How can anyone who looks so good be so sick? (Thank you for asking!)  There was a time when all of us were much sicker than we are today. Fibromyalgia can't be cured, but it can be managed. We are doing it, and we believe that you can too.  That's why we are here to help you.

     GUAIGROUP is owned by The Fibromyalgia Treatment Center, Inc.
 

The members of the Administration Team who work hard to make sure that the online discussions stay focused and the information is accurate are Char Melson (our tech wizard) Gretchen Parker (the diet expert and artist), Jan Houp (nurse, support group leader), Anne Louise (habla espanol), and Cris Roll (Madame Librarian and Master Gardener).

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Char Melson
Admin Team Member

     My FMS story begins from my memory at age two. It began with IBS with constipation and diarrhea. At age four I developed Rheumatic Fever that resulted in Prolapsed Mitral Valve with PAT. During grammar school I experienced dizziness, aches and pains, bladder infections, mouth infections and low grade fevers and a relapse of Rheumatic Fever. In High School I experienced more canker sores, fatigue, dizziness, heavy periods, etc. I could not participate in Physical Education classes for the last three years of high school. At age 19 had surgery for fibroid cysts on both ovaries which left me with only a piece of one ovary and one tube. At age 19 I also had four impacted wisdom teeth removed. At age 21 the IBS got so bad I was told I had colitis and needed surgery. I had bouts of sore throats, the beginning of never ending sinus infections, and more colds and flu. When I was 26 I had an emergency C-section with 6 pints of blood that in turn gave me Hepatitis. At age 28 I had to have complete hysterectomy to control heavy bleeding. Things got worse. I was in the first of three auto accidents with whiplash in my late 20's. In my 30's and 40's I went downhill further with many infections, flu, mycoplasma...you name it. I was the caregiver for my terminally ill Mother and Uncle for many years and let myself go, including my teeth by not going to the dentist.

     By age 55 I was bedridden most of the time due to pain and stiffness and had to walk with a cane most of the time. I'd lost all hope.

     During all of the above my blood tests always came back normal. The doctors would tell me it was all in my head. They told me I had MS. They told me they did not know what I had. They tried me on every pain medication and I could not tolerate any of them. I had Cat Scans, MRI's, blood tests, neurological tests. They gave me antidepressants and I could not tolerate any of them. I lost many friends to this disease... people who could not nor would not understand why I could not participate in life.

     Thanks to a cousin who also has FMS and is a patient of Dr. St. Amand, I began the guaifenesin protocol in July of 1998. Am now in the process of regaining my life at the age of 59 (soon to be 60.) I'm now able to do housework, gardening, shopping, visiting with friends and even camping again. I even ride my bike.

     My tips: Listen to Dr. St. Amand; Stay salicylate-free; Be on your correct dose; Try to exercise when you can. My exercise consists of riding my bike,walking, gentle stretching and deep breathing. There are other tricks that help when the pain flares: Using a hand massager to work the painful parts of the body; Using a device called a Bonger that gently pounds on knots; Using a shower massager, heat and/or ice, resting, keeping positive, being around positive people, using visualization and exercising will power.

     I still cycle and have some difficult days but I also have many good days with unlimited energy. I know that this disease will be reversed from my body and I will be deposit free....thanks to the good work of Dr. St. Amand and Claudia Marek.

Char Melson
FMS since infancy; Guaifenesin Protocol since July, 1998
Copyright Char Melson 2004

Anne Louise
Admin Team Member

     Hello and welcome to our list. I am in my 60's and I've probably had clear symptoms of FMS since I was 30, if not earlier. I went from doctor to doctor for ten years for my unexplained joint pain that moved around my body, but mostly for the debilitating, crushing fatigue I felt, which was far worse than the pain. I was finally diagnosed in 1995 and began to do everything my rheumatologist prescribed, religiously, but I kept getting sicker.

     In 1996, I was lucky enough to be able to telecommute under the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was the only way I could continue to hold a full-time job. But after another year, I wasn't able to do even that. My credit rating was ruined because I was so exhausted I let bills pile up for months, and then tried to catch up with them all at once from deep within the brain fog, causing checks to bounce all over town. If I cleaned the cat's litter box, I was worn out for the day.

