“Really?” I say, not wanting to sound too excited but clearly very interested. Then she pulls out her iPhone, swipes through her photos, and holds up a picture of a huge parasite. I’m stunned. Oh my God! This is crazy, it’s identical to one that I passed!
“What do you know about it? What is it?” I immediately feel connected to her and it’s good to know that I’m not alone.
“There is a book by a Russian scientist about rope worms. You’ll find yours in there,” she says, writing the name of the book on a piece of paper. The second we get back to the hotel, Daisy googles and orders Helminthes: Known and … Unknown by N. V. Gubarev. What are the chances of running into someone who holds the information that I need more than anything right now? Is there such a thing as a coincidence? Life has truly brought me to my knees but God is good and that’s all I know in this moment.
Home from Seattle, I experience a little bit of a shift since my appointment with Dr. Klinghardt. Daisy and I are driving to my colonic and I actually notice the sun on my skin, a sensation of well-being that I haven’t felt for a very long time. I start researching and understanding what I’m really dealing with. Once the book arrives, I can’t put it down. I read it over and over and compare the photos on my iPhone with those in the book. The author calls parasites “our invisible universal enemy.” In one part, he writes:
Our body is an ideal habitat for millions of parasitic organisms. For them, our mortal bodies are a universe where they may splash about in lakes of blood, urine and lymph. They may dwell in alimentary masses in an intestine, may feed at numerous restaurants in our oral cavity and revel in lakes of saliva, etc. Oh, yes, the parasites feel well and comfortable; unfortunately, we cannot say the same ourselves.
The book explains why getting rid of these worms, also known as Helminthes, isn’t as simple as excreting them. Some are large, so they counteract the movement of your intestines that occurs when you go to the bathroom. They’re also strong and elastic, so they can hang on to the walls of your intestines. Gubarev explains how they can create symptoms that can easily be confused with many other conditions, such as pain in the chest, legs, and arms; frequent colds; headaches; skin problems like pimples and psoriasis; hair loss; bloating; and sinus issues. The book not only identifies various worms but also has natural enema recipes to help remove them from your body. These recipes use both common ingredients such as lemon juice, baking soda, and milk as well as less common ones such as special mint leaves, sea buckthorn, and messmate leaf. Daisy orders all the ingredients to follow the Gubarev treatments.
It’s hard to imagine where I got so many parasites. Most likely I contracted them while traveling the world as a young model. When I was shooting in India, for example, I would sit with the local people in the street and eat their food without any worries about what was being transferred to me. Knowing what I know now, this makes me believe that I probably collected those parasites and their infections over my lifetime. Being raised on a farm, I had no fear of dirt or anything like that. Even a healthy human being apparently has parasites and good bacteria living inside of them without any symptoms. But in my case, they’ve taken over and are running the show in my body. It seems that the stress of my father’s death when I was seven, the Epstein-Barr, the appendicitis, and the hepatitis B all by the time I was barely twenty most likely weakened my immune system and therefore I’m not able to fight the microbes.
The more research I do, the more I realize that the giant parasite that came out on Friday the 13th probably was born, raised, and had set up camp in my body for twenty to thirty years. Looking back I remember a few times in my life when I had strange and intense pains under my belly button. About ten or fifteen years ago, when I was in my Santa Barbara home, I’d occasionally have a horrible pain in my stomach that would take my breath away. It was like something was turning inside me; the pain was so bad that I actually got down on the floor. Back then, I thought it must have been something I ate or a spasm from the laxatives I took.
As if uncovering decades-old aliens in my body isn’t enough, I can feel David distancing himself from me more and more. If I was in a healthy state, this would really upset me, because I am a very intimate person, but at this point very little moves or shakes me. I notice it though and it’s confusing. Isn’t marriage and partnership supposed to be all about the good times and the bad? In sickness and in health? I know, I am the one who changed, but it’s out of my hands. One day, David mentions to Bella that things are different between the two of us since we got married.
“Do you think this illness is her choice?” Bella responds kindly but to the point.
