Our Story. THIS IS A DRAFT STAGING SITE
LYN
Our clients become family.
This journey for us began in March 2021. After both of us having Covid in January, 2021, with recovery from acute Covid, I immediately began to have symptoms of Long Haul or PASC and my already tenuous health declined even more.
I have had chronic EBV most of my life which has caused multiple major health diseases and conditions. For most of the last two decades, EBV was in a chronic flare, uncontrolled and continuously seeking out new organ systems to destroy in my body. I had chronic lymph node swelling under my jaw and along my neck for many years.
I had mono (EBV) when I was twelve, but already had health problems in my childhood. My tonsils and adenoids were removed by the time I was two. I had multiple food allergies. My family history involves many chronic autoimmune disorders with almost every close relative.
From my early twenties, I began to have health concerns including migraines, undiagnosed Lupus with classic malar rash, autoimmune hypertension before I was thirty, quickly followed by adrenal fatigue (HPA axis). I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s which over many years became very unstable and eventually, oscillating hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism. This became unmanageable with medication. I was offered surgery to remove my thyroid which I refused, believing the chronic EBV would prevent recovery.
My gut also began to struggle with Celiac, IBS, grain intolerance, leading to Gastroparesis, malabsorption and an unintentional weight loss of 35-40 pounds in one month as my body began to shut down. I was having diarrhea every ten minutes all day long. I began a strict high fat carnivore diet (anti-inflammatory) which helped stabilize most of my medical problems.
Other health problems that I experienced during these many years were Rosacea, Interstitial Cystitis, Uveitis, inflammation in liver, spleen, lungs, and circulatory systems. Allopathic medicine had diagnosed me with pre-diabetes, asthma, reflux, depression, stress headaches, chronic inflammation and other things.
My body lived in constant fight or flight, chronic immunodeficient state, CFS/ME, insomnia for twenty years required increasing and large doses of Xanax. Most of my life changed over this time from a normal, active adult to very isolated, no longer able to work, drive, or even participate in normal life having to shut down most of the outer world.
Long Haul.
We believe I first had Covid in the fall of 2020 after experiencing an exacerbation of fatigue, body pain, chills and drenching sweats. After this initial bout, I began to have worse neurological symptoms with depression, increased anxiety, inability to tolerate any stress. I also began to have POTS, MCAS, dystonia including gross muscle contractions and body contortions into not normal body positions as well as conscious seizures.
As Long Haul set in, I began to have gastroparesis again, vomiting even just water. Unable to retain most meals, I began an almost liquid diet of carnivore shakes and I was in a losing battle again. I began to have heart palpitations, AFIB on average over 130’s. I was unable to tolerate any activity, even my own self-care.
Brushing my teeth was exhausting. With any activity, it took me hours to recover, my blood pressure would remain well above 200/100 even medicated. Most of my life was not worth living. I could not feed myself without exhaustion.
I was seen in the ER, diagnosed with Long Haul and told there was nothing they could do, not even given medication for AFIB. I began experiencing worsening encephalitis with constant excruciating headaches, worse than migraines with the feeling of burning lava in my brain. It felt as if my brain was being squeezed within my skull. Nothing helped the pain or inflammation. I couldn’t sit still, rocked for comfort, which increased anxiety.
With this new inflammation, I began to lose more cognitive abilities including the ability to read, add simple numbers, or write. I couldn’t recognize letters and numbers, as if I had dyslexia, and dyscalculia.
I couldn’t remember words, events and I couldn’t consistently ask for help. I couldn’t comprehend what was being said to me, couldn’t follow directions and could not communicate effectively. I could no longer drive safely as I could not comprehend signs and the actions of other drivers for an immediate response for safety.
This caused me to further retract within myself and isolate more.
This wasn’t the first time I told my husband that this was no way to live. I wanted it all to end, it would’ve been easier to just let go than watching my life pass me by. We had only been married for a year and a half and it was breaking me to see my life disappear. Yet, I couldn’t let go.
JT and I had planned to return to Mexico to just live out whatever life I had left as comfortably as possible. I said goodbye to my kids the best I could, saying goodbye without saying the real words for them to realize it may be the last time. My body was tired, my brain was exhausted.
JT and I both were thinking about death, both of us trying to figure out how to say goodbye to each other. Both of us not speaking about the pain of this.
Fate stepped in and put people directly in our path, leading us to stem cell therapy.