     By the end of 1997, I was ready to apply for social security disability. For the past three years, I had done nothing but work, eat something, and go to bed to get enough strength to go to work again the next day. I hadn't had a social life for nearly three years. I dared to drive my car only when I felt "good", and then only for one or two miles.

     My apartment looked like a garbage house, with paths between piles of unopened mail and stuff I had left out where I could see it so I'd remember to attend to it when I had a little energy. Dishes were piled up so high in the sink I couldn't turn on the faucet. I made such terrible mistakes in my on-line work I was afraid I'd be fired. I had scars all over both hands from cuts and burns I'd acquired while trying to cook during flares, which by now had become one continuous flare. My legs and arms were mottled with bruises from bumping into walls, corners, and furniture, and tripping over air.

     Nights were torture. I woke up every hour to hour and a half all night long. I was exhausted, but no matter how long I stayed in bed, I couldn't get enough sleep. I had irritable bowel, irritable bladder, and restless legs. In the mornings, my joints ached so much that at times I was forced to get down on my hands and knees and crawl from the bedroom to the bathroom to the kitchen. I saw news items of people with FMS and CFIDS who were patients of Dr. Kevorkian, and I fully intended to do myself in as well when it got to be too much to bear.

     I knew about guai but had been afraid to try it, scared by the warning that it "wasn't for the faint of heart." But I came from stubborn, hardworking stock, and I couldn't bring myself to declare to the Social Security Administration that I was a permanent invalid, unable to provide for myself. By March 1998, I'd decided that the protocol might not be for the faint of heart, but neither was the quality of the life I was living. I decided to try guai and if that didn't work, I would give up and apply for disability status.

     I couldn't get an appointment with my doctor until April 8. In the meantime, I sent her articles I'd downloaded on guai, the protocol, the HG diet, and success stories of people who were on guai. At my April 8 appointment she told me it couldn't hurt, and might help. She wrote a prescription for guaifenesin, which I filled on my way home. I took my first dose that evening.

     Within two days I felt like I had the worst flu I'd ever had in my life, but without any fever. I was nauseated after I took a dose of guai for the first day or two, but then it went away. For the next several weeks I felt miserable most of the time, and then suddenly, I had two days of total reprieve from the FMS. Not just "good days" -- extraordinary, amazing days. Then I started into the next cycle. I've had all of my old symptoms return in full force and some new kinds of pain as phosphates were redeposited in my muscles until my kidneys could catch up. It truly was not for the faint of heart, but I was a stubborn survivor, and I clung to the memory of those two wonderful days.

     A few weeks later, I had a critical project handed to me that should have been started a year ago and hadn't been touched. The deadline was coming up fast. I worked as hard as I could over the Memorial Day holiday weekend and all the next week. I was letting my housework go, dirt was piling up, and I was expecting to crash soon. I didn't. I was like the Energizer Bunny. Furthermore, during the same period, I had a dinner date, my first evening social event in three years. The next morning I was at work at 8:00 for a meeting on the critical project. I hurt all over, all the time, but I kept at it. The same week, I went to the office and worked nonstop for 10 hours on two different days, without a chance to stop and catch my breath. At the end of my endurance workathon, three people stopped me to tell me how much better I was looking these days, and how much more energy I seemed to have!

     By the next weekend, I was exhausted and really in pain. I expected to crash and be very sick for at least a week after working straight through 13 of the last 14 days -- and actually going on a date in the middle of it all. I slept, rested, napped, and rested some more all day Saturday. Then Sunday, I got up and felt a little achy and foggy, so I thought I'd continue to take it easy. However, at 8 PM I found I'd cleaned up my kitchen, run four loads of laundry, done some gardening, and downloaded some new software and installed it. Although I was definitely tired, I had less pain and fog than when I woke up that morning. I didn't intend to do all that work; I just felt good and couldn't stand to be doing nothing. That was after two months on guai.