That afternoon, Daisy helps me through a bad reaction to the Biltricide. I vomit uncontrollably but the next morning, she finds me in the bedroom packing for David. My hands are trembling and shaking while I try to lay out his clothes. I put outfits into different Ziploc bags, label them and photograph them for every day he’ll be away.
“What are you doing?” she asks, looking worried.
“I’m trying to be a wife,” I say. I feel like I’ve lost so much so I am compromising and trying to hang on to the littlest things I used to do for my husband that I know he loves and hopefully appreciates.
Chapter Twelve
IF GOD BRINGS YOU TO IT, HE WILL BRING YOU THROUGH IT.
On April 10, Daisy and I take our second trip together. This time it is to Tijuana for an appointment with Dr. Louie Yu, who has a lot of experience with ozone. Although I’ve done a lot of treatments with ozone over the years, I never tried RHP, which is not approved in California, and stands for recirculatory hemoperfusion. Through an IV catheter, your blood is extracted from one arm; goes through a tube into a dialysis machine, where it is infused with ozone and filtered; and then is returned into the other arm through an IV. I feel confident about this because Daisy has done this treatment about twelve times herself with great results. Dr. Klinghardt thinks it may help me as well.
April 10, 2015
RISE UP AND ATTACK each day with courage. Thank you, Mexico, for being open to ancient medicine …
#OzoneRHP #TijuanaMexico
#SearchingForACure #ChronicLymeDisease
When we arrive at the clinic, and I use the word “clinic” very, very loosely, I feel as if I am in a movie, a bad movie. It’s no longer in the same location Daisy had gone to before. Instead, it looks like an abandoned apartment building which is almost finished being remodeled but isn’t decorated yet. We are brought into a room with two chairs and a machine in the center of it. Daisy looks at me, surprised and upset.
“Do you want to leave?” she asks.
“Mmm, I don’t know,” I say. We did our due diligence and carefully planned this trip; it’s just a different scenario than what we thought. Yes, I’m nervous and afraid. This is another unusual situation but then again it’s similar to some of the other times I’ve come to Tijuana for treatment. Plus we’ve traveled such a long way that I try to stay calm and collected. I can’t let my emotions take over.
“You must think I’m crazy,” Daisy says with a smile. But it’s the whole situation that’s insane. How did I end up here? I pace around the room a couple of times, trying to force myself to relax and ease into the situation. God, I pray that you’ve placed us in the right hands.
“I’m a little worried that this place isn’t sterile enough,” I say.
“I brought new disposable tubing just for you,” Daisy says. This is why I call her my Nurse Nightingale. Finally, the nurse walks into the room, apologizing for being a little bit late. She looks impeccable and is very nice, which puts me at ease. My veins are beat up and weary after so many treatments. She eventually finds one and starts the RHP, which lasts about two and a half hours. It’s fascinating to see how my very dark, almost black blood comes out of one arm and then, after being washed by the ozone, becomes bright red and healthy-looking before it’s let back into my body through a tube in my other arm. Seeing this gives me hope that RHP is a good move.
My body is exhausted but I am excited by the possibility of better health. On our drive back to L.A. I notice an unusual sense of clarity in my brain and my eyesight, which as you know has been one of my worst symptoms. Unfortunately, only days later, this treatment hits me like a ton of bricks and the little progress I thought I made disappears quickly. I feel severely ill again, and my skin and eyes are turning yellow. Apparently, the treatment stirred up old infections in my liver like the hepatitis B and Q fever. I am down for the count but magically the universe provides what is necessary for the next step in my journey. The day after Tijuana, I get a call from Dr. Oz, who wants to visit me and get an update on my health. He comes over for coffee, and as we talk I immediately share my parasite story. In fact, I’m so obsessed with parasites that it’s all I can talk about. He must think I’m nuts.
“I’ve saved so many of them, but no lab here in L.A. can tell me what they are,” I say.
