Marie,
I loved my new garden and in the late winter and early spring of last year I thought that I would get an early start and plant seeds inside. My little grow room was very productive and I sprouted four varieties of tomatoes, some peppers and an assortment of herbs and flowers. My plan was to compliment the menu of our deli restaurant with some very local products. My husband prepared the soil for planting while I was being up close and personal with all the trays of seedlings. While busy with this I began to exhibit a mild rash on the mid section of my body.
At the same time I was helping a dying man who was at home and then hospitalized and I attributed my symptoms to poor environmental conditions in this man’s home or to some type of stress as I visited the hospital daily. For a month or so I kept waiting for the condition to clear up since I have always been in good health and proud of my complexion. Soon I was suffering from hives, which covered much of my body and all summer long I took to wearing clothing to cover up so I could continue to work. As soon as the inflammation would almost clear up it would come back again with a vengeance. The itchy hives would often turn into bruises sometimes they were so bad that my face was fat and my eyes were reduced to slits. Of course I sought the relief of medical attention and I was put on Prednisone, which came with a weight gain of fifteen pounds and very uncomfortable and unhealthy side effects. After four rounds of this treatment the drug quit working but I was a bigger mess than ever.
Throughout my ordeal my husband continued relating my rash to my garden and then to my exposure to tomatoes, which I continued to deny because the symptoms did not occur immediately after exposure. I was sent to a specialist in a clinic in Burlington and was told that I was not allergic to anything because I did not break out in the doctor’s office. At the clinic they did not want to test me for tomato allergy but did so when my daughter went to the store and brought them a tomato with stem attached. They had no clue and I was sent home with no hope. On my three-hour ride home I broke out again as usual. I was to learn from my husbands research that tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and eggplants were in the nightshade family and as I avoided these foods my condition was somewhat under control but I could not even be downwind of the plants in my garden and it was a very difficult way to run a restaurant. I was desperate.
In a search of the Internet with the keywords “tomato allergy” my husband found the Higher Healing website and the one tomato testimonial. We never knew too much at all about Health Kinesiology but we were too desperate to be skeptical. Marie instructed me to keep a two-week food chart and I visited her [Marie] for a session, which included muscle testing while in contact with sources of my allergies. Afterwards my husband jokingly said that he thought that as far as he could tell from what Marie told him that I was “rebooted.” The following day I woke to the disappointment of a mild rash but over the next four days the rash was less and less and within two weeks it was gone and I was experimenting with ketchup and tomato sauce. Eventually I was happily back to eating and handling all the foods and plants that I have enjoyed all my life.
When I read about other people’s cases of allergy I consider myself very fortunate that I only had to suffer for a year and I thank Marie for her sensitivity and expertise. If anything like that affects me again I will be back to see her in a flash.
Sincerely,
Sue Ellen Boyle
Lion’s Head, Ontario