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Lena's Health Nightmares
Lena's life has been a fulfilling exciting medical office nursing career as well as opening and growing new medical practices and teaching Medical Office Procedures to doctors and dentists. Teaching Medical Assisting classes all while suffering illnesses galore but the outcome has been the most exciting one of research and learning about alternative healthy treatments for herself. Finding alternatives for fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, histamine headaches and years or Meinere's Vertigo outside conventional medicine, after experiencing years of side effects from treatments and medications with no relief from those things, led her to becoming an alternative health advocate and entrepreneur. Having four grown children who went through her years of trials and illnesses that have learned from her experiences also. 74 years of life makes for a long story but we will attempt to make it as short as possible. To get a more detailed story and follow her life experiences to discover the things she knows that you probably don't know, but should, before seeing your doctor, read her book, "Dangers & Secrets Doctors Refuse To Tell You." Or to learn about her knowledge of herbs and how they have created a healthy life for her and her family & friends get her latest book "Handbook Of Herbs To Health & Other Secrets." Now out of prinT Lena states: "From the moment I was born it seems, I had one medical crisis after another at times life threatening and unable to understand why I caught everything I came in contact with. After many years I discovered the one act that doomed me to a life of illness began with my eating 1/2 can of lye at the age of 18 months. Little did I know that the rest of my life would rest on that one incident? From the age of birth until 59 years of age I caught every virus or bacteria that came even close to me and I suffered longer than the usual normal length of healing time… I simply could not understand why! Early childhood I had all the childhood diseases; two kinds of measles that came close to killing me. Mumps twice, chicken pox that lasted for more than the normal two weeks. Rheumatic Fever, Valley Fever and both bacterial and viral Pneumonia several times. At 18 a case of tonsillitis that put me in the hospital and almost took my life again. Until I was twelve I did not see a doctor, my Native American grandmother used home remedies that worked. After bilateral pneumonia at twelve that almost took my life I was seen by doctors and ended with me having penicillin, many times. This was in the early days of mans antibiotic drugs with penicillin being the antibiotic drug of choice. When they had no idea what was enough or too much. At times had 3cc injections every hour for 12 to 24 hours and felt much like a pin cushion. At 21 I married and had four 7 and 8 month preemie babies and one miscarriage all in the first 3 years and 10 months of my marriage. Each pregnancy was plagued by viruses galore and kidney problems. With the fourth live birth the doctor told me if I had a dozen I would never carry one full term but he had no idea why my body could not carry them full term. With my 4th child barely two weeks old, I was back in the hospital with a severe kidney infection and from that time on I was overwhelmed with pain in every part of my body that seemed to travel from one area to another on any given day. Walking across the floor felt like glass cutting into my feet and until I got into a very hot shower it was unbearable. Being touched on any part of my body felt bruised and painful, even though no bruises appeared. About the same time the world started to move around me sometimes for just a minute and sometimes for days and not a night went by that I didn't awaken with the room twirling and the nausea that caused me to keep a can by the bed to vomit into. Trying to quell those problems led me to many doctors and different medications that had some horrific side effects and some to the point of putting me in the hospital and almost taking my life. Nothing stopped any of it and seemed everything made it worse not better. I was sure I was a mental case that nobody could have that much pain, and have it in different areas of the body on any given day or the world moving on me to the point I bounced off walls as I couldn't walk a straight line when the vertigo and nausea hit. I resorted to seeing a psychiatrist but after several visits he said I was not mentally ill that the pain was real yet nobody was able to find out what it was or why. This went on for 30 years of many doctors, hospitalizations, pain clinics and drugs with horrific side effects without answers. At 29 I was diagnosed with uterine cancer and had all my reproductive system removed along with my appendix, which "might cause problems later", so the doctor said. Luckily chemotherapy wasn’t an option at that time or I would have agreed to have it done as I believed conventional medicine had all the answers at that time in my life. At 31 I spent a year with every virus you can think of and a chronic kidney and bladder infection, I was born with a floating kidney, I finally was told without kidney surgery I would continue that way for a very short life. I was told I would have a small 3” incision in my back on the right side and I would be fine in two to three weeks. I gave in and had it done, but when they got into my body it was found that my kidney wasn’t floating, as it had been in my early years, but was attached to the ovarian artery with a partially kinked tube - causing the ongoing chronic kidney/bladder infections - and in removing it they had to put in an artificial strip of ovarian artery. I will never know if that happened from a scalpel slip or was truly necessary. This ended up with an incision going from my navel around my right side to my spine in the back. I awoke three days later. I simply do