When we arrived to Mexico, I used my rolling luggage as a walker through the airport, leaning heavily on it for support. JT carried the rest of our luggage and backpacks. When we arrived at our Airbnb, I struggled to walk up the stairs to the second floor of our casita.
While showing us around, the host tried to give me a key and I refused, telling him that I could not leave by myself. He looked at me strangely, as most people see me as very healthy — the classic “not overweight with no obvious health problems”. But with invisible illness, it is very difficult to see the devastation inside our bodies, even wearing a blood pressure cuff constantly, even with a constant gray pallor.
During our stay there, we would talk to the owners and they finally came to realize that I was very sick and our purpose for being here was to be comfortable as I passed away. Our host would tell us of his stem cell treatments he was receiving locally for diabetes. Soon, as we met other strangers, they would ask what was wrong with me, and ask if I had tried stem cell therapy. It became clear that we would need to go down this path, if not for relief, then maybe to save my life.
I spent several days struggling through difficult research with a broken brain, reading everything I could find and we quickly decided to try it as our last hope as I had nothing to lose at this point.
We had spent several weeks just being with each other, taking life as slowly as I could tolerate it. During the hard times, I would tell JT that if I had three minutes to live, it was going be watching the sunset with him.
We watched many of them. And this is how we lived for weeks…
Beginning stem cell therapy!
My first treatment was on April 1st, 2021 and within days, I began to notice significant changes in my health and ability to do things for myself. A pink or rosy color returned to my face. I was able to do more, even without thinking about it.
I no longer had activity intolerance, but just a normal muscle wasting that I needed to rebuild with exercise. My muscles now could work and I could be more active. Within the first few days, we were slowly walking back from dinner and I turned to JT and asked him how far we had walked, and he told me about a mile. This was significant, as just a few days before while walking to the doctors office for treatment, I had to stop to breathe, sit on the curb and wait several minutes to catch my breath and still my heart every few steps. I no longer experienced air hunger.
The encephalitis seemed to resolve quickly as well, I no longer had brain burning and the cognitive and neurological deficits quickly faded. I found myself being able to think more, reason well again, read and I even started learning Spanish.
Recovery
I began trying new foods that I had not been able to eat for many years. I would pick foods off of JT’s plate to try and found I was not having any food reactions. I no longer had MCAS symptoms. I began to crave different foods.
I had made so much progress immediately that I had hope that I would be able to live a normal life again. Three weeks later I was able to carry our heavy backpacks as we moved to a new place.
This was the beginning of my healing journey with more healing to come!
OPHELIA
As I began to heal, I began to sleep for the first time in decades without medication, dropping off easily at night and even taking naps during the day which I was never able to do. I pretty quickly stopped any medication or supplement to allow my body to do its work.
With miraculous and healing sleep, dreaming came back as well.
The first dream I had was about an infant named Ophelia, that I did not have in real life. In this dream, Ophelia saved me I realized that this was not only a dream but a vision of what was to come.
Ophelia became my story of rebirth, hope and salvation from dark and desperate times. I told my husband that we could not just return to our lives, retired and traveling, but that we had to help others find this same hope and their own rebirth.
Life is completely different now.
I am now able to travel again, even by myself. I can drive and take care of all of my own needs. I can be with my family and my grandchildren, hike and enjoy being actively involved in life again.
Most importantly, we are able to help others find their own healing journey as well.
Over the past few years, we have chosen to help others find this same hope, working every day harder than we ever did in either of our professional careers. We spend tireless hours listening to those who have been devastated by invisible illness, chronic diseases, and disorders that are deemed incurable or that are not even recognized by modern medicine as a true diagnosis.
We speak with countless numbers of people daily who have been abused by the medical establishment, who suffer from PTSD from being called “lazy and crazy” and those who have searched everywhere and found no answers within allopathic medicine.
We work tirelessly for Ophelia to be able to offer this same hope that we have experienced to others who have also been left alone to suffer, unable to cry out for help and have no hope. This has been the most rewarding life work that either of us have experienced.
JT
In 2020, I was a fairly hyper-healthy person who trained every year to ride competitively in long distance amateur bicycle races. I often drove and sometimes flew with my bike to events all over the country. I’d even had fellow cyclists blow smoke at me about maybe thinking about tuning up to compete in cycling in the Senior Olympics. In one
particular year, I’d ended third overall in my age group in the state of Missouri. Let’s give me the benefit of the doubt that I’d been racing more than two other guys…
Point being though, that I was way above average in fitness, suffered from no long term illnesses, and rarely even from minor day-to-day ones.