“Send them to my friend Dr. Omar Amin, who owns one of the best parasite labs in America, the Parasitology Center in Arizona,” Dr. Oz says. “His lab has the tools to identify exactly what they are.” Hallelujah. We contact Dr. Amin and send him some of my parasites. A couple of weeks later, I get back a proper result with real information. Finally some answers! This is the only lab that identified and confirmed the rope worms I already knew I had.
Weeks later Daisy and I take our second trip to Dr. Klinghardt in Seattle. His muscle testing continues to show that heavy metals are a huge part of the problem with my brain, so he injects my jaw with DMPS, which is a chelator that removes heavy metals from the blood. He also injects the scars from my back surgery. When we leave, my face blows up. I have lumps in my jaw, and the pain is excruciating. I feel as if I’m having an out-of-body experience. Haven’t I had enough of these by now?
We’re sitting on the terrace getting some fresh air when Blanca calls me.
“Lucky isn’t feeling well,” she says. “What should I do?”
“Please take him to the hospital immediately.”
There, the doctor tells Blanca that Lucky has heart failure and his kidneys are shutting down.
“He’s not doing well, if you want to see him before he dies, hurry up,” Blanca says.
Our flight isn’t until late tonight, but we head to the airport hoping to get on an earlier one. We land in L.A. I go straight to the hospital, where I meet Bella and Lucky, who gives me the saddest look. I’m devastated and start to cry because I can feel the outcome of this. My baby Lucky. We’ve had him for thirteen years. I don’t want him to die in the hospital, so I bring him back to the house in Malibu. I wrap him in a blanket and together we lie on the grass in the backyard for hours. It’s his favorite spot to bask in the sun. I am meditating as I envision helping him pass over to the other side. His breathing is very slow, yet it seems like he is holding on until Anwar gets back from school. I FaceTime with Gigi, who is in Miami shooting Sports Illustrated, so she can see Lucky one final time. I can see his little ears move when listening to her voice. When Anwar comes home, he lies with us on the grass until the sun sets. Together we hold Lucky in our arms when he takes his final breath.
Losing Lucky is absolutely devastating. He was such a big part of our family, and energetically he was my partner in crime. I raised my children with him. Back in Santa Barbara, if I left the kids outside by the pool to get something in the kitchen and one of the kids tried to go in the water, he wouldn’t stop barking until I got back. It’s a difficult loss to process for the children and me but someone told me that Lucky maybe gave up his life to save mine. I don’t know if that’s true but I do know that he will always be a little angel on our shoulders.
Through the Lyme community, I hear about the Infusio Treatment Center in Germany. David, Daisy, and I meet with the founder, an alternative medicine practitioner who happens to be in L.A. His stem cell treatment is different than the one I did in Korea which works with plasma. Here they extract stem cells, growth factors, and other important elements from your blood, which then grow for ten days before they are reintroduced through an injection in your arm. I guess anything sounds promising to me right now and we aren’t always in agreement about treatments and protocols, because Daisy’s approach is more integrative, David’s is all conventional, and I am just going by intuition. I think this treatment sounds interesting, but neither of them feels particularly strongly about it. David says it’s because he doesn’t like the guy’s crocodile shoes, which I feel is a weak argument when I’m discussing the next step in my very serious search for a cure. Daisy isn’t sure it will help based on the fact that the founder isn’t willing to collaborate enough with Dr. Klinghardt’s protocol. She is skeptical when he says that he has a cure for Lyme, because even top doctors like Dr. Klinghardt never speak of a cure but rather remission. I kind of like his confidence and want to believe him. At this point, I love everybody’s input, but I need to keep moving and search the globe or else I’m not sure I’m going to make it through. I feel weak, and, besides my usual symptoms, my calves have become numb, along with two fingers on my right hand. I’m at my wit’s end and just need to escape from everyone while I fight on my own.
I also long to be with my mom and brother in Europe, so I go against David and Daisy and leave for Frankfurt on another one of my stubborn missions, determined to find a cure. I travel with the last bit of hope deep down inside me. By the time I arrive, I’m herxing like crazy from the antiparasitic medications and still passing what feels like endless parasites. I feel desperate, so I record a video diary on my phone.
