Like many people of my generation, I feel like I grew up in a doctor's office. I love my parents and I know they meant well, but it seemed like every week I was excused from school for another appointment. Asthma, a deviated septum, hyper-flexibility along with deformed femurs leaving my knees wobbly and wont to dislocate at the slightest provocation, bad eyesight (a prescription of nearly -5 before I was in high school), and eczema. My airborne allergies were so severe and wide-ranging they would incapacitate me with sinus headaches and breathing problems, and I was also born with severe food allergies to peanuts, walnuts, and pecans, making every unaccounted-for brownie a possible vehicle for a poison that could send me into anaphylactic shock and, if untreated, possible death.

If the above description does not do me justice, suffice it to say, I was a classic geek.

And like the responsible, middle-class, eighties parents they were, Mom and Dad dutifully brought me to specialists who poked, prodded, injected, and medicated me. I've taken some form of allergy medicine every day since I was in third grade. Both my knees have been operated on, leaving the right weak (it makes some sort of weird rice-krispy noise every time I straighten it), and the left painful and uncomfortable (I have to stop about every ten steps and crack this kneecap back into place, and there's always a shooting, sciatica-like pain up and down my left leg).

Because I didn't have enough complications in my life, when I was in high school, the psychiatric diagnoses began.

I have been diagnosed with the following:

*Chronic Depression

*Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

*Tourette's Syndrome

(I'm pretty sure if I hadn't been such a bright kid, I would have been diagnosed with ADD as well, but at least I dodged being dosed with speed for the majority of my childhood. A lot of kids my age weren't so lucky.)

There's a lot of intrigue about Tourette's, most of it based in how rare it is and how sensational it appears from the outside. I'll write a post solely on my Tourette's Syndrome soon, but honestly, out of all these diagnoses, it's the one that's interfered with my life the least.

I've been on every antidepressant that was in vogue from 1998-2005. Prozac, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Lexapro, etc. Some made me gain weight, some made me lose weight, and Zoloft took away my big-ten school alcohol tolerance, making me, for a time, a very cheap date. None of them did much for my symptoms.

The year after I graduated college, I stayed in the town waiting for my then-boyfriend to graduate, working at a women's shelter, and writing. I was coming out of one of the darkest periods of inexplicable depression in my life - one where I couldn't get out of bed to go to my last few summer classes or my volunteer jobs, and couldn't fall asleep without drinking myself there. I wasn't even twenty-three yet. I knew I couldn't live my life like this.

I decided to use this "extra" year in my college town to find a way to "get well". At the time, my depression was the most crushing of my medical problems. I had had zero luck with traditional psychologists and counselors, so I sought out a holistic therapist I had met at a sustainable design summer program a few years earlier. Her name was Syndee, and I believe she helped save my life.

At each of our meetings, Syndee would make me tea sweetened with stevia. We would talk about my depression, my family, and my fears. We connected my depression to my OCD, and also found correlations to my breathing problems. "You have all of this weight on you," she would say. "Of course you can't breathe."

Syndee did not shy away from bringing in myth and spirituality to our talks, but also spoke of serotonin and biological imbalances. Instead of medication, she suggested dietary changes. Her treatments also involved meditation and an acupressure-based tapping technique she called EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique).

I was a cynical kid by nature, and I admit I went along with all of it at first wearing a half-sneer behind my earnestness.

But as the weeks went on, I realized my depression and fear were subsiding. I couldn't explain it, but after a few months with Syndee, I was freer from these demons than I could ever remember being. They had haunted me since I was a child, and now I was finally beginning to see the world from outside of their shadow.

I even overcame some longtime crushing phobias. Before Syndee, I couldn't get on a plane without crying and worrying constantly for weeks beforehand, sometimes months. It was so bad I used to avoid flying altogether. I took a train from Chicago to San Francisco and a boat across the Atlantic ocean just to avoid getting on an airplane. After my work with Syndee, I'm able to fly many times a year with only minimal discomfort.

Syndee was my introduction to Complimentary Health Care, which I'm going to abbreviate here as CHC, since it's something I'll be typing a lot, and the last thing I need added to my list of health concerns is carpel tunnel. I have since decided to seek out CHC for many of my other chronic ailments.

In the hustle and bustle of Boston, I let my health slip by the wayside as I pursued other goals. My knees were falling apart, my overcompensating hip hurt so bad that I couldn't sleep, and my allergies left me with a persistent rattling cough and asthma-like symptoms. After two years of this my body began screaming at me to find a way to heal it, and I wandered into Massage Therapy Works. I explained my idea, a blog detailing my journey through the world of Complimentary Health Care. The synchronicity must have been strong in our little corner of Somerville that day, because they were right on board.

Which brings me to this point, looking forward to beginning this healing journey with you.