Recovery from Fibromyalgia & ME/CFS with help of ANS REWIRE – Meira’s Recovery Story

ME/CFS & Fibromyalgia Recovery Success Story Transcript:

Introduction

Hello there. My name is Meira, and I wanted to tell you about my experience with Dan and doing the ANS REWIRE program. It has been quite some time since I did that program, and almost, I would say, seven years now since I did the program, and I have been pain-free and fatigue-free for quite a while now. I live in Toronto, Canada, and I actually found Dan by just Googling all kinds of things, when I was unwell and really looking for something that was going to help me.

My Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) Symptoms

So I had fibromyalgia, chronic pain, chronic fatigue syndrome, and many, odd sensations that were going on inside of my body at the time. I was really ill for about, I would say two years before I found Dan and the ANS REWIRE program. I had, fatigue, I had all kinds of like burning sensations on my body, which were extremely alarming and, very scary.

And I had a lot of like paresthesias - they're called. So like tingling, like weird pins and needle, like, prickling sensations on my body. I had eye floaters. I had, what else did I have? I had a lot of anxiety as well at the same time, obviously, because I was so, alarmed with all of these sensations that I just didn't understand at all.

And, one of the things I had was, markedly was post-exertional malaise. So I really couldn't do, I was capable of doing a lot of physical activity, but if I did, then I would end up on the couch for, you know, several days. I'm just trying to like regain feeling good again. Okay. And the other thing, and I would say this is my main symptom more than anything else was that I just had the aches all over.

Like I had the flu. So like my bones just ached all the time and it would be like a throbbing kind of sensation. And I had that feeling pretty much every day for Maybe, you know, three years, two, two and a half years until I really started to get well. So that, that was really, really difficult. And, you know, there's the brain fog and the memory issues, would come up as well, because when you're constantly in pain, those kinds of things suffer as well.

Life with Fibromyalgia and ME/CFS

I would say that, you know, I didn't really let the illness, you know, impact my life, you know, my, my life on the outside from those looking in, they really wouldn't have known there was something wrong, with me or something major like this going on. I, at the time I had two small children who were like, I think three and five years old at the time, or maybe five and seven, I can't quite remember, but they were little kids.

And so I really had to be on like, I had to be able to get up in the morning, make breakfast, do all those kinds of things, get them to school. And, I was also, you know, working at the time. So, thankfully, I was self-employed. So I had a little bit of, leeway with that, but I do remember feeling, that.

Bedtime was my favorite time of the day because it's when I could finally just get rid of the pain. So thankfully for me, as soon as I fell asleep, I had no pain in the night when I was sleeping. So it didn't keep me up or anything like that. So to me, that was like my time of, reprieve. But I would say, of course it, like, you know, it did affect my family life.

 I probably wasn't as present for my children as I could have been or my husband. And, You know, I think I kind of hid the extent of just how bad it was, because, from my husband as well, because I think, for me, If he knew that or other people knew how bad it was, then I was admitting to myself that I was in a serious, that I had a serious problem and I, you know, when they say things to you like these chronic pain conditions are incurable, you know, letting myself, you know, admit that that's what was going on was also admitting I was going to be like this forever.

So, for me, I really tried to just be a martyr and kind of carry on. Okay. Okay. So in terms of what I tried in order to get better, you know, I did all of the standard medical things. So, when my pain started, it came on with a vengeance in like, within like one week period. And actually it happened shortly after about six weeks after my mother had died.

So I was in grief and I had been going through a lot of stress in my life, managing her care cause she'd been sick for quite a long time. So, I went to the doctor, they did blood work, they didn't find any inflammation or, or anything to suggest that I had, I thought maybe I had some kind of arthritis at the time.

I was referred to a rheumatologist who did a full workup on me as well. And there, there was, you know, suggestion of, being, you know, having fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. The rheumatologist asked me to come back in three months, and as soon as I heard those words and I attached, you know, the meaning of incurable to them, I basically ran and decided that I had to figure this out because I was not willing to, live like this forever, and I knew that there had to be something that could be done.

Seeking Treatments for Fibromyalgia Recovery & ME/CFS Recovery

But in the meantime, it took me quite a while to kind of find the ANS REWIRE program. So, in the meantime, outside of the medical system, the traditional medical system, I did, I saw a naturopath, I, saw a Chinese medicine doctor. I did acupuncture. I went to a chiropractor regularly. I, what else did I do?

I saw an energy healer. I was so desperate. I actually went to a psychic at some point because I was just, I tried everything and I, I was, you know, hoping to get some insight in some other way. And then the one thing I did that was really important for just coping with being in chronic pain was, I saw a psychotherapist probably every week for a year.

It was really expensive, but it was really important to have that kind of support, as sort of ongoing. So I am the kind of person who's - I'm very much a researcher kind of person. When anything, you know, when I'm interested in anything or anything's going wrong in my life, I am the type of person that gets online and I try to like Google everything and figure, figure it out.

Right. I always feel like I'm able to come up with the answers and. As you know, many people that have gone through this kind of, chronic pain ordeal, when you do go online and you Google a lot of your symptoms, it's very scary because you often find things like that, you know, are far worse than what you're going through that you could have.

