Help Me Save Seth

Today is the day I threw in the towel.

It was not easy and it was not without many tears and fears. The fear of letting go. The fear of what’s next.

My biggest fear is the fear of losing my best friend.

I didn’t even find him until I was 51. I feel cheated to only get these 12 years of

life, laughter, and love with him. We both feel deep in our soul that God lead us to each other and we don’t want it to end!

We want many more years of giggling together and finding the joy in the simple life.

We met online - like everyone does! Both of us have done our fair share of time in marriages that were not great matches, but those disappointments and difficulties didn’t stomp out the strong faith and desire in our hearts to FINALLY find ‘our’ person. And there’s zero doubt we did it! We both wake up each day trying to make the day better for the other person. We really are that sickening sweet to each other and I happily take the teasing from others calling us love birds and joking to ‘get a room!’.

Here's where I find myself:

I SHOULD be packing and making lists to not forget the phone charger or Seth’s various medical contraptions that we’ve culled together to treat him to get through a day of pain.

Instead, I feel compelled to sit down and tell our story – maybe it’s therapeutic for

me to bounce down our happy memory lane and maybe I’m just procrastinating

moving forward out of fear.

My sweet little world is crashing around me, and I feel frantic to do SOMETHING to help him.

I tried SO HARD to heal Seth the 12 years we’ve been together. I’ve learned how be be a strong medical advocate as we navigated the gazillion medical options we’ve tried/invested in including: Western medicine, Eastern medicine, Chiro, Naturopath, Acupuncture, Deep Tissue Massage, Reiki, Infrared Saunas, hyperbaric, hyperthermia – you name it, we faithfully tried it.

When I met Seth, he was an active gym rat, out of the house at 3 am to get his workout in. He worked full time, had friends, traveled - just as normal as can be.

Our first date was the classic dinner and a movie; however, we never made it to the movie because we talked for SEVEN HOURS! And, we would have kept on talking, but the bar was closing! Seth wanted to still do the movie, so we went out the next night – and talked for seven more hours!

We immediately sensed this was ‘something’ - something more than two chatty people! :D

We must have had more to chat about because two weeks later, we were strolling in a Dallas mall when we discovered someone had spilled a drink on the mall floor. Seth slipped, his legs went above his head, landing HARD on a unforgiving granite floor to his upper back/shoulder area.

Being a man’s man, he shrugged it off, but his bell was absolutely rung that day.

That was the last day we had a ‘normal’ life – the cascade of doctor appointments soon began. We were just two weeks into dating.

We’ll never know if the mall fall is what created his mountain of health issues,

but it sure seems (in hindsight) that it caused it. Seth has endured so much

pain, loss, disappointment, and fear since that awful moment.

After the fall, he started having the most random health scares that made NO sense based on the man I knew before

the fall. One day I was painting a ceiling high up on a ladder in our home. The phone rang persistently. I climbed down the ladder to find the local fire department on the phone telling me to get to the ER NOW. They had Seth en route and they were about to stop his heart.

WHAT?!?!

Last I knew he was going to Home Depot!

Yea, that’s the kind of scary medical path we’ve endured. The firemen were too afraid to stop Seth’s racing heart IN the moving ambulance (gee can’t imagine why!) so they raced him to the ER where a group of curious medical personnel gathered to witness this rare procedure. Heart ablation followed, since his heart was beating out of his chest. Do we know why? No.

We survived the scare of his heart being stopped and rebooted, just like a computer! We thought, ‘Yay! Now he would be good as new.’ Yea, that

was just a dream. Seth continued to suffer one health problem after another, leading to brain surgery! They proved (via EEG) that Seth’s body WAS sending out pain signals that made him experience the kind of pain as if he was REALLY getting electrocuted, stabbed, sliced, diced, set on fire, ice pick to the eye – you name the torture and he endured it as if it was really happening. ☹

Sadly, the brain surgery did not stop the pain…it actually brought new and deeper pain in. ;(

This is where the bloom fell from the Western medicine rose for us. Seth suffered HORRIFIC pain after the brain surgery – a level of pain that most people would not be able to endure. He sat in dark and quiet rooms just trying to get through another painful day. His life was couch surfing when he could tolerate light, or on super painful days he sat alone in a dark and silent room.

At this point, Seth was falling into a depression – I mean, who wouldn’t get depressed when you are enduring non-stop high level pain and no doctor was interested in getting to the ROOT of the problem. Who wouldn’t feel hopeless?!

So what did we do?

We did the smart thing. We got Seth a companion for couch surfing - our rescue Molly! She senses when we all need her snuggles.