not do well with pain medications and went home from the hospital two weeks later. A week at home all of a sudden unbearable pain filled my whole body but seemed worse in the abdomen. This happened the night before my sutures were to be removed I spent the night going back and forth to the hospital ER for pain shots that resulted in nonstop vomiting but no pain relief. The next afternoon at 1pm my sutures were removed and the doctor said go home and take a hot shower and the muscle spasms would stop. I went home got into the shower and turned the hot water on and within seconds the pain was the worst I had ever experience and doubled me over then my incision popped open and pus and blood spurted out of my right side and poured down my leg filling the shower floor and making it impossible for me to move from the pain. I screamed from the pain and my husband came running and we had to apply a pressure bandage to hold it so I could get out of the shower. My husband almost passed out when he saw it. The doctor and I had had an argument during one of my trips to the hospital the night before because he said it was muscle spasms, but I had had muscle spasms before and knew this didn’t even resemble one and I told him so. That didn’t go over big with him and he told me, in a very hateful voice, to stop being a baby or I would end up bent over for the rest of my life if I stayed bent over and didn't stretch the muscles. He had the medical degree I didn’t so what could I do? Anyway when the shower incident happened I was told to come back into his office where they began the debreding and digging out the rest of the pus. That became my daily jaunt every day for several weeks with them debreding, changing antibiotics trying to kill the bacterial infection. Nothing seemed to touch the infection. I now know that it was a megabecterial (what is now called MRSA) infection and at that time was lucky one antibiotic did finally work or maybe the combination of all the ones I took in those months. For three months of I lived with an open draining incision, that left me with tons of internal scar tissue - now causing pain until I get my stabilizing undergarment on to stop the movement and pain - not pleasant to deal with and if I put on even 5 pounds the scar pain worsens. I guess you could say it is a great weight control! Within the next year I developed severe headaches that made it absolutely impossible to see, walk or think and would last for weeks without let up. More hospitalizations and histamine IV's that only made me into and elephant from so much fluid and exacerbated my scar pain! I discovered many years after this, when I stopped smoking, that 99.5% of histamine heads exist in smokers. The doctor had never told me that during any one of my episodes. In my thirties vertigo became so severe that it was present off and on every single day and a few times 24/7 for weeks. I learned how to do things without moving my head because I couldn’t move my head without spinning out of control and horrific vomiting. I was sent to the House Ear Institute in LA and was diagnosed with Meinere’s Disease. No cure exists for it and was given a vitamin compound that helped a bit, but never a night went by without me turning over in bed triggering vertigo awakening me a found me running to the bathroom while bouncing off walls in the process and vomiting sometimes for hours. Two years after the megabacterial infection my husband was nearly killed in a horrific work accident that shattered both wrists and arms making it impossible for him to brush his teeth, eat or open a door. With four young children to look after and nursing him back to health, which spanned two years. I realized I needed a career as there is always that chance of losing him and we would be destitute as I had no real job skills. I felt that with all my years spent with doctors and hospitals and then my husband’s two years of problems that nursing would be my career. So I went back to college, still in the midst of vertigo, vomiting and running a family, I got my nursing degree at the age of 37." After receiving her Masters in business, and nursing degree in 1976, Lena went to work in a hospital rehab ward, which she left after several months, as the hours were too conflicting with the home life and children. She then went to work as a temporary medical office nurse and surgical assistant for a General Practitioner who she says she thought needlessly put peoples lives at risk every day. Left at the end of her temporary assignment and went to a Pediatric Medical Clinic with nine pediatricians where she worked as back office and triage nurse for three and one-half years. Managing all this during her FMS pain, vertigo and histamine headaches! Five years after receiving her nursing and MBA degrees found her very ill and off work for nine months and misdiagnosed numerous times along that trek. The pain, vertigo and multitude of virus infections and hospitalizations made it impossible to work. She had become frustrated during those years of doctors visits, misdiagnoses, hospitalizations and medications that did some horrible things to her, physically and emotionally. And to be there again unable to get out of bed most days, but that too passed... All this before she allowed nutrition and alternative medicine to enter her life. In those early years of her painful suffering fibromyalgia was almost never diagnosed or even considered a disease by most doctors. There are still some today from the old school that refuse to accept that it exists. Yet some doctors misdiagnose fibromyalgia that is nothing more than a minerals imbalance. After 25 years of pain and suffering she was finally diagnosed with Fibromyositis, now known as fibromyalgia, myositis and myalgia accompanied by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which are all autoimmune disorders and basically the same thing! (The body's immune system not working as it should. Conventional