I smiled and realized how right she was. I had been sick for well over a year now. Actually, this human body had been displaying symptoms for a couple of years, since the brown recluse spider bite. In reality it's been ailing for a much longer period of time. A month ago my complexion was ghostly white, I had deep, black circles under my eyes and I was feeling sicker every day. If someone had asked me how long I thought I would live, I would have said, “About a year.”

But that was before my most recent miracle. This story has a very happy ending.

Monday, November 29th was 20% off everything at the Deland Health Food Store. I went in to purchase a whole new combination of supplements and cleansers to see if I could attempt to feel better. I knew something was very wrong with me. I'd known for a long time but I was just doing the best I could with the knowledge I had to keep myself alive. I hoped liquid vitamins, antioxidants and more detoxes would help until we could come up with an answer.

I loaded my cart and checked out and realized I might want to stop on the way home so decided to run back to the bathroom before I left the store. Besides, I could hear my mother saying, “Go to the bathroom before you leave!”

I left my cart and walked to the back of the store where the bathrooms were located. There was a young man setting up a sign which said “Free Screenings.” I asked him what he was screening. He had just taken a bite of something and covering his mouth said, “Your nervous system.”

I smiled, told him to swallow his food and I'd be right back. I hadn't checked out my nervous system yet. I wondered how he was going to accomplish that in the store.

When I returned he told me he was a chiropractor. I didn't tell him I'd never consider seeing one. Now, since I was feeling like I might die soon, I was ready to see anybody!

He put me on a scale which weighed each half of my body separately. “You weigh 9.5 pounds more on your right side than you do on your left,” he explained and then stood beside me and checked my posture. “Your posture's pretty good but you have some irregularities in your neck and lumbar region.” He gently felt my spinal column and said, “You have bulging nerves in your cervical area, the center of your back and more in your lumbar region. Are you in pain?”

“Once in awhile,” I answered, surprised he had found problems in my spine. The years of yoga had kept me very flexible, but, come to think of it, I did have problems breathing whenever bending to the left and there was pain in my neck and hips during my stretches which I chalked up to hard work and old age.

“Well, considering the bulging nerves in your cervical area you could have some heart palpitations and the problems in your lumbar region could cause severe degradation of your digestive system. I'd say your digestive system was operating at about 50-60% of it's ability.”

I felt a wave of relief come over me. There really was something wrong with me. I just hadn't seen the right kind of doctor these past 2 years.

He asked me to come to his office for a more complete screening and to pick up a questionnaire as soon as it was convenient for me. I made the appointment and looked forward to learning more about my spine.

That afternoon I felt pain in my neck and back more than I had felt it in a long time. It was as if he had given me permission to feel this pain. I recalled before my hysterectomy in 2000 when my gynecologist explained to me I had slowly become tolerant of the pain in my abdomen. When he removed my football-sized-uterus he said I had developed a very high tolerance to pain.

I drove home and my neck and back were aching so I climbed onto the inversion table we had purchased for my husband last fall. I began to feel relief immediately, not only in my neck and back, but from the nausea of not being able to digest lunch. Pinched nerves and vessels in my spine made sense. I was feeling confident we really were going to get to the root of my problems.

When I arrived for my first visit Dr. Terry Watts handed me a booklet titled SUBLUXATIONS. He asked me to read it while he finished something he was working on at the reception desk. I skimmed it quickly trying not to think about the pain in my neck and back wondering what would happen next. When I stood to give him the booklet he asked me three questions on the material.

“What is the misalignment of the spine called?” he asked me. “Subluxation,” I answered. “What is the job of the Central Nervous System?” was his next question. “It controls everything in our body,” I answered hoping I could rely on my knowledge and not on what I just read. If I had known there was going to be a test I would have studied! “What are the results of subluxation?” he continued. “Disease!” I answered. He asked me to sit on the table and he felt my spinal column more thoroughly, pushed on each shoulder while feeling my pulse and made some notes.

When he was finished he gave me a prescription for X-rays of my neck, back and hips. He asked me to bring the X-rays back to his office so he could read them later in the day and to make an appointment for the following morning when I would have my first adjustment.

I did as I was asked and the following day when I arrived for my first adjustment he gave me a booklet titled, ARE YOU NORMAL? I laughed and realized I always say I am not normal and I don't want to be, but, when it comes to spinal health, I'd like to be!

