Late last year I was referred to an internal medicine doctor in Boulder by my former pastor in Denver. My initial meeting with Dr. Luce was amazing - he took over an hour just getting to know me. He of course wanted to know my health concerns and my priorities, but just as important to him was how I was doing emotionally, soulfully, how Michael was dealing with everything. He even took time to just read what was behind my eyes. He has so much medical expertise, but never once lost sight that I was a person. He told me he knew that if I was going to commit to getting better with him, he had to establish trust with me. He did.

Through the course of our meeting, he explained that Western medicine is amazing if you have a disease, because they have cures. But if you don’t have a disease per se, they don’t really know what to do with you except to help you manage your symptoms/pain. The obvious problem with this is that you might never discover the root cause(s) to your symptoms. Dr. Luce’s passion is tirelessly “playing detective” using medical, scientific testing to dig deeper into what is going on inside of every system of your body, and find the breakdowns and dysfunction. In turn, Dr. Luce turns to supplements and vitamins to help the body rebuild itself.

After just one test with Dr. Luce we discovered three things. First, I have a severe protein disorder. Evidently I have enough stores of protein in my body, but the system that breaks down and reuses my protein is completely shut down and cannot access the stores I have. Instead it has been turning to my ligaments, muscles, etc. and breaking them down for “food.” Not good. Secondly, we found that my intestinal lining is severely inflamed. This is bad for a few reasons. Inflamation decreases the area in the intestine that can absorb nutrients. Also, the bacteria that usually reside within the intestine are able to pass across the gut wall and into the bloodstream, from where they can cause infection anywhere in the body, causing havoc for the immune system. Thirdly, we discovered a large anomaly in my hormore levels. We are currently pursuing more testing to better understand what’s going on there.

And that’s just one test! So far, we’ve completed three more and are awaiting those results. It’s slow going because none of these tests (or the supplements) are covered by our insurance, so it is a lengthy and expensive process. We’re doing what we can when we can. The process has been encouraging, becuase we feel like we are finally making some kind of progress and getting some kind of answers, but it has been emotional as well. The supplement regimen leaves me constantly naseuas (miserably so), and has brought a steady weight gain of a pound or two a week (which Dr. Luce warned me about but is nonetheless extremely emotional).

While we are discovering great new information, my day to day pain levels have not changed. My migraines have recently been worse than they have been in over 4 years. But my spirit and faith are stronger than they have been in a long time, so regardless, I am grateful to the LORD for being my always good, ever faithful Emmanuel. Please do keep remembering me before Him, saints. Thank you!