And it just would get my mind spinning, and I probably, you know, made myself a lot worse in those, in that first year by trying to figure out what was wrong with me.

Discovering the ANS REWIRE Program

However. I will say that eventually, I stumbled upon nuggets of, you know, information that really helped. And I think the first thing, I, when I came across Dan online, I believe it was in the context, I think I was Googling, my Google search terms were like recovery from fibromyalgia.

Because part of me started to really glom on to that, that idea that, like, if I could like, just learn about people who had recovered, then somehow I could reverse engineer my own recovery. So I think that's how I found out Dan was through his recovery stories, and, I basically found them on his website and I watched every single one, like hours and hours of recovery stories.

And I felt so help, like, hopeful and encouraged with that. And, so of course, you know, being on his website and watching all these videos, I started to kind of look around and, you know, learn about his program. And, at that time, it was like 2000 and I think it was 2016, like, I'd never purchased an online program or really even purchased one.

At that point, it was really early days for online programs and I, you know, and the cop, like, I remember thinking the cost was reasonable and so I just decided I need to do this. So I dove in, I think that was March 2016 and, I started and wow, it was life changing. So, you know, right away I was able to understand what was going on in my body so much better. And I think that's what I was searching for all those, those couple of years was really like, why is this happening to me and the program really like, you know, outlaid all that kind of information in a way that was just like, So succinct. And I treated that course like it was my job.

Like, I have actually, I have a binder here with all of my notes. Like, I had a binder. It was like, I was going to school and every day, I'd, you know, did my class, watched the videos. I took full notes and, it was, you know, amazing. And honestly, I found just taking part in that and learning all the things that are in the program.

I felt better. Like 80 percent better very quickly. I started to have like less pain and, I was more hopeful. And, I guess what I had, like, you know, that I didn't have before was, was very strong sense of hope. And I think that is something that you must have to recover. So I did the program and then, I, so.

Cool. I would say, I don't remember how long it took me to finish all the modules in the program and I, and I was, you know, I religiously did like the brain retraining types of exercises and I really found. So that was March when I started it. Before then, you know, if you'd asked me if I could like go traveling or something like that, I would have said no, because the pain was just so much that it was just, very, what's the word I'm looking for?

 I couldn't focus on anything, right? Just making it through the day was like a feat. So, after I finished the program, which I think maybe it was probably around June, if I'm guessing, or maybe like May, my husband. Asked if, you know, we could, he wants to go to Paris for in August and I was, you know, I remember being hesitant, like, am I going to be okay to do that?

And I said, yes, you know, and we went with another couple and in August, we went on that trip and I felt really good. And I, you know, I didn't have any fatigue and, you know, I was, less anxiety and everything was just looking up. So, yeah, so I would say I was about like. 80 to 85%. And in the context of, like, say, a regular week or whatever, that to me was like, I would have maybe one day.

Every week or every other week where I had some symptoms still. They were much less like far dampened, but they were still kind of like I could feel them kind of in the background every now and then. But then I would just recommit to the exercises and, and things like that. And I would feel much better.

Maintaining ME/CFS & Fibromyalgia Recovery and Overcoming Setbacks

So, in the years that followed me doing the ANS REWIRE program, I did have like little moments where, you know, I would have kind of a little bit of a flare up, but you know, nothing that wasn't manageable and, and because of what I learned in the program, I was able to clearly track why I was having symptoms based on what was going on with my emotional life at the moment and how much stress I was under and those kinds of things.

So finding that connection between, you know, you know, my environment around my body, and, and, and the symptoms that were coming out. I, I had that ability to make those connections, which I think is really key, because then they're not coming out of nowhere. They're actually, there's a reason for them, and there's then something that I could actually focus on addressing, right?

Which was some kind of stressor in my life at the time. So I, I did get to a point after a few years where I was. Mostly like 95 percent better. Again, I, you know, every few months, maybe I'd have some little thing, but. I was mostly fine. So one of the things, a few of the things that I really loved about the ANS REWIRE program, since doing Dan's program, like over the years, I, you know, I sort of dove even deeper into understanding mind body science and understanding the brain and stress and trauma and those kinds of things.

And I actually became a holistic nutritionist, after. Yeah, a couple of years after doing the program and a lot of that was just being inspired by what I learned in the program and wanting to go deeper and learning more. So I ended up having, I had a, I had like a major flair, a few, maybe about - when was it?  2019 before the pandemic started and, I kind of, it forced me to really like, go back to basics again. And, I, I went deeper in reading about mind, body medicine and, learning about, as I just said, like trauma. But what I love about Dan's program is that it's very holistic. So you're not just being given exercises that you follow blindly.

You're being given a whole curriculum about like your health and optimizing all areas in order to recover from CFS, ME, POTS, all of these, you know, fibromyalgia conditions. So, that's a real value because I, I have. You know, investigated other programs from time to time, and none of them really have that sort of holistic view.

So, I can't recommend the program enough. It's fabulous.

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