At the end of 2019 I returned to the US and was asked: “So how long will you be staying?” I hadn’t even thought about it, but heard myself answer: “I’ll be here through the end of 2020.”

Just weeks before returning I had volunteered at a refugee camp in Greece. Everyone in the camp had a cough, and after working there for a week, so did I. I returned to Italy with a fever, which broke after a couple of days, but the cough lasted for six weeks. With that illness on my mind, and knowing that I would be in the US for at least a year, I decided that the time was right to work on my health.

January 2020 – High Blood Pressure

The health issue that most concerned me was my blood pressure. High blood pressure has been an issue in my family, so when I saw that mine had crept into the danger zone, it galvanized me to action.

The one thing that I knew was that I did not want to have to depend on pharmaceutical drugs to bring down the blood pressure. For one thing, the drugs are not a cure, they only provide symptom relief. For another thing, I had seen how the pharmaceutical industry develops new drugs. In a nutshell: they find some natural substance with known healing properties, take it back to the lab and study what it looks like on the molecular level, then they build a synthetic copy. Sometimes the copy works, oftentimes it doesn’t, but in either case, the list of possible side effects is often far worse than the symptoms you’re trying to treat.

No! I decided that if I couldn’t combat the blood pressure problem naturally, then I would just live with it. The most obvious plan of action was to lose weight. At first I didn’t know how much weight I wanted to lose, only that I needed to get at least 50 pound off.

Weight is a very strange issue. Most of us have some sort of distorted body image. All my life I had thought that I was fat. In fact, I only got fat in my 40’s. At the same time, like most overweight people, I didn’t have a true idea of just how fat I had become. Over the years, I had gotten really good at choosing clothes that hide problem areas. Now that I’ve lost 70 pounds, I’m surprised every time I see myself in the mirror or pull out smaller clothes to wear. In my mind I still think of myself as the fat girl. It’s messed up, I know. But back to my story:

So, I had heard about the keto diet, and decided to give it a try. After all, I had done other diets, and they had all left me starving at the end of the day with my calorie budget exhausted. That was the most dangerous time for me to be left hungry, when I had no energy left for fighting the hunger. Keto turned out the be ideal for me in two important ways: first, the emphasis on protein and fat kept the hunger at bay. Second, being low in carbohydrates, it got the sugar monkey off my back. I had had no idea what a sugar addict I had become, but after a few months on keto, I could say no to birthday cake and cookies (both favorites), and sincerely not feel deprived.

Together with the diet I began daily exercise. I started slowly at first: I took the stairs. At first my knees ached as I approached the second floor landing, but I knew that there was nothing wrong with my knees, so I just went for the stairs every time. Don’t think! Just do it! And before long, I could go two floors up without pain. Then three, then five. I also started to walk in the neighborhood. Where I live is very hilly, so this was also not so easy, starting out. But little by little I was able to walk farther and farther. Walking outside in the fresh air and sunshine was good for me in every way: physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I saw lots of wildlife: tentative deer, shy black bears, tom turkeys with their harems, and more rabbits than you can even imagine.

And while following my diet and exercise regime, I also used essential oils (specifically helichrysum) to bring the blood pressure back under control.

March 2020

When the pandemic hit, Mom and I went to stay with my brother and his wife. I walked throughout their whole neighborhood: sometimes with them, but also by myself every morning. We had an ideal situation at their house: I stayed on the top floor by myself, which made an ideal situation for studying Health Coaching online; my brother and sister-in-law were on the middle floor, where the kitchen was; and Mom stayed in the basement suite, where she drew lovely pictures of old barns. We got together for meals, which we took turns preparing. Often we would also get together to watch a movie. Sometimes we would get in the car and take a ride around to look at the barn quilts. In Western North Carolina many families put a painted representation of a quilt square on their barn[1]. I don’t know why, but it made for several pleasant afternoon drives. It also gave Mom lots of inspiration for her drawings. Every afternoon we got together for a friendly card game. When other families were suffering and going stir crazy and gaining weight, we were studying, exercising, having fun, and losing weight. Honestly, I hated to leave when the lockdown ended.

