November 22, 2006
After 20 years of illness diagnosed as Fibromyalgia and much more, a Texas woman discovered she had Lyme disease. Then followed six years of fruitless antiobiotic therapy. But finally she embarked on the Marshall Protocol and claims she has achieved a state of health she hasn’t known since third grade.
What is the Marshall Protocol? Developed by researcher Trevor Marshall, PhD, to treat sarcoidosis, it is an experimental, demanding, and still controversial protocol now being tried for other "Th1" conditions including Fibromyalgia, Lyme, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. (See disclaimer at the end of this article.) It must be administered under the care of a physician. For basic information on the theory and protocol, see “The Marshall Protocol for Treating CFS and FM: Hopeful Results Emerging," at http://www.immunesupport.com/library/showarticle.cfm?id=5784&T=CFIDS_FM )
Our Daughter’s Recovery Story
By LoneStarMom
Thanks to Rich Carson for telling his heartwarming story “On the Road to Recovery.” If it hadn't been for reading that, I wouldn't have been inspired to tell our daughter's story. Hopefully she will be the one to write the next chapter herself some day, but she prefers to wait until she reaches the five-year mark before "going public" herself with her own version of her story. Especially after so many years trying to hide her illness from strangers; trying to pretend to be “normal” around friends who couldn’t really comprehend the severity of her almost life-long health problems.
It's really hard to remember the long list of symptoms that plagued her for so many years. Or all of her old diagnoses for that matter - including Fibromyalgia, plus "allergies," Epstein-Barr virus, mycoplasmas, candida, gut dysbiosis, suspected lupus with ANA (anti-nuclear antibody), suspected multiple sclerosis, “it's-all-in-your-head” psychobabble nonsense, plus Lyme-neuroborreliosis (with Bartonella and Babesia co-infections, too, of course).
But she's like a new person now, and that's what really matters most to us.
She would prefer to wait another three years before "coming out of the closet" and announcing to the world that she is well. However, knowing the desperate plight of readers of this newsletter, three more years of needless suffering is three years too long for them to wait before learning that the Marshall Protocol is something they might want to study and consider pursuing.
I’ve been hesitant to share our daughter's success story for a couple of reasons:
n First, most folks whom we try to tell about it don't really believe it.
n And second, the Marshal Protocol treatment program is so difficult that 50 percent of those who attempt it give it up in frustration and despair before they get "over the hump" of their initial Herxheimer reactions, and before they finally achieve noticeable improvement.
Decades of struggle
Therefore, before I tell you about what has been the magic "cure" (if you will, though "remission" might be a more accurate term) for our daughter, let me tell you a little about her history, so that you can really appreciate the significance of her amazing recovery.
She has been ill since early childhood and, to the best of my memory, probably never attended a whole five-day week of school from about third grade onward. In fact, she missed all four years of high school on the homebound program, because home schooling wasn't a legal option back in the late '70s and early '80s.
Her vision was often so blurry that I would have to read her high school textbooks aloud to her, even if she had the special large print books for the visually impaired. She was so far behind her classmates that she had to take the GED in order to graduate.
She scored well enough on the SAT, though, to get into college. College was much easier for her because she could arrange for a reduced academic load with a more personalized, flexible schedule. She required four years to complete the first two years of college credits, then had to drop out after she started her junior year as a nursing major because she got sick after being exposed to patients in the hospital setting during her clinical training program.
Things went downhill after that, so we'll skip over the next couple of decades, except to say that she finally received a belated (and unexpected) Lyme diagnosis in 1998, the first time she was ever tested for Lyme…to "rule it out."
That's when we first recalled about the tick bite she’d had on the top of her head 25 years earlier, when the school nurse found it during third grade. That was also the year the "migraines" started, which made it so hard for her to keep up with her peers.
She was among the first
Fast forward to the spring of 2004 when, after six years of continuous, heavy-duty antibiotic therapy for Lyme disease, including 17 months of IV antibiotics, she first learned about the Marshall Protocol (MP). She was one of the very first Lyme patients to start the MP who was actually able to stick with it through the difficult early months. This is because the Herxheimer reactions during the first 6 to 12 months on the MP can be extremely challenging. Not to mention the need to maintain the "MP lifestyle" of strict sun avoidance, plus a few minor dietary restrictions – collectively the reasons so many patients who start the MP give it up within the first few weeks or months before they begin to see positive signs of improvement.
Coping with the need to avoid sunlight is much easier for her now than it was when she started the MP two years ago, since she learned about the "micronized zinc oxide" and "helioplex" sunscreen products now available on the market. (Don't mix them. They don't work well together, according to the FDA, which doesn't permit both substances to be combined in the same product. Wear only one or the other, but not both kinds of sunscreen at the same time.)
Although she is now asymptomatic, she doesn't consider herself fully recovered yet. We anticipate that for someone with such a long history of such severely chronic illness as hers, five years is a much more reasonable target date for claiming full recovery. Nevertheless, she is functioning at a level of wellness which she could never have imagined before. In fact, she never really knew what good health feels like, until now.
n She can now jog three to four miles on her treadmill - after spending a couple of decades as a housebound couch potato whose only exercise was using her thumb on the TV remote control buttons, sometimes too weak to boil water and dip her own teabags.
n Her resting pulse is down to a very healthy 68-72 bpm, after being in the mid-80s to 90s range for the past 2.5 decades (or longer)!
n Her basal temperature is a textbook normal at 98.6 and has been for the entire last year, for the first time that either of us can even remember.
n She takes NO pain killers and NO other regular Rx meds, except just for the prescribed MP meds, which she is still continuing, of course.
n Her decades' long battle with intolerable insomnia is a thing of the past.
n Her appetite is good with no more food intolerances, after having been underweight since childhood.
n And the list goes on and on. No more multiple chemical sensitivities. No more suicidal depression. No more brain fog. She is clear-headed enough to balance her own checkbook, a task which was impossible till now.
n The MS-like numbness in her feet and legs that had been progressing for several years is gone now, too.
n Her balance is good enough that she can jitterbug in spike heels, whereas before she started the MP she used to bruise herself by staggering and bumping into the doors frames and hallways of her own house. In fact, her balance is good enough that she expects to water ski by next summer - if Santa brings her a UV-protective swim suit. No worries about neuro-balance problems even slalom skiing behind a fast boat.
You can read her success story and many other patients’ stories at the Marshal Protocol patient forum site http://www.marshallprotocol.com/forum2/7287.html . There you will see that she is just one of many who have made unbelievable progress toward genuine health after long, debilitating chronic illnesses such as sarcoidosis, CFIDS, Lyme, RA, and more.
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Disclaimer: Results in this report should not be considered typical. This letter recounts one person's experience with the Marshall protocol (MP) for the benefit of other readers, but ProHealth/ImmuneSupport.com does not endorse the MP, or any protocol, as a treatment or cure for CFS or FM. Positive accounts of results are still largely anecdotal, like this one, and patients should be aware that, as with any protocol, negative effects could be encountered.
Note: This information has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not meant to diagnose, prevent, cure, or treat any condition, illness, or disease. It is crucial that you undertake no change in your health support plan or regimen without careful review and discussion in collaboration with your professional healthcare team.
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