Hey, You're Gonna Be OK
Hey, hey, I'm Elizabeth Mae, and my functional health practice helps people heal when they’ve exhausted traditional options. I was once stuck, with no one who could figure my health challenges out, but now my team helps you resolve symptoms and restores your health by identifying the root cause. I love talking to people and helping health seekers bridge the gap between fear of an alternative healing model and your end goal of returning to the health you once had! Join me as we explore first-hand stories of healing chronic illness from a root cause approach. Through compassion, empathy, and a whole-system approach, this podcast will empower you to unlock your body's capacity for healing.
Hey, You're Gonna Be OK
Seizure-Free After 10 Years: Mayci’s Healing Journey
When seizures began at age four, Mayci’s family spent a decade searching for answers—endless appointments, elimination diets, and a medication trial that only brought more questions. Nothing stopped the daily seizures.
In this episode, her mom shares how functional testing and our immunetherapy process uncovered underlying infections and gradually calmed Mayci’s nervous system. After completing a nine-month protocol for Lyme and co-infections, Mayci is seizure-free for the first time in ten years.
This is a story of persistence, faith, and the power of root-cause medicine—one that will encourage any family facing chronic, unexplained illness.
Instagram: @heyheyelizabethmae
Website: www.heyheymae.com
Hey, you're gonna be okay. I'm Elizabeth Mae, and my functional health practice helps people heal when they've exhausted traditional options. When no one else can figure your health challenges out, my team helps you resolve symptoms and restores your health. You're listening to my podcast where we will hear stories of healing chronic illness from a root cause approach. This week we are gonna talk through a story of a kiddo who's dealt with seizures, and I kind of just want to open with a quick little read from an Instagram post her mom wrote because her telling the story is way better than me telling you the story. So we'll start there and get into Mayci's story today. For 10 years, we fought an uphill battle, so many appointments, questions, mostly unanswered, sickness after sickness, doctors, providers, so many diet changes and late night, early morning meal preps, lots of money spent on testing that isn't covered by insurance, sacrifices the whole family had to make to accommodate what one person in the family needed, schooling, research, and all the prayers and worship and praise, even in the unknown. That is kind of at the end of her story. But I want us to definitely go back and start to at the beginning of her story and really set the stage for what brought you guys into care for Mayci and what role do you, mom, have? Because Caressa, you I feel like are we see a lot of moms who are also practitioners and on this journey of like trying to figure things out have learned a lot. And so I kind of just would love for you to introduce us to yourself and then also just kind of to where Mayci was when you started, and um, and we'll go from there.
Speaker 01:Okay, yeah. Um, my name is Caressa, and I am a mom and a wife. We have four girls, and when we came to see you, Elizabeth, we started. This was probably or eight years into it at that point, nine years um of trying so many different things. Um, but we were kind of at that point where I felt like every practitioner that we had seen up until then had kind of reached their max of what they could offer as far as they didn't know how seizures were related to how she was feeling or if this was kind of the end, and she was just gonna have to deal with this the rest of her life. And for us, we weren't taking that really as an answer because she wasn't born that way. She lived three years of her life without them. Uh, so I felt like that had to be something. Something was going on for it to start, so something had to happen for it to stop, and that's kind of what brought us to you as far as where we kind of ended up. I had seen uh like a little promo video during one of my classes that I was in, and it was you talking about gut health and kids. I was like, this lady understands me. This is what we walked through, this is the diets and figuring out how gut health related to so many of her things that she was dealing with. And at that point, I was like, Oh, I'd never heard of heard about you, and I was like, oh my gosh, this is this is it. And that was probably a year before we came to see you. Um and that whole time I kept thinking, well, maybe, and then I kind of learned about more of the uh immunotherapy that we ended up working with, and I was like, I just feel like this has to be something, and I just kind of felt these different pieces kind of lining up, but I wasn't sure exactly what that was gonna look like. And for so many years I felt like it was me trying to figure out the responsibility, it was mine. I'm the mom, I'm feeding her. What can I do? What can I not do? What's the next step? You know, all the pressure of that. And I was like, okay, maybe I just have to kind of surrender that and allow somebody to come in and work with us who also believed what we believed. And that's kind of where the big difference came from.
Speaker 00:I didn't know that you'd seen that video, and I think I know what you're talking about. Um, and I do think it's really important to note that like you and I have same some same training. Like you done in NTP school, you were, I think, in one or two levels of RWS at the time that we met. I know you've maybe done more since then. You had really wisely cared for her. You'd pulled bioresonance, you'd looked at blood work, HTMA, you'd looked at MTHFR gene stuff, we'd look you'd pulled genetic testing. Um, and I know that you worked with Abby on our team, and we truly do work together as a team and see all of that. But I remember reading Abby's notes early on and her just saying, Mom is really intuitive. Mom really has really good insights, and she really has a lot of observations. They're just really helpful. Um, and I think that's how it goes when you have a kid who has illness. Whether you're able to connect the dots because you've learned and had training or not, there is a knowing that parents who live with and see their children day in and day out have that like I can't bring to the table. And it's definitely a collaborative process. And I understand too as a mom of kiddos who've had things in myself how hard it is to turn that over to somebody else, and also how frustrating it is to go to lots of practitioners, and not that any of them are doing anything wrong, but sometimes it takes finding the right collaborative at the right time for things to kind of move forward. So, you know, you guys had done a lot of things before we connected, so I'll kind of let you go over some of those. I know she was 100% gluten-free, you've done a lot of diet stuff. What other things had you guys kind of explored, traditional or otherwise, before we connected?
