Toe Fungus

The older I get the more I love to write. I firmly believe that everyone has a story to tell.  Mine might be more dramatic or more visible to the world, but as someone who has been very ill, I have been blessed to have the opportunity to perfect my listening ear. I get to hear about the struggles and the trials other people have faced. I am here to tell you that EVERYONE has SOMETHING.  A perfect life does not exist. And if you think it does, buckle down, because something is coming.

I have procrastinated starting this blog because I didn’t know where to begin.  I have lost sleep deciding if I tell my health journey from the start, tell embarrassing stories along the way, talk about Crohn’s Disease or my miracles or even my remedies.  So I just decided “No more procrastination”. Someone is waiting to hear my story…..all of it.  So to set the mood of maintaining my sense of humor thru all my yuck, I decided to begin with Toe Fungus. Yep. Toe Fungus. As you will learn about me, I am an Occupational Therapist, trained in the medical model. I am drawn to intense, high-risk cases and treated patients throughout the ICU’s with brain injuries related to stroke and particularly trauma after car or motorcycle accidents, spinal cord injuries, and neonatal ICU with sick and premature babies. When I had my own health setback, I pivoted to a less physical job and became a pharmaceutical rep pedaling the top GI drug for reflux and ulcers in the industry. My work history is completely medical. I was trained to find the symptom and treat it with drugs.  I had to know enough about medication to provide my patient with the optimal therapy session by making them comfortable, alert and calm, aware of any potential medical risk that might occur with strenuous therapy.  And, I knew my drugs backward and forward to promote them to doctors to use with their patients. I was very well trained to regurgitate everything the pharmaceutical companies wanted me to say.

All the while, as far back as high school, I had my own issues brewing. It started out with my first stomach pain. Then, I got really puffy.  For a girl that averaged 5-7 days of tennis a week, unexplained weight gain should have been on my radar as a red flag, but I knew very little. And I had my first yeast infection.  I know now that it all stemmed from prophylactic treatment by my dermatologist who put me on long-term low-dose antibiotics for skin care. It ruined my gut flora and so began a 17-year history of yeast overgrowth I knew nothing about.  Hang on to future blogs for the continuation of that very long and painful journey.

Thru all of my battles, issues, and crises that I will share, my very stubborn hard-nosed medically trained self refused to acknowledge natural remedies as a means of treatment. My body was worse. My issues were worse. My stomach problems were rare. I needed the big guns and the big doctors. That is what I thought anyway. Until little things started changing my life. The little things became big things and the big things opened my eyes to an entirely different perspective on how our bodies were created and thus could be treated.  While still a work in progress, I am sold out on becoming more of a hippie every day. I cannot wait to share.

Albeit not in order of discovery, one of my greatest discoveries is that of curing an unnecessary bout of toe fungus, everyone’s favorite!  My precious niece had a party selling those stickers that make your nails look painted. I loved them. I put on my nails and toes for my upcoming surgery and that summer I unexpectedly ended up in the fight of my life in the hospital for 8 weeks (6 weeks + 2 weeks).  As you can imagine those toes got lots of compliments in my hospital bed, but being unable to bend at the waist and really not paying much attention to my feet while I was septic, they remained on my toes for no less than 3 months. I think the instructions say to change them every 2 weeks. When I finally took them off, my big toe had a solid yellow section that I paid little attention to. I lived in Texas. There was no downtime for painted nails because we wore sandals year-round. So, that toenail remained hidden under nail polish for the next two years.

 

 

Two years later we moved to Kansas and I finally offered my poor toes nail polish relief during the winter and noticed that yellow stripe was still there. Oops! I was already working on my hippie status and read that Apple Cider Vinegar would remedy the issue by just soaking my toe in it for 30 minutes. Given that it had been there for more than a couple of years, I went over the top and soaked it at least three times in Apple Cider Vinegar {with the Mother} and I kid you not, no more toe fungus.  It works by destroying the fungus’s cell structure, along with the enzymes the fungus needs to live. Fungi environments ideally have an acidic pH. Apple cider vinegar can regulate the pH of an environment by neutralizing the acid, thus removing the ability for the fungus to grow. How about that?

So how do you know you have a fungal infection?

There are so many more uses for Apple Cider Vinegar . Our houses are filled with products that can treat our bodies, kill germs and prevent issues that are not only more effective than purchasing at a drug store,  less expensive and safer for our bodies.