Despite the excruciating pain I now felt in my back and neck I tried to read the brochure carefully knowing there would be questions. I was also watching other patients get there adjustments and it looked relatively easy and painless. When I was finished reading I walked over to the desk and was asked, “Which organs are controlled by the Central Nervous System?” “All of them!” I answered with a smile looking forward to getting my nerves un-pinched and my organs operating at their full capacity. “What can interfere with the Central Nervous System?” was the next question. What was that word, “Subluxation,” I hesitated as I answered. And lastly, “How do we evaluate spinal alignment?” “X-rays and posture,” I answered.

I sat on the table for my first chiropractic adjustment ready to be out of pain and to start my path to optimum health. Dr. Terry used an automatic “thumper” up and down the problem areas of my neck and lower back and then sent electric shocks down my spine to help relax the muscles for my adjustment. I did not feel anything at all but he said I would eventually feel the shock going down my arms and legs. He helped me lay down on my back and adjusted my neck over a brace. Then I laid on my stomach. He placed lifts underneath my stomach on one side and my hips on the other and adjusted my lumbar region. Then I was instructed to take deep breaths and on each exhale he pushed on the center of my back till it cracked in 3 places. I left there pain free somewhat in disbelief but definitely happy.

He told me it would be normal to feel sore, as though I had worked out at the gym. He instructed me to drink 16oz of water upon waking each morning with 1/4tsp of Himalayan sea salt in it and ½ my body weight in alkaline water every day for hydration during my healing process. He asked me to come in and bring my husband with me for a 2 hour discussion the following evening and we would go over my X-rays and the plan he would suggest for my corrective care.

I was glad he asked my husband to come in because I wanted him to understand what was going on with my body. We came in as scheduled and after lessons in reading X-rays and knowing what a normal spine should look like we looked at my X-rays. He explained the bones told him the accident which initiated my problems occurred over 20 years ago. We found my neck is in Phase II degradation, the bones are nearly in a straight line where they should be curved, the center of my spine goes off to the right like the leaning Tower of Pisa and the bones in my lumbar region are pinching nerves that control my kidneys and other organs. The separations between the bones throughout my spine are very small, compared to what they should be, and I should be have difficulty absorbing nutrients and minerals.

He went on to explain the organization he is affiliated with, called Maximum Living, labels problems on people who don't correct their spines “diseases for dummies” because if people know what is broken and they don't fix it, well, they are dummies. I agreed with him wholeheartedly. He offered me a discount if I paid for my treatments in advance, I did so and have been having 3 treatments each week, eating right, drinking alkaline water and feeling better every day. Just knowing what was causing everything made me feel better-knowing I wasn't a hypochondriac, that I really do have something wrong with me and that it can be fixed made me feel great. When we left his office my husband smiled and said, "He speaks your language." Indeed he did!

Imagine. From a skiing accident well over 20 years ago. I guess I am living my newest miracle.

Looking back over the past couple of years each of the healers I worked with gave me a correct diagnosis from their perspective. It all pointed to my system shutting down for some unexplained reason;

In March of 2008 when I was bitten by that ornery brown recluse spider my system began screaming for help. The venom obviously toxified my organs enough to begin episodes of chest pains, dizziness, nausea, confusion etc. The heart specialist said the symptoms weren't caused by my heart, it was one of the strongest hearts he had ever examined. They did an EKG and he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Later a friend, a nurse who performs EKGs, looked at the same paper and said, “This blip here isn't normal, it means you are low on potassium.” Lots of people are low on potassium so I began taking potassium pills.

I also went to see my Meridian Stress Assessor, Lynn Deen, who found I was allergic to night shade vegetables. I avoided tomatoes, eggplant and peppers and seemed to be fine, for awhile.

In February 2009, after a Valentine's Night of two many glasses of wine, I was very, very ill and a long distance healer was suggested to me. When I visited with her in the Florida Keys she gave me a Jin Shin Jyutsu treatment (literally the Japanese “Art of Living;” using her hands as jumper cables to help the energy flow more efficiently through my body). The treatment along with herbal teas she concocted helped quite a bit. She said in order to really cleanse my system I would need to cut out all carbohydrates for 3 months; no fruit, no sweets, no bread, no rice etc. I followed her directions and felt great, for awhile.