Speaker 01:So when she was first diagnosed at four, they wanted to do anti-psych meds right away, um, since that's how they treat seizures. And with her being four, I couldn't justify the possible reactions or side effects at the time. So we said we're not doing that, let's try anything else. And I feel like 10 years ago, that wasn't super common, like it is more so now. Um, so we had a lot of pushback. But right after that, we tried a program called Brain Balance, where they try to focus on each side of the brain and strengthen the weaker side. And there was, and they also focus on diet, but it's more gluten and dairy and sugar, which you know will all play a part in that. So we did that in the beginning, did exercises to try to strengthen the other side of our brain. And there were a little bit of changes, but nothing drastic. And again, we were trying diet changes. And when you're first starting, you're like, okay, let's do three weeks of cutting this out, and then we'll eat normal, or you know, two bites normal, one bite gluten-free. Um, and you're really not making a difference, but you just gotta start slow, right? You're starting somewhere. And when you have four young kids and a husband who's like, What are we doing? Um you kind of just do what you can. Yeah. After that, we had moved from Oklahoma to Texas at that point. So we basically moved and had to start all over again. Saw a new neurologist, same kind of situation. They want to do medication. Mayci is six at this point, and I still felt like, no, I don't think we're supposed to do that. Um, they really pushed it, and we kind of held our ground, like we're gonna try to find somebody more in the holistic space, pediatric and neurology, which was really hard to try to find. And at that time, Macy was also having abdominal migraines and cyclical vomiting. So every week we were getting calls from the school to be picked up, and that's when kind of we were going back and forth to doctor's appointments. She just was not getting better. Everything I felt like was getting worse. Um, and so then we were like, okay, maybe we do try these seizure meds. We tried it within 24 hours, you could see a difference in as far as her kind of just shutting down mentally, quiet, not really laughing, more reserved. And then there was food dye on top of that inside the medication, and we were trying to be against that. And the hospital's only solution was for me to contact the pharmaceutical pharmaceutical company to try to uh see what they could do about that. And I thought we're one in a billion, right? They're not gonna change their formula based on us. Um, so then we kind of fought against getting her weaned off within 48 hours. It turned into a CPS threat for neglect, even though we're doing so many other things for her, but it wasn't what they thought was best, even though we're seeing our kid watching the changes. So at that point, we found a pediatric neurologist in Dallas, took her there. She did all kinds of testing. She was the first person who told us that Mayci had a whey allergy, and we had been giving her dairy that she had some stuff going on with her thyroid, but it was probably other infection, just thinking it was her thyroid. Like, we've had so much testing. Why hasn't anyone told us this in two years? So they wanted to completely start over basically and do major gut repair. So that was our focus for that clinic and huge elimination diet, rebuilding her gut flora, all of the things. They did neurofeedback. Uh, it was a lot of intense eye therapies because we had noticed certain movements triggered seizures with her eyes, or certain colors, or certain brightness in the sun and stuff. And so that was really their focus. And it we went there for a year or two, and it got to the point where we just couldn't afford it any longer, and it we were just not seeing a ton of change after we did like re-food introduction, and we had seen a ton of uh change with the seizures being from about 100 a day to like 25 a day by the end of all of that, which is great, and she started engaging more. We thought she was super shy, which she is more shy than some of our other kids, but she started initiating conversation, and like out in public, she was just kind of more free and talkative, and I we didn't even realize that that was a symptom of what was going on. So to see that change really kind of validated, okay, food is making a huge difference, it's kind of keeping her little soul a prisoner in her body that we didn't realize it was even impacting. So we did all of those changes, kind of changed everything in the house as far as here's a shelf in the pantry that's completely safe that you can eat off of. That way, you know what you can have, you know what your sisters can have. We're not gonna be worried that you're eating something that you shouldn't. These are safe for school, um, that kind of stuff. Where like the changes that we had to make in the treatments that we saw, we would do some chiropractic care. We saw uh a chiropractor who did kinesiology and muscle testing, and all of those little things kind of added up, but there wasn't anything that made an overall difference where it was super drastic.
Speaker 00:Hmm. So lots of different things you all tried, lots of different paths, conventional paths, traditional paths, and you were really good observing and really during the intake process, the information you had for us, and even in the clarity call, looking back on the notes then, all the little observations that brought a conclusion really helped us to piece together what was going on and where the probable route was. Because she had been, I kind of want to rewind, this all started at a certain point. You said that she wasn't born like this, it became a thing, and it was around age four. And what did, you know, what did it look like when it began? What type of seizures, and and what do you feel like was her turning point? Because I talk a lot about an immune trigger, something that changed the body from before to after. What was going on around four when things shifted?
