My Story

              How Young Living Saved My Life

Several years ago now I went through an incredibly stressful time period in my life and during that time I really let myself down. I was already a YL distributor and using products on a regular basis, NingXia Red every day, Valor and Cypress on my feet in the morning before I put my socks on. Joy blended with Abundance (I call it Joyful Abundance) to really kick the day off right and whatever others the day called for along with using Thieves Household Cleaner for all cleaning jobs.

When the bottom fell out of our financial well being I went into total stress mode. I pared my Essential Rewards order down to just enough to keep it going because I had yet to have chosen to work it as a business. I stopped using my products. I stopped taking my morning walks, stopped preparing fresh food in favor of something from a fast food restaurant, I stopped sleeping well and I picked up every job I could whether it was household cleaning, pet sitting, help with moving, personal transportation or whatever it might be. It was my partner’s income that disappeared by the good grace of being a contractor for New York State so his stress compounded my stress as we moved into the holidays with our 6 yr old child.

The day after Christmas the pay they had owed him since October showed up and knowing there was relief, my body started to collapse. Within 3 days I was in University Hospital ICU in Syracuse with 3 different medical teams scrambling to try to figure out what was wrong with me. The diagnosis was sepsis, a staph infection of my blood. My liver shut down, my kidneys shut down and they contemplated removing my gall bladder but decided there was no use in that. At least that was what I was told when I came out of the morphine haze. I was in ICU for 4 days, on dialysis for 4 hrs each of those 4 days and out of it, mercifully, most of that time. When I got out of ICU my condition was still so sketchy they put me on the Oncology floor since they are equipped to handle the most ill patients.

During that time as I was still struggling to come back to life I flicked away a crusty piece in the end of my nose and somehow that set off a hemorrhage in my right sinus cavity. I bled into my stomach and my lungs and all over the outside and they scrambled for an ENT dr. to address it. There came a spot where I literally heard the Lost in Space robot saying, “Warning, Warning” I felt it was a 2 minute warning. The warning was that within 2 minutes I would have so much blood in my lungs and not in my arteries that it would permanently weigh the balance and not in my favor. I knew this doctor was going to be the last face I saw, or the one who saved my life, no in between.

Obviously he became the doctor who saved my life but I had already done so much struggling that this really set me back. At least in ICU I was oblivious to what was going on but at this point I was consciously facing the implications of my imminent demise. After that however I was in and out of awareness. One day a team of “angels” gathered at my bedside. My sister Lois, my friends Kate, Irene and Mary Starr came and tended to me. They rubbed Lavender Lotion on my feet and spoon fed me and prayed over me, anointed me with oils, they were acutely aware that I was still not out of the woods with my yellowed skin and eyes and I wasn’t coherent. The turning point for me was that Mary Starr had brought a bottle for me with diluted NingXia Red in it. With the sinus hemorrhage I had been breathing through my mouth so my tongue was cracked and sore so she diluted it again before putting a straw in my mouth so I could sip it. It was as if I drank in a thought and the thought was. . . “I could survive this!” It was totally imprinted on me and at that point, I started turning the corner.

By the time my “angels” left, my skin and eyes were beginning to clear and I was speaking coherently and understanding all that was happening. From there I steadily improved; when I could self administer my oils. In the middle of the night a doctor came in and asked, “Do you know what you’re doing with all of these?” I replied, “Yes, sir I do!” with that he left the room. Nurses would be quick to answer my call because they’d come in and sniff their favorite scent, saying I had the best smelling room in the hospital!

It was 19 days door to door at University Hospital before I was finally released, not a day too soon for me. I had to use a walker to get around at home and struggled with each step. I had been out of work and didn’t know how I was going to get more NingXia Red and the other products I needed to support my full recovery. Mary Starr Carter and Roxanne Seeber both held Zytoscan benefits for me and gave me the cash which I used to place my next Young Living order. Kathy Kouwe sent me a care package with Thieves products and Sulfurzyme, anything she felt would help me snap back.

Since starting with Young Living I have been embraced into the “familiness” of it and have felt so supported and loved. Not just the products but the people have truly saved my life and helped me recover my health. I met with a long lost friend yesterday who I knew in elementary school. I hadn’t seen her since graduation. The first thing she said was, “Oh, my God, you haven’t changed a bit, you look so young!” God Bless her eyes and generous compliment but I am so happy to have reclaimed my life and my health and to be living vibrantly with Young Living that it just shines through whatever I do. I don’t leave home without at least a bottle of Lavender or Frankincense in my pocket! EVER!