Soon after that, I had my Health Coaching Certification.

August 2020

At the end of July I went to Branson, Missouri with friends. It was so not worth it on so many levels. I’m not a big fan of Las Vegas. Branson is like a hillbilly Vegas. It was a long drive for a couple of good shows and a couple of good meals. I should have stayed home. Right after the trip, the couple I rode with informed me that they had tested positive for the vrus[2].

Since I lived with my elderly Mom, I immediately moved to a hotel and got tested. The test came back negative. I got tested again a few days later. That also came back negative. That’s when I began wondering about the refugee camp cough and got a blood test. The blood test came back positive.

Anosmia

Sometime in the midst of all this I lost my sense of smell. I didn’t think anything of it at the time because I didn’t know that it had anything to do with the vrus. Losing my sense of smell didn’t really hurt me. I figure there are a whole lot more bad smelling things than good, so maybe I was better off.

November 2020 – Parosmia

The week of Thanksgiving my sense of smell came back—in a really bad way. The first thing I noticed was that coffee smelled like rancid gasoline. Lots of things smelled like rancid gasoline. At first it was the only thing I could smell. After a while I was able to identify that anything with a fat or alcohol content (hand sanitizer!) smelled like rancid gasoline. And any food that had been warmed up smelled like rancid gasoline. I ate a single bite of turkey, out of politeness to my sister-in-law, but just couldn’t bring myself to touch anything else.

At first I would only eat cold foods, subsisting almost exclusively on granny smith apples and celery. But honestly, I just had no appetite.

Then I read an article[3] that you could retrain your sense of smell, using essential oils. So I followed the protocols that the article recommended: each day, several times a day sniffing rose (floral), lemon (citrus), clove (spicy), and eucalyptus (resinous). Very soon I could correctly smell the eucalyptus. It was a wonderful moment for me! The clove followed a few days later. Lemon took a little while longer, but today, I still can’t smell any floral smells at all. Perhaps they’re just too subtle. In any case, retraining my sense of smell worked for the most part. Heated things still smelled mostly bad to me, like coffee, smelled bad for a long time. It’s finally gotten to where coffee doesn’t smell bad now, but it doesn’t smell good. It just sort of smells off.

June 2022 – Essential Tremors

I thought I was mostly done with dealing with the effects of the vrus, but now there’s something else: internal tremors. At the end of June I noticed that every night it felt like my bed was vibrating. I looked up earthquake trackers in the area, but the time of day was wrong for the only one that I might have felt. Then I learned that it’s a long-term after effect of having had the vrus. Perhaps the reason it hasn’t been so bad for me is because I only eat healthy, organic, non-gmo, natural foods, and more vegetables than meats. I don’t have it as bad as some of the people I’ve read about. Some people have the tremors so bad that it feels like a cell phone on vibrate in their chest and disturbs their sleep.

Conclusion

I believe that my distrust of traditional western medicine came about at exactly the right time to prevent me from putting my faith into an experimental j@b. The things that could be fixed naturally (high blood pressure) were successfully fixed without the use of synthetic drugs. The things that couldn’t be helped by any means have not been complicated with toxic side effects.

Don’t blindly believe everything you’ve been told about the vrus. If you follow the money, you’ll see the truth that they are hiding.

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[1] https://www.carolinacountry.com/carolina-adventures/travel-guide/2019-travel-guide/explore-nc-s-barn-quilt-trail.

[2] In this age of cancel culture, I have abbreviated a few words that might cause my blog to be flagged by the algorithm. Your patient indulgence is appreciated.

[3] https://www.euphoricherbals.com/blogs/news/using-essential-oils-for-smell-therapy-after-covid-19.