Speaker 01:Yeah, so Mayci was sick a lot when she was like literally from the time she was born until she started eating better. Um just constant sore throats, strep, ear infections, all the things, right? And now looking back, okay, she had an allergy issue with dairy. That's obvious, but back then we didn't know that. Um, so she had vaccines when she was four, and her sister had her younger sibling also had vaccines at the same appointment. And within weeks of those vaccines, youngest sister had a febrile seizure, and then we noticed Mayci having the kind of staring off. We kind of thought something was going on with her ears, and maybe it was hearing related. And the first two years she didn't really speak, it was more just kind of noises, and so it kind of tracked with the history. But we had had hearing tests after hearing tests, and every time she passed, so I was like, I don't think that she's not hearing us. I think something's going on because it just her shoulders kind of would slump and she would just kind of look kind of fuzzy, and her eyes, and then she would do a little motion with her lips, kind of like her lips were puckering. Um I was like, I don't think she's just ignoring us. And then we were on a family trip because I kept telling, you know, my husband was like, I think something's going on, I think something's going on. He was like, I don't know, you know, maybe she's just being a kid. And so when we were on this family trip, we're all walking in this parking lot, and Mayci starts walking towards where traffic is, and we're yelling her name, and she's not responding, but she's continuing to walk. And my husband looked at me and said, This is what you're talking about, and we said, Yeah, this is what I'm talking about. Something's something's going on. Um, because she could hear you any other time completely fine. So then we took her in and they diagnosed her with absolute seizures.
Speaker 00:And her awareness around things as you guys moved in and through that over time. I mean, she has she would kind of give feedback sometimes. Like, was she aware of what was going on at that point?
Speaker 01:She did not know at all. And that was one of the things the very first neurologist told us when we were sitting in the office. He said, She's gonna keep walking when she's having them, she'll keep running when she's having them. If she's riding a bike, she will keep riding her bike while she's having it. Your body will still move in the same motion that it was going in. And he said, I don't think his intention was to scare us, but it definitely did. Um, he said, you know, if she's riding a bike, she'll just get hit by a car because they're not paying attention and she won't hear it. And I thought, what? Like that, we can't just jump over that like it's nothing. Something has to be going on. Um so, anyways, so that kind of she doesn't, she never knew she would come to, and I think she knew that she missed part of the conversation just by where we were in the conversation, and so she would kind of say, I'm sorry, just as kind of a habit, more of anything else. She's the older she got, the more she would say that she kind of knew that it was happening, but I still you would talk to her while she's having it, and then you would ask her what you said, and she wouldn't know. But if you're hugging her, she would hug you a little tighter. So it's like her body could knew what was going on, but she still couldn't hear, so it was that hearing part part.
Speaker 00:I think it's really important to hear and understand that because sometimes I'll do clarity calls with family and they'll describe absent teachers to me, but they're not familiar yet that that's what they are, and I think it's important for us to hear and understand because they can be in some ways ordinary or in the climate of like ADHD kids and all the stuff we hear about inattention, like it's easy to shrug something like that off as like it just doesn't pay very good attention sometimes, or it kind of zones out, but truly, like, there is something going on. Um, and sometimes you know, that awareness is really helpful and we can push a kid out towards a neurologist um in tandem care to kind of address what's going on. But one of the things that stuck out to me for her was just her early history. She'd had her adenoids and tonsils removed. You mentioned the frequent strep. I mean, she'd had long stretches of antibiotics, and one of those times she'd noticed um, or I guess it was after the tonsils and adenoids came out, you all noticed a change in speech again, um, that there was an uptick in ability there, and that her strep was decreasing. So we got no tonsils and adenoids now. So the goal there was achieved. But even going back further into her history, there was an early hospitalization that you've mentioned that stuck out to me. Um, at nine months, she had a really high fever, which babies can have a high fever, um, and there were suspected meningitis at that point, and it was in there with all the like sick constantly stuff. So those things and other observations too that you'd shared that stuck out to me. Um, and like you know what to look for, and so that helped a lot because you had info that you were like, these things I know are pertinent, but um her school skills. Tell me about kind of where she was when we got together. You were seeing like like she's she's able to participate in normal life, right? Like she does schooling, but you were noticing differences or changes there.
Speaker 01:Yeah, so she the new neurologist that we decided to work with said everything that I was doing was fine with her as long as Mayci wasn't falling behind in school. So that was our goal, right? To make sure school was gonna be as normal as it could be with her for her. Um early on, I worried, you know, like playground. Is she gonna walk off the playground and nobody's gonna pay, you know, know what's going on? Um and a lot of times teachers don't really know what they're looking for, unless I'm standing there and saying, this is what a seizure is gonna look like, or you know, it they could miss it, they could have their back turned, they could be looking right at her and not really know what they're looking for. And that's no fault of their own. It's just kind of the nature of these type of seizures. Um, but if you're having a hundred seizures a day, you're gonna miss a lot of classroom time and a lot of instruction. And if she doesn't know that she's missing it, she can't say, Can you repeat your last statement? I don't know what you just said. And so we started to see a decline in math and science, especially. She's always loved reading, and I feel like that's kind of easy if she knows where she left off, she can catch up, right? For math and science, if you're missing a core tool, you're not gonna know that you missed it. Um, so those grades really started to go down sixth and seventh grade, and I wasn't sure if that was you know, is it just because you're in higher expectation classes, or is that kind of just where you are? And so we put some 504s in place to have a little bit more tools and then um having her go in extra just to make sure that she's staying on top of these things. But once she started the immunotherapy, it's like night and day difference. She went from being a C C student to now she has A's in these classes that I was like, okay, it's working. She's yeah. And it when we started seeing the decline in the seizures, I was like, it's just all working. It made a huge difference.
