Back in 1996, doctors suspected that I had either multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson’s, or Lou Gehrig’s disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-ALS).  I was sick beyond belief and lived in constant pain.  I couldn’t sleep at night, had frequent panic attacks, and suffered with severe heart and neurological problems.  And those are just a few of the many symptoms that I had.

Because my symptoms overlapped between MS, Parkinson’s and ALS, one doctor suggested that I be admitted into Shands Teaching Hospital in Gainesville, FL.  Perhaps they could get to the bottom of my constant state of dis-ease…  But to tell you the truth, I was sick of being sick.  I couldn’t take it anymore!  My pain and suffering had become unbearable and no drugs or remedial treatment was effective.

But that’s not the point.  The point here is that I wanted to know WHY?  Why was I sick and diseased?  I had already been diagnosed with 35 diseases, wasn’t that enough?  Why did doctors want to label me with yet another disease?  Why did I have neurological problems and peripheral neuropathy?  Why was I so dizzy and losing my balance?  There was no way that I could turn my head or eyes quickly to either side because my head would start spinning like a top, I’d get nauseas, and my body would pitch forwards or backwards, or to one side.  When I got out of bed in the morning, my body would head off in a different direction than intended, and my feet hurt so bad that I could barely stand the thought of putting them on the ground.  I tried every kind of shoe and shoe insert that you can imagine, just so I could relieve some of the foot pain during the day.

Why did I suffer with anxiety attacks?  Why did I develop a fear of high places, agoraphobia, and claustrophobia?   Why did I have fibromyalgia?  Why did my feet, legs, and lower torso lose feeling?   Why did my body twitch?  Why did my hands, fingers, feet and toes tingle and feel like they were being stuck with pins and needles?  And how could they feel numb and heavy at the same time?

Why did it feel like I had bugs crawling under the skin on my legs?  Why did my head begin to wobble?  Why did I trip and drag a foot when I walked?  Why was I losing my ability to grip with my hands?  Why was my vision blurry, and why did I get tunnel vision and see flashing halos of lights?  Besides suffering with chronic headaches and migraines, why did I develop ocular migraines?

Why did I have to get up five and six times a night to go to the bathroom, even though I really didn’t have to go?  Why couldn’t I sleep at night?  Even though I was so exhausted, I would go to sleep and wake up zinging within an hour or two and then couldn’t back to sleep for the rest of the night.  Why did I feel the need to pace the floors at night?  Why would I sit and incessantly rub my legs at night, all the while having to look down at the floor so my head wouldn’t spin?  By this point in time, I was suffering with nightly panic attacks.

Why was I in a constant state of brain fog?  Why was I having difficulty remembering simple things?  It’s like my brain couldn’t process a complete thought.  Why had I developed a slurred speech?  It was very embarrassing.

Why was I having difficulty swallowing?  Whatever I ate, didn’t seem to want to go down.  Food would sit like a huge wad in my throat and then I’d begin to panic, thinking that I was going to choke.  The simple act of eating caused all sorts of physical pain and symptoms.  I had a constant, burning pain in my stomach and on my right side.  My liver and kidneys were inflamed.  I had chronic digestive and intestinal problems, and I suffered with chronic inflammation and infections.  Why?

What caused my heart to go bad — so bad that one doctor suggested a heart valve transplant?  I had horrible heart palpitations and arrhythmias.  Any exertion would cause shortness of breath and pain in my chest.  I was even hospitalized with a suspected heart attack and placed on powerful heart medications.

So these are just some of the 100 symptoms that I suffered.  Besides living in constant pain, agony, and perpetual fear, what was most troubling was the fact that doctors couldn’t answer one simple question — WHY?  Medical doctors could not provide one single answer to any of the questions that I had.  Where’s the science in this?  Doctors were more than happy to diagnose my condition, prescribe drugs (over 2 dozen of them), and perform surgery, but forget about telling me what was causing my problem.  Why?  The only thing that I could ever figure was that they simply didn’t know, or that they didn’t want to know…  Medical doctors passed my disorder off as incurable and sent me home, loaded down with drugs, to live the rest of my life in total despair!

Since I was sick of being sick and no doctor could answer any of my questions regarding my failing health, I decided to find the answers for myself.  And did I ever find them!

I started out with the word – SYMPTOM.  Why?  I had lots of them!  A symptom is a physical or mental condition of disease, that is particularly apparent to the patient.  A symptom is a sign of the existence of something, most often an undesirable situation.

Symptom originates from the Greek words sumptoma ‘chance, symptom,’ and from sumpiptein ‘happen.’   This basically means that symptoms happen, they come about.  But when you look at the definition of happen, you’ll see that for something to happen, it is the effect or result of some action or event.  This means that something is responsible for symptoms when they occur.  There is a direct cause!  Bodily organs and systems cannot just go bad for no reason at all.  There is a series of events that must take place in order for them to fail.  Why is it that medical science overlooks this fact?  Most doctors are not concerned with pathogenesis—the starting point of disease.

Synonyms for SYMPTOM include manifestation and sign.  A symptom is a warning, a hint, and a clue.  A symptom is also an expression and indication of something, it is evidence and proof.  But proof of what?

A symptom is the consequence and product of an event.  A symptom is a testimony.  A symptom is the result of something else.  A SYMPTOM is the effect of an action.  In other words, something that I was doing was causing my symptoms!  By doing a simple word study, I came to realize that my symptoms were a direct testimony of my actions.  They were evidence and proof, formal witness, that their existence was a witness of my deeds.  Essentially, I was responsible for my acquired symptoms!  This includes those symptoms and conditions that are acquired, obtained (earned) within one’s own lifetime.

After gaining an understanding of how symptoms occur, I had to step back and look deep within.  I soon came to realize that whenever I suffered symptoms, my body was giving myself a warning, a hint, a clue…

[TO BE CONTINUED…]