In January, 2021 , my wife Lyn and I came back to the US from a trip to Mexico and we both soon came down with the original Covid. It’d proved a relatively easy, modest and brief illness, though as I recovered she seemed to head straight into what would later
become known as “Long Haul” symptoms. We barely knew what that term was, and certainly, nor did doctors. Nobody knew at that time that the symptoms of Long Haul Covid would prove to be in most cases worse than the disease itself.
Dial forward a couple months and we were quickly approaching a planned return back to Mexico. However, with Lyn seemingly losing more ground everyday, and having very little of it left, we decided to go forward with the trip just to live our lives as comfortably
as possible. We fully recognized the great likelihood of her imminent passing. But then God or the universe or blind luck, whichever one cares to believe, intervened in a spectacular set of coincidences that are described in Lyn’s story. So while she began to undergo stem cell treatment and get back on her feet, I returned to the US in a few weeks. Warning, there will be a pattern arising here.
Before returning to the US, I was feeling fine and looked healthy and normal. There were no reasons to anticipate that my physical and mental health would soon decline precipitously.
Long Covid hit me in the same manner Hemingway described how he’d become bankrupt… “Gradually, then suddenly.”
While in the US, I began to not be as well as I had been. One day I was out and active and living a full and enjoyable life, and then next I could only gingerly walk downstairs in the morning to sit in a chair, and find myself drained by that tiny effort. So I’d fester all day staring at a TV screen and entirely oblivious and uncaring as to whether it was even
turned on.
My vital signs became erratic and quite worrisome. From the time I planted myself in a seat downstairs, my blood pressure would rise about 10 points every fifteen minutes or so. In short order it’d be climbing through 170/120 with the sky seemingly being the limit. I’d never had blood pressure problems before. So there I sat with a blood pressure cuff and a bottle of Lisinopril and a bottle of Clonodine, chasing the digits with the meds until my body finally succumbed to the chemicals. Then my BP would drop like a stone down to dangerous levels around 80/50’s, and I’d wonder how I was ever going to make my way back to bed.
During that time, unbeknownst to me, Covid was silently and quickly damaging my lungs. Before I knew it, and timeframe wise I mean within days of the proverbial Long
Covid greyhound bus hitting me, I could no longer walk twenty yards without succumbing to oxygen exhaustion. I’d done many ‘century rides’ at full gas in the heat of Texas summers and not gotten so blown-up physically as merely walking up and down our short driveway in my Covid body.
I hadn’t had the slightest idea of the extensive micro-clotting occurring throughout my body, and how my lungs were being permanently savaged. My brain became foggy. Depression set in, and at times my thoughts and words became aggressive, as if I were bipolar. I began to experience suicidal ideation. Fortunately for me, but in no way enjoyable to them, were family members who picked up that Dr. Jeff was descending
into a very dark Mr. Hyde.
How the tables had turned!
As my family helped me struggle through daily activities such as cleaning up and cooking and bringing me food, we quickly figured out that Lyn and I were in different emergencies.
Lyn, just a few short weeks earlier unable to walk or travel by herself, now knew she’d need to, and was actually once again able to, return unaided to the US. Stem cells had done her a life-save, and now I needed salvation from whatever was hollowing me out.
Instead of me needing to help Lyn through the airport and carrying our bags, now she was helping me through DFW as I struggled with each st
When we arrived back at the same Airbnb in Ajijic, our host Tony commented, “Well, this is quite a change in events,” pointing at Lyn, “You look healthy and he looks like he’s dying.” I didn’t even have the breath to reply.
Preparing for my first stem cell treatment, we had blood labs drawn. The results gave my physician immediate concerned about a possible pulmonary embolism, and sent me for a chest X-ray.
The X-ray found that I had pulmonary fibrosis. with Covid this is known as “glass lung” and considered incurable.
The doctor demanded to see me right away, as my d-dimer was hovering at emergency levels. I was treated immediately with Aspirin and a blood thinner and told I’d likely be on them for a year. During that time we’d do regular testing to ensure my blood thinned, or else I might suffer a stroke at any time. Of course, flying on airplanes with thick blood was out of the question, so traveling anywhere except by car was out also of the question.
Within days of my first treatment, brain fog began to lift, as well as the depression. I was taken off the blood thinners, as my d-dimer numbers had returned to within normal range. Pulmonary fibrosis would of course be permanent, and we could at least consider ourselves lucky that it hadn’t gotten so bad as to bring lung transplants into conversation. Ah, silver linings.