Speaker 00:Quick break. If you've been curious about homeopathy, this is your sign to try it. At Hey Hey Homeopathics, we've created liquid remedies for everything from sleep and skin to digestion and beyond. Safe, gentle, and designed for real life. And if you're a practitioner, our preferred professional line opens the door to powerful tools like no sods, myosins, detoxers, and more. Anyone can shop, but professionals can apply for exclusive access. Visit Heyhey Homeopathics.com and start your path to natural healing today. Yeah. The math and science regression is something that we see a lot. We'll see a child regressed or we'll see a child struggling. Of course, Mayci's to it's a little different because she's literally not present for parts of the day, like tens of times over. So if you just think about checking out 30 times today, like completely, like you're gonna miss out. But also, it's interesting that it it does usually land a kid who's struggling with like pans-pandas type, which she has a seizure piece, but also the infections piece and how it affects the brain and interacts with the neurological system really does fit in that pans-pandas category. And math and science are two things that we will see either like a full regression in skills of small fine motor skills will change too. Um, kids who had great handwriting can not write or have terrible handwriting, like there's a whole host of those sort of things. So those things for me, too, were kind of additional notes where I'm thinking, absolutely, because we do a lot of clarity calls with kids who have teachers, and sometimes I don't hear things where I can help, or where I know that I have confidence that I can help. Yeah, and I'll say that absolutely, but with her, there were so many immune threads throughout that really seemed like, okay, this this is this is what makes sense for us to do next. And she had a lot of known seizure triggers, and they were kind of all over the place, but they also for me had little immune portions, right? Like heat, stress, weather change, um, female hormone cycling in her close proximity, not even her family members, right? Full moon, watermelon, that's a high histamine food. There were definitely some pieces in the immune system that generates histamine to deal with an infection. So there's a connection there. So there were lots of little pieces that led us to say, like, okay, let's look at an infections panel and see what we can see, and then go from there. And so we got that back, and it was definitely on the weaker side. Her immune levels were her IgG immunoglobulins were on the low side, so we're gonna get a less reactive test. Um, but she did have weak positives for borrelia, the bacteria that creates Lyme disease, and then Rickettsia. When you guys got those results back, and Abby reviewed them with you. How did that set or feel? Because you've been through this long journey of like trying to figure it out. You feel like you're aligned now, you know. We've said, hey, let's do this expensive test, and then it comes back kind of it's there, but it was pretty chill.
unknown:Right.
Speaker 00:Pretty chill results.
Speaker 01:So we had done the bioresonance, and I think Borelia had come up on that. And so that for me was like, okay, is it Lyme? Because it's in my in my mind, it wasn't like your typical Lyme things. And so then when we got the Rickettsia confirmation, I thought I felt like that was kind of like out of left field. But I wouldn't have tested for that if we wouldn't have done the testing that you guys did, and then to see it, but also thinking back not just Mayci's uh like genetics, like I'm thinking more mine and my husband's, and that would make more sense just based off of mine and his. And so for her to carry that, and then all of these other little things kind of triggering it along the way when she was little, it made me think, okay, at some point the scale was tipped, and this is kind of where it got stuck. So I wasn't super shocked, but also it was like, okay.
Speaker 00:Yeah. The co-infections piece, and I'll say this a lot because people are like, can we just avoid the test? Like, uh, we can't really avoid the test if you want to solve the problem forever because the co-infections portion, a lot of them look similar, a lot of them function similar. So I can look and say, hey, I am 99% confident Lyra's here. I I haven't met anybody yet who can uh guesstimate what co-infections are gonna be there. And their katsu was interesting too because that's in that Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Anaplasma is in the same family. Anaplasma tends to be more head and like a lot of headache, head pressure, but the high fever part from her early days, and then you know, the rest of the symptoms are kind of just general same lyme crossover. Um, but those pieces were interesting, and so that's what we decided to go into addressing were those two parts, and then kind of see how she did and see how it goes. And so, how was maybe those first two months? Because that's more of the intensive phase, like what how did her body respond? What did you guys see and observe during that time?
Speaker 01:Yeah, she didn't want to do any pills. She has, you know, we've done heavy supplement loads, and she was kind of at that point where we've been doing this long enough, and she's old enough, she can kind of voice her opinion. And I said, These are just vials. You're just gonna have to put it in some water and drink it, and it's not gonna taste awful like some of the things that you've taken before. Um for her, I felt like it was an easy option, like this is gonna be easy compared to a lot of the other things that we've done. Um, right away, she started having some headaches, which you know, with the abdominal migraines, I was like, okay, like you can handle this. Um, there was one time that she had some vomiting, and it we had not done the herxs before or after until that point, and then I was like, okay, we need to add this in. She threw up the one time, we added that in. Completely changed the game for her. It helped with the headaches. She might have had a little bit of loose stools, but nothing to where I don't feel like she thought that was a major symptom. Um, it wasn't hindering any part of her day. She could still go to school and come home, and you know, it was fine. Um, that was really the most symptom that she had: the headache and the one time of vomiting. And I'm looking for other things. I'm looking for mood changes, I'm looking for any kind of rash, I'm looking for is your throat hurting or your ears hurting?