Then, in December 2009, after a few weeks of drinking an occasional glass of wine and eating sweets at Thanksgiving I ended up in the emergency room with chest pains, dizziness, a rapid pulse and nausea. The same symptoms I had had previously only much worse and they lasted for hours. Five hours in the ER and $3000 later all they could tell me was my pulse rate was 125bpm when I arrived and it had slowed down to 90bpm and that my blood pressure was 155/90. Neither were high enough to give me any medications, which I wouldn't have taken it anyway.

Considering my blood pressure was normally 90/60 and my resting pulse rate 60bpm I understood why I felt so poorly but I still wanted to know why this was happening to me. I did yoga and qi gong and ate better than most people I know so I decided to try western medicine again. There had to be a reason my body was doing this. After phoning more than a dozen physicians' offices I finally found one who would take me without health insurance and made an appointment. He did a series of blood tests to determine the status of my body. He found I was anemic and my potassium level was low. He suggested I take a drug to keep the food in my stomach longer and I said I didn't like prescription medicines. He told me he didn't like them either and I should exhaust every natural healing modality I knew of before he prescribed anything. I had found the right doctor!

I wrote to my friend, Norm Shealy MD Phd and filled him on what was going on hoping from some answers from this world famous-brilliant-neuro-surgeon-medical intuit.

He wrote back he hoped they had checked my thyroid function, T 3, T 4 and TSH as hyperthyroidism can cause all of my symptoms. He also suggested I take a good digestive enzyme with each meal, which I was already doing. He recommended I do basic autogenic training daily, asked if I was using my magnesium lotion and whether they'd ruled out diabetes. I remember when I attended his classes on energy medicine and mentioned I had a hard time keeping my potassium level up he'd said it didn't make sense. I obviously ate properly and exercised daily. There must be an underlying problem.

I began taking my potassium daily, using my magnesium lotion, did the basic autogenic training (meditation) and carried a good mineralizer called Electro-Mix with me. I sprinkled a little on my tongue whenever I felt the waves of dizziness, palpitations, etc beginning. It was a temporary solution and I really wanted to know why this was all happening. I used acupressure points to relieve the symptoms, which were daily now. Never in a million years would I have thought my skull was crushing my brain stem shutting off communication lines to my entire body.

In January, my Meridian Stress Assessor said, “You are severely allergic to carbohydrates,” so I cut out all carbs again, took her remedies and felt better, for awhile. Cutting out carbs wasn't easy last year but it was much easier than experiencing heart attack symptoms daily. I wasn't sleeping more than an hour or two at night and kept feeling worse. I visited my acupuncture physician occasionally but I had moved away from her office and didn't want to find another. She gave me a blood sugar test kit and I monitored my blood sugar when I had really dizzy spells. It would spike and drop but it was always normal between meals. I saw a Naturopath who reassured me I wasn't diabetic and prescribed Lycopodium to help my organs talk to each other.

In May 2010, while we were packing to go to Maine, thinking about how lousy I felt on a daily basis, I began to panic. Here in Florida I was near my acupuncture physician and Meridian Stress Assessor, in Maine I had no one. The long distance healer I had worked with back in February of 2009 came to mind so I called her for a counseling session. Her prices had gone up considerably due to her great success and long list of clients. We came to an agreement and she sent me some teas and told me to get a book and learn how to do the Jin Shin Jyutsu treatments on myself while she was doing them on me remotely. I began to feel better, because the Jin Shin Jyutsu helped the energy to move where it couldn't go through my spinal column, but little did I know, once again, I was just fixing the symptoms without getting to the root of my problem.

In November 2010 I began to feel pretty yucky again and I'd only had one glass of wine in October to celebrate the closing of our new business. I went to see my Meridian Stress Assessor again and now I wasn't digesting milk products. In fact, she informed me my body didn't like to digest anything. I cut out the cheese and milk and began feeling better and decided to start working out with upper body weights. I had leg cramps throughout the night, the surface of my head hurt to the touch and I felt sicker by the day.

Then my December Miracle at the health food store occurred. Having Dr. Terry Watts tell me I had spinal problems turned on the light so brightly I felt as though I had been healed on the spot. He gave me the WHY I had been searching for that all the other healers had overlooked.