To all who may read this, I have been plagued with allergies for as long as I can remember. I had been through the allergy shots for at least ten years when I was young and into my adult years. As I got older I acquired more allergies. An allergy is your body’s way of telling you it’s on overload. I have been through runny eyes and nose, my face itching all over. I know some of you out there know what I am talking about. My body would rash in various spots and I would use the creams and take the medicine to make it stop, but it was only a short reprieve. Then in my thirties, my hands started breaking out in rashes and splitting open. I would put cream on them and keep going. In my forties, I drove a semi and got out of the kitchen. My hands got a little better. In my fifties, my hands got worse and my fingernails peeled off my fingers. They would bubble with water blisters under them and lift the nail right off the nail bed. I went to a dermatologist and they gave me shots in my cuticles, talk about Chinese torture. I went once a week for three weeks. It didn’t work well enough so I went through it twice. My fingernails came back.
This is a picture of my hands then.
As you can see, they still have some rash and are a little swollen. That lasted for a few years and then it started all over again. So I just lived with it.
My hands have been a mess of rashes, cracked skin and swollen fingers to the point I could barely use them some days. I had to wear white gloves to protect them while I was working and rubber gloves when I was working in water. They were so bad that at night I would put salve on them and then wear white gloves to sleep in. I was also fighting rashes on my arms and legs. I was allergic to so many foods that most of the time I was eating only plain meat and vegetables. My hands were swollen and broke out all the time. My allergies to grasses, trees, and flowers aggravated my asthma which I could keep under control while I lived in New York. When I moved to Florida in 2008 my whole body went into a revolt and those close to me thought I was dying. I was in and out of the emergency room because I couldn’t breathe and I was coughing so hard my windpipe would close up. I was scared I was going to die. I started seeing Rusty, she was my last hope of ever having a better life down here. I can’t tell you how happy I was when I was getting relief after I went thru the acuSET. I was walking up and down the road and exercising to build my strength up. I was doing so much better.
Then the trees started to pollinate, I had a minor setback, my asthma kicked up in major form. Now I want you to know that I did not get discouraged when this happened. I called Rusty and she took me right in and we upped the sessions. You see, when you first go through this and you are as weak as I was, the bad stuff attacks your weakest point, which in me was my lungs. Rusty assures me that next year when the trees pollinate that I will be much stronger and they will not bother me. I have faith because between Rusty and my regular doctor I am feeling like a powerhouse.
I couldn’t walk a few feet without breathing hard and now I am running across the Winn Dixie parking lot racing my granddaughter. Talking about my granddaughter that I am raising, I took her to Rusty because she was plagued with many of my allergies and I did not want her to suffer. She was on an inhaler and three different allergy pills. When she finished the sessions, she is NOT taking any medicine at all and is doing great. She and I are doing so well, I can’ t tell you how happy we are.
This is a picture of my thumb a few months ago when the swelling was down and the nail had started to grow again. I wish I had the presence of mind to take a picture when they were really bad so you could see how much of an improvement this really is.
This is what my fingers looked like after going to Rusty and the swelling went out of them; the fingernails started to grow again. What you see are the beginning of nails growing and the nail beds. There is only a quarter-inch of the nail at this point. Both hands looked like this.
This is a picture of my hands now that the nails have grown back almost all of the way. You have no idea how happy I am to have nails on the end of my fingers and they don’t hurt. I can also eat most fruits, which I couldn’t do before. If I did eat any, my finger would break out and itch so bad I would put them in hot water then cold until the medicine would kick in. I would be rubbing my fingers together.