Speaker 02:Yeah.
Speaker 01:Everything, right? She's like, mom, I'm fine. Like, okay. If you're saying it, I'm believing it. But if something feels off, then I need you to let me know. And she was great.
Speaker 00:How did the seizure activity shift and when did you see a shift in that, if at all?
Speaker 01:I felt like in the beginning it kind of ramped up, and I was expecting that because if she's having any kind of symptom, she's gonna have more seizures. Um the moon was still affecting it, the full moon cycle was still affecting it, the menstrual cycles were still affecting it, so all of that, probably the first two kits, I would say we were kind of still seeing it, and then when we got towards the 10M is really when we saw the biggest difference of seizures kind of dropping off. And because we've been seeing them for so long, for 10 years, um, when you don't see any, you think you're missing them. So then I would ask somebody else in the family, hey, have you seen Mayci have any seizures today? Well, I haven't seen any. Have you seen any? No. So then we're asking the youngest sister who is basically like Velcro with Mayci, of are you seeing any? She's like, No, I haven't seen any. And so then we were kind of tracking days, like, okay, it's been two days. But then you kind of get scared to say, I haven't seen any, because then you're expecting a big, you know, uptick in seizures or something. So then it kind of started just slowly just diminishing day by day, week by week. We got to the end of the 10M kit, and we hadn't seen any probably in a couple weeks. And then once the 10M kit finished, it was a couple days of no seizures, and then they started to increase again. And that was the point where I was like, it has to be this helping her because I've never seen them diminish like this. So then we talked to Abby and I said, This is what's happening. What do you recommend? She said, Let's do the 10M again, and we did another round of it, and same thing, kind of around the second and fourth, had a little bit of increase, and then it was decreased after that, and then we finished the kit, and she had um a couple right after, and that was around Easter this year, and then we have not seen one since then, so it was just crazy watching the drop off.
Speaker 00:So at the end of that process, the full process ended around Easter. Um the check-in before that, where we kind of adjusted plan, you were seeing changes in the seizures, and once the protocol ended, seizures were no longer present. Right. When we finished the complete protocol, she did not have any seizures.
Speaker 01:We had um met with our neurologist in January. Well, it was back in the fall, actually, and she was supposed to open a new practice in January, and so we were waiting for her email for all of that to go through. It ended up being pushed out till June, and then I called because we had not seen seizures since March. And I was like, okay, let's get on the calendar, schedule an EEG, let's see if they're in fact um gone. And then she had the EEG August 18th, and the neural just said her scan was beautiful, there's no seizures, we have no reason to see you back. Like there's not even a chance that they're going to come back. It was so good.
Speaker 00:So yeah. And that EEG process is not um without trigger, right? Like it's definitely like they're attempting to create, to reenact, to really push the body to its limits to see if that is present.
Speaker 01:Yeah, it's a 40-minute intense trigger uh with strobe lights and then uh hyperventilation for three minutes, trying to put the body and the brain under as much stress as possible. And during that whole time, I'm watching Mayci to see if I notice something, like any kind of change in her body movement. Are her eyelids flickering, or is her hands doing something that they don't wouldn't normally do? You know, I'm just watching just to see if I see anything. Is her breathing changing? And they even had her count to 40 at one point during the strobe lights, and she counted all the way through, and normally that would have been a big trigger, and she would have lost count and then started mumbling. Um, so by the end of the appointment, I could tell her little brain was tired, but I had asked her, Did you feel like you had any? And she said, No, I felt normal, which is huge because it was very, very tiring for her.
Speaker 00:Yeah. I'd imagine too, after having seizures so consistently for so many years, like for her to be able to say, like, I felt normal, like I don't. I mean, I I know that she knows when they're happening to some degree and um has a lot more awareness around that now that she's older, but to be able to get to know what it's like to be normal and and not have to be living with that just kind of is mind-boggling. I also think too being a parent to a child who's ill in any way, shape, or form, who's ill for years. Um, but neurological challenges are a different ballgame because there's a there's like a lack of control there in a very big way. Sickness, total lack of control. But there are tools sometimes, right? And you guys had like exhausted all of the tools and weren't really getting anywhere, and to have to continue to watch this over and over and over again, um, and just to have to live through like sorting through the learning around it and those sort of things, and trying to navigate um seizures and all of the pieces. What would you say now looking back on y'all's experiences? Like, what advice would you offer to parents whose kids are still struggling with seizures?
Speaker 01:That there is hope. And you can find somebody who will advocate with you because it feels hard and it feels lonely, especially when your kid is dealing with something that a lot of people can't physically see. Um you know, like I wasn't planning on crying, sorry. Um because it would be something where like we're all together as a family and we're all laughing, and then somehow it would trigger and she would kind of miss that moment, even though she's there physically. Um but it would it was like it was stealing that moment from her, and like we could see that. Um so that's kind of hard when it's not like a physical thing until you know what you're looking for. Um I think the support of the friends just listening, especially when I'm completely nerding out and talking about all of the random things or the concerns of is she going to be able to get a normal functioning job, or is this going to keep her from that? What if she never can drive? And during the last neurologist appointment, she kept saying when she's driving, and we weren't sure we were ever gonna see that. Um, which was hard because our second oldest just got her driver's license, like right around that same time, so it was celebration and fear, both. Um I just you really have to advocate whether you feel like you're the only person on that little island doing it, and you know your kid the best, you're with them all the time. Um, God gave you that kid for a reason, and I definitely think that it has taught us to look at each of our kids separately, like we're a whole family, but they're all different. They each have different experiences, they each have different little quirks and different DNA that builds them up and things that they've experienced that have kind of hindered it or broken it down or triggered it. But you have to look at each thing separately and um that there is hope out there. And we weren't sure that we were ever going to get there, but just keep going one day at a time.