medicine says it's "attacking itself".) Given medication after medication that relieved nothing but presented side effect after side effect for her. Then along with the fibromyalgia she developed osteoarthritis. She says she soon learned to live with the excruciating pain and fatigue that accompanied it and finally settled on some mediations that helped a little but didn’t alleviate the pains nor prevented it from progressing. Then she developed nodules on the joints of her fingers to add to the pain and doctors visits! She states, "Keeping busy is a great alleviator of pain for me. I'm not telling you this to say, hey look at me but to help you understand that I do know a few doctors in multiple practices as both a patient, an employee and a co-worker." After leaving the pediatric medical group she then worked seven and one-half years as an internists' back office, triage and home visiting nurse as well as office manager. Making visits to patients homes who were too ill to come into the office and advising the doctor of the necessary treatment plan, medication or hospitalization. That internist was and is a truly great genius, whom she felt gave the patients the best that medicine had to offer and still feels that way about him. Even though she occasionally came to a bit of odds with him as he was steeped in the traditional medical syndrome and failed to look at natural or herbal remedies as an alternative, he did his very best for the patient with what he had been taught. At the ripe old age of 37 the internist decided to leave private practice as he saw what medicine was becoming with the HMO's coming into play and said he wanted no part of it. That prediction has proven to be accurate! Lena says, "About 75% to 80% of the patients she encountered over the years were simple problems that could have been treated at home with everyday common sense, applying their brain and could have created better health for themselves. This," she says, "was confirmed by several doctors over the years." Lena wants to make it clear here that she is not anti-establishment and that she does believe doctors are a necessity. It's just that after twenty plus years of experience with patients, she believes that people are too willing to run to the doctor for every little ache and pain while refusing to take responsibility for their health, putting themselves into great danger, gets what they get. More illness! While managing the brilliant Internists' office, one of her vivid memories was helping on Clinical Trials track & document patient for a couple of medications before their release to the public for pharmaceutical companies - She received all kinds of great expensive perks for it. You can find out why she feels one of those medications that is on the market should not have been released to the public in her book "Dangers and Secrets Doctors Refuse to Tell You." Also she reveals in her book other atrocities that should not happen to anyone, but did. Lena's feeling that testing is inadequate was confirmed in 2000, when information released to the public says other doctors offices, who did "Clinical Trial" drug testing, falsified tests and created non-existent patient histories. She asks, "How safe can you feel taking a drug now?" She is very skeptical of prescriptions and she feels, and statistical history backs up her feelings, that the true side affects of most prescriptions will not be known for 20 years or more after release to the public and hundreds or thousands of human beings will have used them and many will die or have serious illnesses because of them. So she stresses, "Make sure the illnesses is dire enough to actually require a prescription, as one is not always necessary to heal or prevent the illness. Our bodies can heal themselves when given proper nutrients and if you can't get them from foods supplements will do just as well." During the years with the genius doctor she developed shortness of breath, swollen legs and ankles, chest pains and more fatigue. Genius doctor sent her to a cardiologist who found a Mitrial Valve Prolapse (MVP), heart valve problem. He let her watch the ultrasound and she observed the valve flapping and not completely stopping the blood flow as it should, but was assured that if she took antibiotics with any procedures she could live a long happy life with exercise and care! More on this later and how she eliminated that problem! Lena has listed a group of questions to ask your doctor so that you may determine the necessity of a prescription, she also included some home remedies used on her patients during her career in her book, "Antibiotic Alternatives To Preventing Mega Bacteria!" After leaving the brilliant Internist she fell into a whole exciting but as she describes, "A gut wrenching profession of setting up new medical offices along with medical consulting." She states, "I feel like a very lucky lady in that I have had a very successful life in two areas - Medical Office Nursing Administration and Teaching Medical Office Management and Procedures - greatly enjoyed both. I am now successfully combining those experiences with Online Marketing of my own Internet Home Based Business and Natural Healthy Environmental friendly products." Opening a New Medical Office Had It's Pluses and Minuses with Loads of Education! In each of the offices she opened usually consisted of the doctor seeing patients and her as the lone office & triage nurse, receptionist, insurance clerk, PR person, and patient counselor until the office grew large enough to add personnel. That process took from three months to three years to grow into a well functioning successful office... She also founded a temporary employment agency for medical personnel while still working in a medical office and set up that business in the same medical building giving her the ability to handle both offices. She could be described as a workaholic as both offices created 18-20 hour days. She says, "There