At one time, all the doctors Seth was seeing had him on 13 different and STRONG medications - enough to stop a horse, per his cardiologist.

Once we repeatedly saw a pattern of limited interest in deep diving his root condition, we started looking into alternative medical options.

The scary realization then set in … we are on our own to navigate the mystery of Seth’s medical issues.

Best way to describe it is he has good days and bad days, but there’s enough unpredictability that we never know which “Seth” will wake up – will it be the full of energy and ready to stuff 5 days of work into one day Seth, because he feels good that day or will it be the lethargic, weak, no muscle energy Seth who spends most of the day asleep and not feeling well?

Never knowing if you will have enough energy or feel well enough to get through a day made it difficult for Seth to keep his job. Factor in the stress of the loss of his income and health insurance eight years ago while crazy medical expenses piled up…

Stress much?

Covid killed my sweet little business of 30 years, and I was getting depressed.

So what did we do?

We very spontaneously decided to reduce the stressors on both of us. We got out of the city and bought a little patch of land in God’s country in SE Oklahoma. Seth has thrived in the rural country of bumpy, dusty dirt roads, deer crisscrossing the property, and down-to-earth, small town, good people neighbors.

After 12 years of this scary medical roller coaster, we’ve accepted that our ‘normal’ is Seth will have good days and bad days. It makes it nearly impossible to make (and keep) plans. It’s Impossible to travel (gosh I still have trauma from our last trip involving flying. It wasn’t pretty.) But even with those unpredictable inconveniences, it was enough of a workable plan for us - until it wasn’t the norm anymore.

And NOW it’s not the norm anymore. ☹

Seth has had stomach issues his entire life. I don’t think he had a healthy stomach at birth. Pile loads of antibiotics, heartburn medicine, and Tylenol on top of a weakened stomach biome - and you get where we are now. Seth’s stomach hurts so bad that it only doesn’t hurt when he’s water fasting (as in NOT eating). One time out of desperation, he water fasted for 21 days! As soon as he eats, he’s in pain.

In the last couple of days, Seth started getting dizzy again – grabbing walls and counters to steady himself. Then today, as he casually chatted, his body folded like an accordion right in front of me – and suddenly he was on the floor. Let me tell you how scary it is to watch someone you love look pale, confused, then crumble to the floor.

That’s the moment when I threw in the towel of trying to heal Seth and I said ENOUGH.

We called the cancer hospital in Tijuana that specializes in holistic healing. This is the place if you’ve been kicked to the curb by your doctors and you’re on your own to figure out your own healthcare.

We don’t know what Seth has, but this place heals scary things without the harm a lot of Western medicine does.

That’s where I am right now. I still didn’t pack a thing, I’ve made no list, I have no plan except that we are getting on an airplane with the faith that God will save my sweet Seth.

He’s a complicated medical mess and I

need someone to take the lead because I am now too fearful to think logically to help him. I have to keep reminding myself that I didn’t give up on my love. I gave up on me trying to heal him.

As we are well aware after over a decade of paying out-of-pocket - holistic healing isn’t covered by insurance and it’s insanely expensive. This is a big test of faith for us, as the hospital estimate that we’ve committed to is $18,000 (plus airfare and accommodations! ) The average is about $30,000! Scary numbers, right?!

Anyone who knows me knows that I am the best GIVER/HELPER you’ll ever meet. The flip side is I’ve never been good at asking for help, because the chatter in my head is calling it a weakness to ask for help.

With me losing my beloved small business, Seth not working for almost 10 years, and the high price of just ‘doing life’ these days - I know everyone is feeling the pinch.

Maybe this is MY lesson to learn – to be gracious in learning how to accept help.

If you can help us, we would be so eternally grateful. We have no idea what lies ahead in the coming month that Seth will be in the hospital, but we are going forward with full faith that God is blessing our path to ONCE AND FOR ALL heal Seth.

Do we know how we will pay for it? Nope.

There’s a real is act of faith for ya!

I’m drying my tears and I’m going to go start the packing process. Writing this sad story has been cathartic for me. I thank you for persevering to the end. Clearly, I can be wordy!

ANY help is appreciated. A small, simple act of kindness is appreciated and I can guarantee it will make me cry! I’m so not normally a cryer but this moment of not knowing what is wrong, not being able to help, and then having to ask for help - is really outside of my comfort zone, but I need to let go, and let my friends and my God help save Seth.

If you can’t financially help, please send prayers for us. We value and appreciate your prayers and support.

I’ll keep you updated on our Mexican health/healing journey. Ole!