Speaker 00:One day at a time is super important, I think, for so many things in life. But this where it's like it's it's one thing too, I think, to be sick or have a health issue yourself because you can feel and experience that. But to repeatedly watch something that's outside your body and his mom, something that was formerly inside our body that we're very attached to and have an innate knowing and like connection with, um, is difficult. And I think too, just about how easy it would have been for you to be discouraged on that path because you'd worked with practitioners who were skilled, who were smart, who were looking for the root cause, trying to figure it out, trying to to bring something new into the equation, and it just hadn't gotten there yet, right? Like there were improvements along the way, diet changed things. Um, there were different influences you could remove in see shifting. So, how did it feel for you being like practitioner mom and weathering all of that? And I think too, just watching the family dynamic. Like I say all the time that sometimes we give moms back to families.
Speaker 01:Yeah.
Speaker 00:And we give kids back to siblings. Because when you miss out on things like that, you don't I there's there's more than just the loss in that person. Like there's the loss in the familial unit, there's the loss in the siblings. It's a stress for the family. Like, there's a lot there. So, how did it feel for you to like see a root cause approach succeed after years of searching and you know, like being on the a good path, but not seeing conclusion really um to that root cause approach?
Speaker 01:It took during the whole 10 years, it took a lot of my time um as a mom because I'm the person that cooks. That I love that's what I love to do. Um, so it took a lot of my time, like a lot of late nights, a lot of oh, there's gonna be a birthday party this weekend. I've got to plan ahead and set aside time to make something so that she can feel included or you know, not miss out. Um but now that we were on the side, once we found out that they were for sure gone, my husband and I were joking, and I said, now what am I gonna do? Because it was so much of what I did just trying to research or prep, which some of those things are still gonna just be still there because that's just who I am. Um but it also I think it was good for my kids to see that all of this time and effort that we put into it did have a finish line, and it wasn't mom, you've been doing this for so long. I mean, one of my kids basically in her entire life, and now she gets to see a sibling that is free from all that, who she's never experienced that, and then some of the other girls, you know, just okay. Not that I ever only took care of just Mayci, because it's everybody, you know, all the time. Um, but maybe they can feel safe enough that this isn't going on that they can say, hey, this is also going on with me. Because I don't ever want it to be you can't bring your voice to the table because I'm over here dealing with this. I still want you to be able to voice whatever you're experiencing, is just as important as whatever we're dealing with. We can deal with all of it, not just one thing at a time. But it gives me a lot of like brain space to kind of just be more available and look at things a little bit differently.
Speaker 00:I'm kind of selfishly super excited to see what happens when you have brain space, practical space. Your girls are getting older, you have all this life experience, but you also have clinical training that like allows you to see things in a particular way, and there's really nothing that can replace an experience. Like the things that we've developed, the things that I've done or seen or the ways that I can serve our practitioner team or clients really are because of the physical junk that my body has been through and the way that you're able to kind of see those things differently when you have embodied it or lived with someone who has. So that part makes me excited.
unknown:Yeah.
Speaker 00:I'm gonna ask my usual question of you know, like, would you invest in this process again? Would it be something that you can look back and say, you know what? That was worth it. 1000%.
Speaker 01:I want to take the entire family through it and not because they're having, you know, one specific symptom like seizures, but there's other little things that I've seen. And if we can address it now, why not address it now? Why wait till you have something huge and you crash and address it then when I can address it now? So there's I would love to take everybody through it, even if you know I'm like, okay, well, if we can't afford the major testing, even though I wouldn't have known what exactly we're dealing with unless we did that, you can guess and spend money doing these other little things. If you just know, it makes it so much easier. And I don't and having girls and thinking of the possibility of them getting married and then having a kid, and then I don't want that to be a trigger for something that we could have dealt with now. Let's just deal with it now.
Speaker 00:Yeah.
Speaker 01:If we don't go on a family vacation this year, that's okay. Let's this is more important right now. You just have to kind of figure out where each where your priority is, I guess, as a family. And our Mayci's health was the biggest priority for the family for a while. And now we can kind of you know focus on some other things, but it definitely was a little bit of give and take, but it was 100% worth it.
