In December 2013, I had just gotten laid off and suddenly I was sick all of the time. I would be OK for a couple of days or even a week but then another cold or flu would hit and I would go back to being sick. On top of that I would get bouts of vertigo and have to reach out to something to keep from falling over. I could feel it my body too — something was very wrong. I tried different doctors but nothing really was helping. Finally, six months later, a medical intuitive declared I had mercury poisoning. He had no proof for it but at that point I was ready to investigate any lead so I asked my naturopath to test me for mercury. She told me that first for completeness we will do a blood test, but that never comes up positive because mercury is so toxic that the body quickly sequesters it. After that we can do more sensitive tests to detect for sequestered mercury. But then I got a phone call from her telling me I had to come in right away. The blood test came in with sky high mercury! Levels so high it was alarming. We figured out that it mostly likely had been triggered by a poorly handled filling removal done back in December when this all started. It turns out that old school filling amalgams are roughly 50% mercury! If my mercury blood levels were that high six months later they must have been through the roof way back in December.
It was a long recovery. I could not work for two years. Fortunately I had just gotten a chunk of stock option money and that was just enough (barely) to get me through that time. Getting sick over and over showed me what it feels like to walk a few steps towards death. I know that path a little bit better now. Much of the time I had incredibly low energy. But in a weird way that low energy was a blessing. I no longer had the energy to harshly judge others or future trip ( obsess about the future). It turns out that those take an incredible amount of energy. At every moment I had a choice — function or not, and I kept on choosing to function. I gave up harshly judging others not because it is the right thing to do, although it is, but as a simple survival choice. I simply didn’t have the energy to spare for it. I still remember the very first day of my recovery I had a big burst of energy. I ended up splurging on a huge bout of judging others and future tripping. It felt like way overdoing a dessert — fun in the moment, but ultimately didn’t feel very good. Now that I am mostly recovered (I still get sick more than the average person, but I am functioning pretty well), I have kept that habit. I tend to not harshly judge others not because I’m morally superior to others (hah!), but because it feels so much better in my body not to. My long illness taught me this.
There were many other blessings as well. The illness had me pay exquisite attention to what foods worked for me. With such low energy I had to be careful to only eat things that worked. I no longer had the luxury of just ignoring when a food was causing me trouble; that could destroy an entire day now. I learned what was important. Connection to nature and exercise were no longer just nice things to do; they were now survival strategies. A very big blessing was how humbled I was. Up to then if this had happened to someone else I just would have (secretly) assumed they were shirking. It was all in their head and they just needed to shake it off and get back to work. Now I knew what it felt like to be on the other side. I was now one of those people. This knocked me off of my high place of superiority and brought me to a much more humble place. I feel more connected and tolerant of homeless people. Maybe the biggest blessing was that I no longer took my health for granted. Every day that I wake up in health is now a cause for deep joy.