were some doctors I had to deal with in the agency which were anything but honest. I won't bore you with the nightmare tales here, but it was a hellish experience in some instances. I became very familiar with Small Claims Court due to those problems. But I soon realized that particular business wasn't my forte and I could only help people from the medical office, I sold the agency a year later." She took on a teaching position at a paramedical school and taught Medical Office Management and Medical Assisting nights but within just a matter of weeks after starting the teaching position, she was approached to set up and open a new medical clinic in San Bernardino California, which was in proximity to the Paramedical School making it feasible to do both. Being overworked set up a situation to create crises flare-ups with her fibromyalgia and another step in searching for alternative treatments that the average traditional medical profession could not offer, in order to alleviate the pain that the prescriptions were unable to control, without heavy sedative effects. With the prescription medications came drowsiness inability to think rationally and only a slightly lesser degree of pain anyway, leaving her feeling unable to work up to her potential at times and sure that there was something else, if she could just find it? She was forced to leave teaching a little over a year later. Simply because sitting in faculty meetings, of which about 1/3 of the instructors smoked, she would develop horrific histamine headaches and weeks of pain because of it, so she soon found faculty meetings intolerable, as they would not forego smoking during the meetings. These days that is not a problem but that was before smoking was prohibited in places of work in California. One positive did come from the headaches though. The prescriptions given for the histamine headaches left her nauseous, vomiting and unable to function from the horrible side effects and the inpatient IV treatments given for the headaches, were equally as bad. She accidentally found the headaches could be alleviated with chiropractic treatment and herbs in minutes. Upon leaving her first organized medical clinic in San Bernardino, California three and a half years from the onset there were then nine doctors and 17 employees in a very large clinic of over 3000 patients of which about 99% were HMO insured. This clinic initially opened with her, a receptionist and a doctor. She says, "The HMO patient load made for a great education in juggling treatment protocol and insurance company protocol. They collide with a loud crash for the most part, and since I was the gatekeeper and patient advocate as chairman of the Quality Control, Quality Assurance and Outside Authorization committees along with my Medical Director, it was a real dance and challenge to balance the patients needs and the insurance companies rules. Just guess who is the loser there?" She says, "I wonder how many people actually do receive the care they need since most people simply want to do their job and not rock the boat. Each clinic/office should have someone sitting as a caring sensitive advocate in each medical facility with the capability of keeping the patient first and not the HMO/PPO. But that isn't happening." For the next fourteen years she set up 44 clinics and medical offices throughout Southern California for a friend. Getting them up and running onto strong footing and moved on to do it all over again. She says, "Each was a real feeling of accomplishment with the successes and ability to learn and pass it on. And I became very familiar with the freeway system." One Sports Medicine Clinic that she sat up had both alternative and traditional medicine, which required a great deal of study on her part and truly awakened her to the real conflict that exists in medicine and doesn't have to. But proved to be a turning point or, as she calls it "a wake up call to what other methods exist in medical treatments that truly work and is much healthier with little to no side effects." She says she diligently studied under the nutritionist and chiropractor absorbing everything she could. Her disillusionment with the chemical medications, that never seem to cure a problem, found her more interested in nutrition as a means of healing. She then took nutrition courses adding to her ability of helping people find cures and preventions of many diseases... Over those years she managed to receive her MA, MBA and Medical Office Administration Certification, and studied alternative health & healing treatments without a degree, which rounded out her career. But also made for a very busy person growing and consulting with many medical practices and clinics throughout Southern California From Santa Barbara to Palm Springs. While managing a clinic in Palm Springs California for a very difficult and demanding doctor, she began to experience more extensive chest pains, more frequent shortness of breath and problems walking up stairs and short distances without almost passing out... After having a battery of test she was diagnosed with 75% to 80% blocked heart arteries along with her existing valve problem making it perilous, according to her cardiologist. Her cardiologist scheduled her for angioplasty with probable bypass without her permission or telling her. She refused that mode of treatment and left the hospital "AMA" and found Whitaker's Wellness Clinic in Newport Beach California where she underwent successful Chelation IV Therapy and corrected the blockage and even corrected the MVP she had experienced all those years. She says that anyone who has a heart problem and doesn't try the Chelation IV Therapy is missing the boat in natural health and healing. Non-invasive, no side effects, less expensive, long lasting repair and no-life threatening surgery to contend with so why would they not try it if they know about it? After finding healing she then went to work for a friend in Irvine