Speaker 00:If you've been wanting to transform your health but don't know where to start, I've got you. My full color cookbook is much more than recipes. It's a 300-page crash course in healing through food. You'll get 125 plus gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free meals the whole family will love, plus step-by-step guides on shopping smarter, improving digestion, and making your kitchen a healing place. It's gorgeous, practical, and designed to make healthy living simple. Grab your copy at heyheymae.coms/cookbook and start changing your health one delicious bite at a time. I think the thing about Mayci too is when it comes to lyme and Merketsia, both of those are bug-borne, predominantly tick-borne. You guys lived in Oklahoma, you lived in Texas. Those aren't tick endemic areas, neither one of them. Of course, we all travel, we've been places, but her stuff started so early too, and she had the strep early as well. And strep is often an opportunistic infection. It's gonna come in and really wreak havoc when an immune system is dysregulated from other infections. So we don't necessarily know, like, okay, Mayci had a tick bite and she contracted Lyme at this point, or this is when things began, or there was an immune trigger vaccine that turned on the seizure seizure expression. And then even I think in the year before you guys started working with us, there had been a lot of stressors, and she had gone from having like about 50 to 80 a day, upwards of a hundred. And so there were things it was always shifting, right? But we still don't really know where did it come from. And we we do know that we can pass Lyme and Co. infections congenitally, we can pass them to our babies, we can pass them through sexual activity. So do we know where it came from? No. Is it possible that it's in other family members if you identify it in one? Yeah, it all depends on the person's immune system, and that's why that vaccine trigger is so notable because there was a point before when she wasn't having seizures. Her health was not great, but she was functional. And honestly, I would say I see a lot of kids who will do a sick day call and they're just here to get a little strep support. But when I start talking to them, there's a lot of strep. There's a lot of not going to school, there's a lot of being really ill. There's a lot more going on that we've just kind of accepted as like normal. Yeah. But a lot of times there's layers going on. It's not just the recurrent strep. And there can be a trigger for me. I had an acute bite, I became very ill. I think that it was there before then. Um, but that immune trigger piece and kind of like proactively caring for kind of the the idea that it's ingested is really valuable because hormone shifts are also an immune trigger. So puberty is one. And I'm eager to see how Mayci maintains throughout her teenage years as well. And then having babies, our immune system shifts like proactively to protect the baby, and then it shifts back when we've had baby. Um, and all of those places can be places where there's a turning point, if you will, and an immune trigger. So I do think that part uh or thinking about the family in that context of we don't really know where this came from for Mayci is important to kind of contextualize. But um, what do you think was the hardest part about the process itself? Of the immunotherapy. Yeah, and like being the extent of being in care with her. I know you've been through so many other processes too before.
Speaker 01:I think most other uh things that we've tried didn't have like a start and an end date. It was kind of a let's try this, not sure how it's gonna work, and then move into this next thing, and it was just kind of up in the air. I appreciated that this was this is where we're starting, this is when it potentially will end. There may or may not be a couple things added. Um, I think the hardest thing was we're trying something new. Again, just just go with me, guys. Um trying to get everybody on board with another thing that I was reading about and learning about, and let's just try this. Um I think that was hard, and then in the beginning, when you see the increase, everybody wants to see you know the results right away, right? Um, but having to keep in my mind her body is fighting, and that's a good sign. A reaction isn't always a bad thing, and just trying to keep that in my mind, okay, her body is trying to fight through this, it's trying to learn the proper way to react, and that was probably the hardest of is this is this gonna be worth it in the end, and even if we would have made it all the way through, and it would have just been the decrease in seizures and they wouldn't have gone away completely, it would have been worth it because it would have showed us that there is hope still that it is not just something that her body has and she's never gonna get better.
Speaker 00:It showed us yeah, the increase in quality of life, yeah. Yep. Is important. I think too, with Mayci, like when a kid has a health issue that's limiting for them and you're able to remove that, you have to think about the context of development. If a child is dealing with an ongoing challenge every single day, the brain's involved right in this, so there's a significant involvement of a main organ that really runs and coordinates everything. They're missing out on developmental things. In some ways, like she's you know, struggles to gain weight, struggles with appetite. There were lots of other layers. There's this big pressing issue of the ongoing seizures, but there were other things in and through there that existed for her too. And so a lot of times through the process, we do see an expression of symptoms. We want to see the body respond and go address those pathogens like it should have been doing all along. But that can mean that there's going to be symptom expression. And also that means that you get little glimmers along the way of better. Like I think about Epstein Barr. For me, I mean, I would if I did all five days of doing everything for my boys by the time Thursday came, I was going to bed at everybody's going to bed at eight. I'm going to bed at 8:30. And I'm like struggling through Friday and then usually sick on Saturday until I had it. I mean, that's how my life was. And so to be able to get a glimmer of like, oh, I feel so much better, or you want to have a glimmer of different frequency of seizures, I think is important and helps because truly the only way out is through. And there are a lot of things like that in life, but this is one of those where the only way out is through. Um, and you have to give the body time to work and to learn what it needs to do and to really be rebalanced that immune system or you'll be back where we started. So um I do think one of the hardest parts to chronic illness is being alone in it. I think this is even more profound because she's a kid. You're in a like as an adult, do I spend a ton of time with tons of other adults? I don't. But my boys are with like tons of kids, like they're all together next to each other. They're in a classroom, we compare them, we score them, we make sure they're on par. And there were one of a health issue that was major, and then there's just limiting factors from her development, but um it can feel really lonesome in that and like you're really different, and then you're learning all the things and trying to employ new stuff that's making little headway, but not, you know. I'm curious how your family or Mayci was loved well while working through chronic illness, which is a long trajectory to ask because it was a longer season for her of being sick, if you will. But how how did that look for you all or for her?