Recovery
After several weeks, I went back and had some new films shot, starring my right and leftlungs.Those x-rays, by the way, cost US$20 each, no insurance or appointmentneeded.You get the films handed to you within 20 minutes.And what do you know, they were clear as a bell and you-know-who no longer hadfreezer burn lungs!All the sudden I could get out again for long hikes and my onlyphysical barrier was being out of shape (…that part hasn’t improved so much; somedayI’ll get on that, I keep saying).
My stem cell journey, Part II
In December, 2021, I was in a motorcycle accident while on a business trip in the US, leaving me with head trauma and multiple fractures in both my left tibia/fibula and arm/wrist, with only soft tissues holding the bones together. I was taken to a large, prestigious hospital (that will not be shamed here, because I’m above that) in Dallas, only to be told I would be seen in the parking lot! It was a serious enough situation that over the coming days I tiptoed quite close to the line of becoming a motorcycle fatality statistic. Weeks later Baylor Scott & White emailed me to ask if I wanted to schedule to come in for followup treatment. Bless their hearts because for all they should have known, they’d be emailing a dead man. But let’s not dwell on the US healthcare systems and prestigious hospital systems, shall we?
Once again, my wife was called to urgently rescue my sorry self! As the ER grudgingly sloppily wrapped up some of my broken bones and left me to deal with other the unattended ones and dispatched me home — Lyn got her ‘go bag’ and headed to the airport for an overnight flight back to the US.
I was dispatched from the hospital with much haste on their behalf with a pair of crutches. Nevermind a broken left leg in barely an ace bandage. Or a broken left arm entirely unsplinted. Or the TBI which had knocked me out cold for minutes, or the injection of Morphine the hospital had given me without even asking if I was in pain or had allergies.
Two fraught steps later came the inevitable full-frontal faceplant getting in the house. Which of course re-separated various broken bones in my leg, beat up all my soft tissues once again, and since this time I WASN’T wearing a helmet, produced a second TBI in about as many hours.
As a long time wound care nurse, Lyn didn’t like the look of the tissue which was losing circulation and immediately called our physicians in Mexico to consult and an emergency plan was made to return for surgery and stem cells. She expected me to lose parts of my leg with an amputation if gangrene set in. She set about gathering appropriate necessary equipment for the trip including a wheelchair.
My wife wheeled me in a wheelchair with leg elevated, semi-splinted fractured arm, crutches and other medical equipment through the airport without any physical issues after having recovered from Long Haul also. During the trip, I also went into shock on the airplane and a kind stewardess helped my wife stabilize me.
We landed in Guadalajara after midnight, and were met and taken to a fantastic hospital, where I had surgery that evening.
We were told without that immediate intervention, I would have lost the leg as it had been improperly set by the harried doctor at Baylor.
The surgery involved 13 people in total with three different surgeons working on different parts of me at the same time. As I was being rolled into the ‘theatre’ I was asked if I wanted pictures of the procedure. Well, HECK YES I did!
After I’d been stitched up and rolled back to my room, I received a dose of 200 million stem cells.
I now have multiple screws and plates holding things in place, recovered without any further problems, and was able to quickly resume walking and never required physical therapy.
Stem cells have saved us both in many ways.
First, they saved my wife’s life and saved me from having to let her go. They fully restored my brain and body from Long Covid. And they allowed my body to heal after a devastating accident where in all likelihood, I would have lost a significant portion of my body, which would have changed my life drastically. I no longer even think about a good or bad arm or leg, as there is no deficit in either.
We made it our mission to help others.
When stem cells saved my wife and she began to get better, she told me that we needed to help others, allowing them to find this same hope for recovery.
We decided to help as many people as possible and we put off our retirement to do just that. We have even invested our retirement into helping others.
After recovering, we have still experience health incidents that one does in life. Most frequently, additional bouts Covid that have arisen as we’ve both traveled and hosted people to help them through their illnesses. What we know, is that we’ve got access to a powerful life substance that is not medicine but works better than any medicine. So we can go forward doing what we do, without fear and without holding ourselves back.
Our clients become family.
Our stem cell journey doesn’t end here. Over the past few years, we have not only helped hundreds of clients but also provided education for others to find their own journey. We have helped locals who cannot afford this treatment to receive it at cost or even for free. We have also helped many members of our own families recover from Covid, Long Haul and other medical problems. We continue to support the community we built with weekly calls and post-treatment support months after clients have returned home.