I am a 43-year survivor of Crohn’s disease. Crohn’s is an inflammatory bowel disease that can cause inflammation and ulceration of your small or large intestine and eventually malabsorption of the food you eat. It can cause chronic diarrhea, intestinal pain, urgency (when you feel there isn’t enough time to make it to the toilet), rectal bleeding, blood loss anemia, and incontinence of stool and fistula disease. Those that suffer usually suffer silently. It’s an embarrassing disease that is not talked about. My goal is to change all that and to let the world know there is hope!

In October of 1994, doctors removed my extremely scarred large intestine and rectum. I felt as though I had been defeated and that I would never be able to help anyone else. At that point in time, I had been drug free for one year and three months. However, the day before my surgery, I had my last Colonoscopy (a test where a tube with a small camera attached is inserted into the rectum and views you from the inside out). That test showed that I had totally healed 100% of my large intestine, which had previously been 100% ulcerated. Unfortunately, years of scar tissue had developed in my descending colon and rectum, making it impossible to save. I gratefully live with an ileostomy now, thankful to be alive and able to help others. I have occasionally had flare-ups but can kick one out in 24 hours or less.

I spent thirteen years in various degrees of illness. Most days I felt like you do when you have the flu. Always fatigued, usually foggy headed, but driven to live my life! During the horrible days I was incontinent 6-7 times per night, barely slept, ate less food than my toddler and made 15-50 trips to the toilet. On good days I could attend church even though I was too weak to hold a hymnal, make a quick trip to a grocery store, or run the vacuum. All this before cell phones, texting, or the internet to entertain you. In addition to my health problems my husband travelled all week, each week, and I had no friends where we lived. I was lonely!

When I think back on my life, I would never want to relive any of those years—but I wouldn’t change them either! That experience transformed me into a woman who determined to spend the rest of her life helping others to not get as sick as she once was. To that end I have been faithful.

One day I received a little yellow booklet in the mail called Two Months to Live. That booklet changed my life! It was a story about a doctor using this is a weird thing called God's Natural Laws of Health and Healing. A man with cancer who was sent home to die began juicing, along with some other natural remedies, and he became well! After I called the doctor in the story, we made arrangements for me to attend the same clinic.

I spent seven weeks in Florida juicing for 9 hours a day. That experience completely changed the direction of my life! I received lemon water, activated charcoal, acupuncture treatments, two hour-long lectures per day, sunlight therapy, and multiple glasses of freshly prepared vegetable juice or herbal tea. I returned home with a new vitality I had never experienced before. There was a rosey color in my face and I was experiencing energy for the first time.

I began praying for ways to share my new understanding of health and healing with the community when I took a tour of our local public access television station in Fort Wayne, IN. It was a lightbulb moment for me! I immediately began producing 30-minute-long cooking and health programs for the local community. Within a year I had an invitation from a worldwide religious network to begin producing hour-long cooking programs for them. The seven years I produced holiday cooking programs helped me write three cookbooks, two of which are published. You can find them under the name Taste of Health~Gourmet Vegetarian Recipes, volumes one and two. Gluten free wasn't a thing back in the day but that is the way I eat now. If you purchase the cookbooks, please keep that in mind.

In the early years I was in nursing school. Forced to drop out due to illness 10 months before graduation. Because I was not in a step-down program, I was unable to even sit for LPN boards. The years passed and I had knowledge without a degree. I went back to school to get my medical assisting and associates in science and graduated at the top of my class in 2009. However, I kept getting in trouble from the doctors every time I would ask their patients how much water they were drinking. Instead, they wanted me to push their acid reflux medications. After a year I gave up working in the doctor's office and went back to school to get my certification as a holistic health practitioner with a specialty in live blood cell analysis. I opened Taste of Health Spa in 2014 downtown Columbia SC and haven't looked back. I love my job!