Speaker 01:In the beginning, it looked like people accepting uh the path that we were gonna choose, even if they didn't agree with that. Um being willing to kind of hear and learn about it and kind of some people didn't support it all the way, but at least being willing to allow us the freedom to do what we were gonna do. Um there were some people who helped financially when it was a huge burden for our family. Um that was a huge blessing. So if you are gifted in that area and you can help a family that way, that's huge. Um because finances can hold people back in a big way, and you know, um it could mean the end result is completely different. So um that was big during the beginning part of this journey. And then just accepting her just the way that she was, if not um making a big deal out of out of it, if they saw one, just kind of giving her some time and space. Um a lot of the kids that she was in class with, and I look back at this and think that this was just God's way of protecting her in school. Um, she would have friends that would know and they would see. I don't know why kids can see these things easier than some adults in those situations. Um, but they would even advocate for her, like, hey, Mayci needs a minute. Or they would stand and wait with her in the hallway if she was having a seizure and the rest of the class is moving on. And it's not because they were asked to do that, they just naturally kind of protected her. Um, and as a mom, that was huge because I couldn't be there at school with her. Um, but just to be able to hear it from Mayci or the kids themselves, just they felt like that was a challenge that they needed to stand up and accept. So just little things like that. Um really, I kind of I felt like sharing our story because it's not something that you can see really from the outside, and because it's been going on for so long. I don't feel like a lot of people just gave up. They're like, you guys are doing a great job. Just the encouragement of you're doing what you need to do, just keep doing what you're doing. They didn't say, Oh man, that last treatment it didn't work. When are you gonna give up? When are you gonna do something different? They just kept encouraging us the entire way, and that really has made a big difference. Make sure you have good people in your circle. Yeah.
Speaker 00:That's a hard uh lesson to accept in some ways because there's a lot of grief throughout the whole process. There's grief of loss of life with your kid, there's grief of watching what's going on, there's grief of loss of relationship of people who don't have capacity to understand or accept. Um, but to be able to remain centered in like what you all need and what is good for you and what remains true to your situation and the experiences that you're walking through is really important. And I think there's, I mean, there's there comes a lot of beauty in my experience out of that, of of making life smaller, friendship smaller sometimes to to really be like what the situation needs. And kind of always too, like asking, like, what's I know that you would think probably the same way of like what how can this decision that we have to make on this relationship or that choice or what how can we make that in mindfulness of like loving Mayci well or loving our family well, considering like what we're going through, um, as opposed to like, you know, I don't know, there's just a lot of naysay sometimes or a lot of not understanding sometimes. Um and that piece is really, really important. So I just appreciate you pointing out how other children it'll probably make me cry because I hear stories like that all the time where they take care of each other and they just know. And there's no um, there's not as much of a filter, you know, like they don't care. Like she just needs somebody to stay with her right now, like not really worried about what you think about it or what you what you're doing, or you know, there's just a very human, innate thing that recognizes when another human needs support. And I think that that's really, really cool. And I think too, mom's intuition, you said in the beginning, like you always knew, and and moms know their children. That's so true, and that's a big part of care. Sometimes we'll get to a crossroads where I'm like, these are the two choices we can make. I don't have a very clear path for you. I don't have a strong feeling. I know that they both could work. I don't know that they both will work. What do you want to do? And moms always are like, this one feels like the right path for me. And moms having the confidence in our climate of pediatrics and just like what we have or haven't been taught in caring for our children or having to advocate for them when we when we do have to do that is just really important that moms are able to. Trust that and know that like you watch them the most, you're with them, you see them, you know them, um and bringing that to the table. So I really appreciate you sharing. I appreciate Mayci being willing to share too um her story and all the layers of experience. But um, I'm so glad that she is seizure-free and excited to see how um she continues to grow and develop as she doesn't have to live with that anymore. So thank you for sharing. Yes, thank you for asking me to share this.
Speaker 01:Yeah. She for so many years she would say, Why me, why me? And not any of my other sisters. And just kept reminding her, you know, God has a story specifically for you, for somebody else to hear, so that you can bring hope to them. Otherwise, I don't know why. But it's good, good is gonna come of it, even through all the hard. Even if you felt like you were sleeping through all of it.
Speaker 00:Yeah. I mean, from this side of the street, we feel like it has brought more clinical understanding to us so that we can serve families and children better. And so I know that you feel the same way, but it is interesting how things like this happen or persist, and there's certainly lots of things we've learned from it, but I appreciate you guys sharing very much, and I think I'm gonna wrap it up really with just kind of your other Instagram post that I love so much. Um about a year ago, Mayci started a Lyme co-infection protocol after some testing confirmed Lyme. She finished the nine-month protocol around Easter weekend, and that week was the last time we, the entire family, has seen a seizure. Before that and during the protocol, they were daily. That's almost four months with no visible seizure activity for the first time in 10 years. And it's been longer since then, so I'll leave you with that note. Thanks for listening. I hope you're leaving encouraged, curious, and hopeful. If you learned something, I'd love for you to share this episode with a friend. Hey, we're all healing together. You can learn more about my practice, our team, and what it's like to work with us at heyhey mae.com. I teach lots on Instagram and answer questions each Monday. My Instagram handle is at heyhey elizabeth mae. You can watch these episodes and more on our YouTube channel at heyhey mae. Learn about and enjoy our homeopathic line at heyheyhomeopathics.com. Happy healing.