Video Diary
April 2015
I arrived in Frankfurt yesterday and today is my first day starting a new treatment. I will be here for 14 days, away from my children, which sucks. I had a terrible flight coming from Los Angeles. The minute we took off, I had severe inflammation in my brain, and my eyes, which were already bothering me when trying to get through the airport, so I stopped to buy extra-strength reading glasses. I feel like my eyesight is getting worse by the day. I actually feel like I have worms in the back of my eyeballs, which is blocking my vision.
I always considered myself a smart person, especially with medical stuff, but I’m in a maze where every time I turn a corner there is something new and crazy that I don’t understand. Since I passed that 16-inch rope worm on Friday, Feb. 13th, I’ve been researching all over the world. I have found this book that has given me a lot of the answers by a Russian scientist. I feel like if I could just leave my body right now, I would be okay. And it’s not that I’m depressed. I don’t feel depressed, just defeated because I’m losing this battle.
If anything happens to me, and in case I don’t wake up, I want to make sure that there is an autopsy done by a medical team of my eyeballs, brain, gut, and sinuses because I want to prove that something is living inside of me and killing me slowly. I don’t know how to fight it but I AM fighting it and I will continue to fight it. I’m blessed with resources and the ability to be in Germany and try another protocol. Most don’t get that opportunity. I’m just really at the end of my rope with my rope worms. I feel so alone but too embarrassed to share this with anyone. Lyme disease is one thing, the word Lyme disease sounds fancy compared to the whole chapter of rope worms and parasites that I know are blocking the healing of my body.
At this point, it’s probably not the Lyme that is keeping me down, but the worms. I feel like my body has been invaded by some crazy creatures. They just keep coming out. I have pieces of flesh coming out of me, something is eating my insides that nobody is seeing. I have no choice but to keep going. I know I’m not the only one. I know there are millions of people walking around with this problem, feeling so sick and helpless and not understanding what is going on.
For three years, it’s been so hard to get diagnosed and to be treated for Lyme and now I have aliens coming out that no parasite testing has ever showed. It’s so frustrating, but l try to keep finding gratitude while telling myself that I have
the best circumstances in the worst situation.
I brought my parasite bible and sixty disposable enema bags, so I set up a makeshift lab in the hotel bathroom. The hotel was able to provide me the basic ingredients such as milk, salt, baking soda, et cetera—and I am pleasantly surprised that they even got the harder-to-find ingredients like nettle and eucalyptus leaves from the biological pharmacy. During the day, I am at Infusio for treatments and at night I come back to my hotel room and prepare the hideous parasite cleanses and enemas as directed by the Russian scientist. This honestly is the most insane experience I’ve ever had. That said, I’m rigidly committed, which means that I lie on the bathroom floor for one hour in the early morning before going to the clinic and one hour when I get back at night with whatever potion the book says I should use. Imagine holding warm milk with salt or a carefully brewed eucalyptus potion up your butt for an hour! YES it’s crazy, but I am a desperate person on a mission. I’m afraid and I’m in this thing all alone.
I haven’t really told David about what I am going through. That is, until what looks like pieces of intestinal tissue come out of me after one of my enemas. These are actually pieces of my intestines! I’ve been a vegetarian for the past year, eating mostly fruits, vegetables, and olives, so I know it can’t actually be meat because I have not ingested any. I’ve tried to be optimistic and private, but after seeing this, I’m convinced that I’m losing my life to some strange internal attack that’s gone undetected by my medical team. I start to send David e-mails with photographs of all the alien discoveries from the past couple of months. I didn’t want to scare him—that’s why I didn’t share before—but at this point I honestly don’t think I am going to make it through. I’m at war, and physically and emotionally exhausted.
The only bright spot in this experience is that my brother and mother drive up from Holland and stay with me at the hotel. What I love about my family is that they’re low maintenance. We don’t need to do anything but sit, talk, and enjoy our togetherness. My mom is a strong woman, and even though what I’m going through is all very unusual, she doesn’t flinch or panic. She is a calming force in the middle of the worst storm of my life.
Believe Me Page 21