California and the first day in the clinic she ended up firing a doctor and reported him to the state Attorney Generals Office for gross malpractice, of which she later spent a week in trial to successfully remove that doctors medical license… She says, "that's a whole other story in itself…I can only say he was the worst of the worst!" Her position as Personnel Director, along with administrator of the company's clinics, was evaluating medical offices and clinics that were for sale, and helping to convert them into HMO clinics -- She says, "See I went to the enemy's camp for a short while as a favor to a valued friend." She would go in evaluate an office that was for sale, look at the medical records and financial records to see if it was truly worth buying and decide whether the doctor was an effective physician then advise the Company as to it's worth. Would handle the change over, set up the computer system and manage the employee patient ratio to correspond properly and develop office protocols to interact with the HMO. She says, "I met some more really off-the-wall money-grubbing doctors while doing that!" adding, "I cannot stress enough to people how careful they must be when seeing a doctor - Be informed and take charge of your own health and let the doctor be a partner…Do not give him/her free rein with your treatment, medications and testing…you could become one of the dreaded statistics sooner or later!" Statistics found in her book "Dangers & Secrets Doctors Refuse to tell You," are pretty gross! Painful Experience Lead to More Information! In 1996 on Christmas Eve she went to a chiropractor to realign her TMJ (temple mandibular jaw joint) and the Chiropractor ruptured her C-7 – neck vertebral disc. He failed to acknowledge a problem and proceeded to ground the material into her spinal cord afterward and letting it go for a full month, which ended up causing her to have several surgeries creating damages to her spinal cord and lost temporary control of her legs virtually ending her abilities to get out and work full time. Lesson learned she says, "That doesn't happen very often in Chiropractic care but if a chiropractor is rough stop in mid treatment and get out of his/her office and find a new one!" Having controlled the fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis with herbs and mineral nutrients for several years prior to the ruptured C-7, that event came as a devastating blow and sent her autoimmune disease into a tailspin again, because of all the anesthesia and antibiotics administered for all the surgeries. Having even dissolved the arthritic nodules on her finger joints with the herbs she now had to start all over again in order to bring it back to remission... This came close to sending her over the edge! But she states, "Out of bad things can come good, if you look for them and I have looked and found them. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" Fibromyalgia flare up was due to so much anesthesia and chemicals put into her body during the course of all the surgeries that followed the neck injury...which led her to a detox and upping her supplements to correct the situation... But she feels she had a great experience with a fantastic doctor at Barrows Neurological Institute in Phoenix, AZ and feels that St. Joseph's Hospital is a place every hospital should be patterned after. "Make lemonade out of lemons," she always says. Now she has become experienced with the system of justice, because of this incident, and she says, "It's not at all fair nor just." Her Most Fulfilling But Frustrating Life Position! She feels that the medical office triage nurse was the most fulfilling of all the areas she has handled in her career. Also the most frustrating! She states, "I
do not take the world at face value without doing some analyzing
of my surroundings... I cannot be accused of being a follower
for the sake of following, I need to know why I do things
and found that disconcerting to most physicians I worked
with." She added that the later years of her career she says she walked a fine line between natural medicine and traditional medicine and the doctor. She added, "Sometimes if I knew the patient well enough I would suggest stopping the prescription and tell them of a home remedy or suggest herbs that would take care of the problem. I always prefaced it with, - "The doctor does not recommend this and if you tell him I will be fired." - I never had a patient tell but I did have several who dubbed me Dr. Lena, because the natural treatment worked and they were able to feel so much better without taking the chemical drugs." Lena feels that there is an alternative healing treatment for most all simple and some not so simple illnesses and preventions that should be practiced by everyone. A combining of traditional and alternative medicine does exit and is out there for you if you are willing to risk finding it. She feels that the traditional and natural medicine practitioners are working against each other to the determent of the patients and she wants that to change. Her hopes are that she can be an instrument in helping that change come about. Her dream is to see both traditional and alternatives used together for the betterment of every human being. Her philosophy is, Yes, there is risk in everything. Medicine and medical treatments has never been an exact science even though the profession would like you to believe it is! She feels that she is now in a position to really help people in regaining their health or helping educate them to prevent serious illnesses and diseases from overtaking them. She says that natural healing remedies and prevention can save a person thousands of dollars a year and possibly millions in a life time besides lengthening their life considerably while giving them quality as well as quantity of life. Lena says, "Take
Charge of your health and become better for it. PS:
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