, which significantly improved her life.
My name is Lauren and I’m 22 years old, and I have chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, multiple chemical sensitivities, food light and sound sensitivities, and a movement disorder. And I’ve had most of these, um, for about five years. This is my wheelchair. These are my hot wheels, and it keeps me reclined so that my blood pressure is more at a optimum level because I’m vertically challenged. Uh, when I stand up, my blood pressure just drops. And, um, when that happens, it makes your heart rate just shoot through the roof. With these conditions, I’ve had to have a lot of help from my parents.
We had worked with an immunologist to start allergy testing and allergy shots. Um, we found out she reacted to 54 out of 76 antigens that was done of skin testing on her back. So that led to immunotherapy with allergy shots, which were gonna last for three and a half years. Now, the difficulty with that was she couldn’t tolerate it very well either, and they could never give her therapeutic dose because her body would overreact to what she was getting.
And a lot more malaise. I was very, very tired and sleeping a lot.
She became highly sensitive to light and sound.
It had gotten to the point where I, I just stopped looking at my laptop. Um, even though I would bring it to the lowest setting, it was still just too bright.
We would have to put a washcloth over her eyes because the sunlight, even with sunglasses on, was too bright. And the music that they would play in the doctor’s office, even with earplugs in her ears, foam ones that for 70 decibels was too loud and annoying to her, too stimulating.
My dad wrote Post-its on the door saying, please close gently, but it was never gentle enough , even though we had those reminders, and I would just jump like, out of my chair and I’d just start crying.
Her fibromyalgia would really become very painful in her, her muscles and joints,
The pain that you just constantly have, it’s like impossible to fall asleep because you’ll never find a comfortable position.
I had to make all of her food because she required a special diet. It was everything was organic, grass fed meat, and she could only eat about a dozen items. Uh, first we worked with, um, the allergy doctors, and then it’s went into other doctors like gastroenterologists. We were going out of plan for work with a, a fibro my fatigue center in Denver.
I went to the Mayo Clinic a few years ago, and they were really good at diagnosing the problem, but they don’t necessarily know how to get you to the next step to recovery. This has been really limiting to me because a few months ago, about, eight months ago, I was home bound and did not leave my house at all. I did not leave my couch. And at the time I could still watch tv and I was just watching TV and I felt very alone. Um, and it was almost impossible to see my boyfriend who was in Boulder, in college. So he didn’t have time to see me. And that was very challenging, and my world did get very, very tiny, and it was very challenging.
By the time it was October of 2012, uh, Lauren’s psychological symptoms were at a, a peak. She was so depressed and suicidal, uh, she did not want to live anymore because to be honest, her world was so, it was just so bad. It’s so limiting, so isolating. Lauren was in a, a very, very grim state, uh, both physically and emotionally, and she not see a way out.
A lot of people see my recovery as a miracle, but really the true miracle was that it happened through the Dynamic Neural Retraining System.
I, I had began to wonder if there was a connection with the amygdala based on, uh, a little snippet of information I had learned. And I actually set a prayer to God and said, if, if this is the path you want me to take, if this is the direction I should go, please, please send me a sign. We got that sign from her functional medicine doctor because he had a patient that me, me, uh, mentioned this program to him. And even though he had no idea if it was gonna be effective, but that turned out to be the key to Lauren’s recovery.
I’m supposed to go on to talk about what my life is like now, and well, of course it’s dramatically different. I am sitting here, I’m talking to you. I’m not closing my eyes because it’s too bright, and I mean, I get to, I get to be who I want to be. It’s great. I get to laugh and really have a good time. And I’ve been a little busy lately where I just got married a little over a month ago and moved to here in California just a couple weeks ago.
Well, um, I’m just so thankful to Annie and her program because I have my daughter back again, and our whole family is just so thrilled. And my life has changed quite a bit too. You know, I’m no longer the, the full-time caregiver. It’s great to have Lauren back, ’cause the Lauren she used to be was giddy and laughing, and we would literally be in the grocery store and she’d start dancing in the aisles, you know, completely uninhibited and she’d sing and it was, it just, uh, so great to, to see and hear all that again.
t, where I was a year and a half ago, sitting where you are now, um, I was not sure I would commit to the, the six months, um, or even do the practice. Like I knew I should an hour every day in addition to doing the rounds of practice when pops come up. Um, I thought that if I just really understood the information, that it would do what it needed to do to rewire my brain. But if you are really serious and committed about really having a, a second life here, I’d say just, just do the practice as it’s laid out. Just just do it because yes, it is a lot of work. It’s a lot of work and um, it’s a huge commitment, but all the work you put into it is nothing in comparison to what you get out of it.
