Lois Smithers’ Story
I wonder if someone had told me along the way that at age 49, my decades-long horse passion would tumble into six years of misery, I’d have stopped with the first injury. Highly unlikely for when you love something that’s become a soul passion, wild horses can’t drag you away (pardon the pun). That passion began at age 5 – many, many years.
Just so no one thinks I must have been a haphazard rider, competing, training young horses, breeding foals, gaining the trust of abused horses involves some risk. It isn’t a hop-on-the-back leisurely stroll through the woods although that part is the icing on the cake.
Over the course of 25 years, I fractured C-5 and T-12 vertebras, my wrist twice, right shoulder, 3 ribs, pelvic bone twice and have two severed (not frayed) shoulder tendons and torn rotator cuff (all inoperable). In essence, one tendon is left to support my right arm causing my arm to be uselessly frozen for several years. Diagnoses of fibromyalgia, and arthritis came later.
It’s amazing how the human body heals. While all that sounds “ouchy” (and it was) all fractures healed very well until about age 45 when they seemed to be resurfacing. For the next four years, pain from head to toe began slowly mounting and growing until it was a constant companion.
My doctor was an amazing man. He insisted MRI’s be done every year to gauge the progression of degenerative spine disease hoping I’d see the light and give up riding, horses, my barn and equestrian stores. Finally, in 1999, the MRI was so alarming, listening came easily when he made one statement that shook my world - if you don’t stop everything now, you are two steps away from a wheelchair. That did it.
Everything was sold – ten acre horse farm and stores but kept one horse I bred for and hand-raised from a foal – my joy, a beautiful Andalusian. I had to keep at least one foot anchored in my passion. It was also the year of a freak stumble in the woods.
I rolled off without much to-do but my shoulder struck a tree trunk. In the ER they noted a fracture but missed two damaged tendons and a torn rotator cuff. The fracture healed fine but a year later when my arm “froze” an MRI showed what they missed only now the tendons had split, torn rotator cuff and it was too late to stitch them back.
So, you would have thought giving all that up would have made things a bit better. No more back-breaking, hip-busting, saddle-swinging days with countless inventory boxes that needed unpacking daily but it didn’t. It was the beginning of the worst six years of my life traipsing from neurosurgeons to orthopedists, acupuncture to therapy to spinal injections exhausting every imaginable possibility.
In 2005, Dr. Nicholas Perricone’s Anti-Inflammatory Salmon diet caught my eye and for two weeks, ate two servings of salmon every day and felt the first bit of relief in years. All that pent up passion that had no horsey outlet came rushing through and a quest began to understand the connection.
Imagine my surprise, the overwhelming sense of wonder after years of medications and injections something I ate had this kind of power. That was the beginning of a long journey to understand the science behind EPA and DHA. Many products were tried and then one day quite by accident one fell into my lap and the pain was mercifully, incredibly – gone very quickly.
I asked my doctor that first month, “How can the pain be gone when the injuries are still here? What about those injuries? Where did they go? Tendons are still severed but my arm swings freely, can read my own writing again, still have degenerative spine disease – what’s going on here?”
“Inflammation” he said. It was never the injuries for they had healed nicely 15 years earlier. They masked a much deeper problem and quite naturally, every health care professional assumed “the injuries” were returning with age. Hindsight is a wonderful thing when you want answers for in looking back, I could mark the year it began, 1995.
I was opening the second store, barn full of horses, churning from morning to night creating a hectic lifestyle that changed my eating habits. Fast foods, take-outs, restaurants 2 and 3 nights a week, grabbing food always on the run, became the norm. Little did I know that drastic change would create a physical impact in a very short time.
In 1999 when those days ended, my eating patterns reverted to what I’d always known - real, fresh, whole foods but the change had little impact on the six years that followed. While it was a step in the right direction, inflammation had taken over and as I was to learn years later, it would take more to quiet it down.
We assume with age pain will come from something. Bones getting older, joints stiffening, well-used muscles aching but quite often, it signals something much deeper. Don’t assume a dull, over-all ache is injury or age related. Inflammation is often referred to as the “silent killer” for a very good reason. By the time the first ache makes an appearance, it’s been mounting and building for quite some time.
So many amazing things happened that next year and continue to this day. What a blessing for mankind that God (or whatever deity you believe in) put fish in the sea, Dr. Dyerberg had a keen fascination with the health of Greenlandic Eskimos, Dr. Perricone wrote a book, and that product landed in my lap.
I wouldn’t be writing this had those events not occurred.
