My wife is lamer than me

My wife is arguably more lame than I am. If you’re reading this there’s a decent chance you’ve heard about Tess feeling crappy and us trying to figure out what to do about it. For the last year or so she has ached a lot, slept crappy, and so on. It keeps getting worse too. It’s escalated to the point where she tries to have at least 2 days worth of leftovers before doing simple things like mowing the lawn or vacuuming, since even small amounts of physical exertion are so exhausting and painful that they knock her out for days at a time. She often says she feels like a giant bruise. Which is silly since she is only 26. So! This post has two purposes, #1 giving you all an update where we’re at so we don’t have to explain it all the time. And #2 helping me process everything we’ve learned so far by putting it into words. I’m kinda dense and every time the doctor mentions neuro transmitters my default reaction is to review what I remember from the last superhero movie I saw. Adulting is lam-.. Er, boring?

Anyway! To summarize, we’re still very much gathering data and doing tests, and anything we think we know may get thrown out the window with the next discovery. The simple concept seems to be that when you produce energy your cells create waste. Tessa’s body doesn’t clean up the waste very well, so now she’s full of crap (not to be confused with literal feces). All this waste is stressing out her body and brain, so her body is inflamed and she aches all the time, doesn’t sleep well, and she is in a high stress state all the time. It may even be the root cause of SPD (but don’t hold your breath*). Tess has started some supplements they think might help, but thus far a week of those seems to have had no effect. And that’s where we’re at! Feel free to stop reading here, you have the full update.
*unless you’re about to go underwater while reading this, in which case it’s encouraged.

So Tess as you know is very interesting. She received her bachelors in biomedical engineering, so she of course is all in for medical science being able to help people. However her threshold for when to actually take anything or see anyone about health problems for herself is pretty extreme. So just note the fact she's even willing to see anyone for it means it's a big big deal. She does a good job of hiding it and not being grumpy with me or around others though. Also we of course have been praying about feeling better and finding help for years, and continue to pray about it regularly now too.

The most recent catalyst for our discoveries was a documentary called “Root Cause” which was free on Netflix for a really short period of time. It’s about how doing a root canal is really leaving something dead in your mouth, and you wouldn’t leave a dead finger attached to your hand or it would cause trouble, why do we leave dead teeth in our mouths? They have all sorts of interesting studies about how root canals usually cause all sorts of trouble, but dentists don’t have equipment to see the mistake they made; Usually “cavitations”. Cavitations are gaps under the tooth that fill with infection and don’t hurt directly but rather distribute the infection and mess up other places. The documentary said something that really caught Tess’ ear though when they said that sometimes it causes Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) symptoms, and that even a badly done wisdom tooth removal can leave cavitations. She thought about it and the start of her SPD (which has become worse over time) coincides with her wisdom teeth removal years ago. 

So, she found a specialty dentist (Total Care Dental in American Fork) who knows about caviations, she went in and they checked her out and found 4 really bad ones, so they moved her to the top of the surgery list and got her in to fix it. We did that and Tess actually got worse. (In hindsight, part of the surgery involved using a gas that would kill off any infection they couldn't reach. This of course produced a lot of waste, which Tess can't get rid of, so it made it worse!) They kept saying “oh it takes three months to feel better” but finally two months in when Tess described the way she felt crappy they said it sounded like some people in the office who have some specific genetic stuff, and they encouraged her to take a DNA test. So Tess took one through Ancestry (using the Mother’s Day discount, nailed it) and discussed it with Doctor Preble, who we think is technically a “Neuromuscular dentist” but any time you mention his name to any of the staff at the office they always say “he is so smart!” Anyway Doctor Preble apparently knows a bunch about genetic stuff too, he told us some stuff about Tess’ genetics but mostly wanted to order out some other tests. There was some shenanigans and delays getting the blood work and saliva tests, but finally we got both back and learned some more. He is definitely a smart guy, but he has a hard time dumbing it down to my level; which is a large part of why I want to write all this down, so I remember better. I even asked him last time “so if you were to explain this to a 12 year old what would you say? And he said “So DNA is the building blocks of who you are, and in them are these nucleopeptides, and they… well Tess has this circle, and due to some of her genetic snips there’s a… a stop in the circle…” this is where I interrupted and in my own words explained more the paragraph this article started with, and he confirmed that’s a decent enough simplification. When a sentence in to his “simple” explanation still used the word “nucleopeptide” I started grinning, and realized simplification isn’t his forte. Note he’s still a fantastic doctor and I highly recommend him though.

In parallel with all this, since Tess has ached and been inflamed she started getting massages two years ago, and the last 6 months or so she was seeing a chiropractor who kept putting her spinal bones back into place when they’d slide out. Recently that guy’s expected fix timeline ran out and Tess switched to chiropractor Gutherie, who also seems to know a good amount about the stuff we’re finding. Some of the recommendations come from him too.

Here’s a piece of one of the tests Tess took, any of the things outlined in red or yellow are bad (well, that is oversimplifying it, but neither of us REALLY know what any of this means either. Even after Tess read science-y articles for 6 hours). But she has at least 6 different genetic mutations within this circle.

She also took some mineral hair analysis thingie and it basically said she was massively deficient in like 13 of 16 categories. So basically her body is missing lots of stuff, probably because the cycle above or others are broken and her body exhausted everything she had left trying to fix it. She’s trying to take a bunch of things that will help jumpstart the broken cycle and to supplement the missing stuff directly where possible. 

And that’s where we’re at! Anything we try doesn’t really have rapid results so don’t feel bad if you ask Tess how she’s feeling and she still says “crappy”. We still snuggle and play board games and video games together and have company over and such though (yes all at the same time. Maybe.) so it hasn’t destroyed our fun. Mostly it makes Tess sad she can’t do all the things she wants to do in the yard, but our neighbors and parents are angels and help with that too. Thanks neighbors and parents! Also, if anyone knows any genetic nutritionist people who could help interpret some of this stuff, please pass on their information. We are mostly guessing at what things are best because we haven't found someone who knows how to combine all the different test results.