     I continued to improve during the first two years, and then the roof fell in for me. A new management team did not believe in FMS (I *looked* like there was nothing wrong with me). They took away my ADA status, and I was back in the office, pulling 8 to 12-hour days again, and carrying a beeper, being awakened at all hours of the night to solve problems. I wasn't able to take proper care of myself, and the stress interfered greatly with my quality of work and my ability to bounce back.

     I went on unpaid medical leave and tried to regain my ADA status. Five different doctors at my HMO agreed that I could no longer work in my career, but they refused to say I had even a partial disability that required accommodations. One of them told me the HMO had ruled that nobody with FMS could be called disabled, because it was generating too many legal fees for them.

     As the process dragged on, I used up all my savings and began to make withdrawals from my deferred comp retirement account. To save money, I began eating a lot of potatoes, pasta, rice, and beans - although I should have stayed on the hypoglycemic diet. Finally, I could hardly afford my guai and felt there was no point in taking it if I was doing many things to block it anyway, so I stopped.

     Then my stubbornness and self-sufficiency kicked in again. I decided the system had failed me, but I still had myself, and I was going to reclaim control of my life. I took early retirement and withdrew the remainder of my deferred comp in a lump sum. I paid off all my debts and moved to Duluth, Minnesota, where my daughter lives with her family. I could live more cheaply there and she could help me out in exchange for baby-sitting. I rented a tiny one, room apartment, started taking guai again, and resting, and exercising, and taking care of myself.

     And then an amazing thing happened. In two months, I was better than I had been before I started that yearlong downward spiral. Without intending to, I had put the "two months = one year" rule of thumb to the test, and it was true! Two months later, I got a full-time job as secretary (and unofficial systems analyst) for a high school. It was the first time I'd been able to work full time without crashing in seven years! I bought a tiny house and this past summer, I not only revamped most of the school's databases, I pulled up two rooms of pea-green shag carpet to expose nice hardwood floors, painted the walls and ceilings, made faux built-in bookcases, and tended a small vegetable garden.

     I still have to pace myself, I still have a bad cycle now and then, I will always have to take my guai - but a really bad day now would have been a day of heaven for me back in March of 1997. I've reached the point where I'm beginning to clear tendons and ligaments and it truly is a test of patience, and it hurts! But I cannot even conceive where I would be today if I had not taken that first dose of guai on April 8, 1998. I will forever be grateful for getting my life back through the guaifenesin protocol and will forever be willing to help others do the same.

Anne Louise
Age 60; FMS 35 yrs, diagnosed 1995; Guaifenesin Protocol since April 8, 1998.
Copyright Anne Louise 2004

Gretchen Parker
Admin Team Member

     My passions have always been care for disabled children, crafts and fine art, Norman Rockwell in particular. By the age of ten I knew most of Rockwell's work, had learned about physical therapy and had begun telling everyone that was my life's goal. Most people back then didn't even know what a PT was. Later that career goal changed to occupational therapy when I earned an OT /BS degree with a minor in applied arts (crafts) that has helped in my work with disabled kids. During my senior year in high school FMS reared its head again when the stress of graduation and the life changes that accompany it brought on CFIDS like symptoms that were misdiagnosed as arthritis and allergies. I started college with a vial of allergy medication in my bags and instructions for weekly shots. I suffered joint pain my entire freshman year. It suddenly stopped the following spring and never came back.

     Graduation neared and I was facing nine months of clinical rotations at three different universities in three different cities. Then IBS hit with a vengeance along with Meniere's disease and heavy vertigo. One of the med students at the University of Michigan noticed a skin condition that he had seen in diabetics. I took an 8 hour glucose tolerance test. By the end of it I was ready to pass out but was never diagnosed with HG. My blood sugar tested normal at every scheduled blood draw. I started taking Phenobarbital for the IBS and lived with the rest of the symptoms. Throughout my adult life when ever there was stress little things would pop up like VV pain, yeast or bladder infections, IBS or funny "colds" that never lasted long. Over the years I saw every specialist in the book for one thing or another. No one ever connected the dots.

     The final decade-long plunge began with a hysterectomy to reduce my pain (didn't work), followed immediately by a move (which I fought with every fiber of my being) from South Carolina to California with two teens. That decade was one of the best and worst of my life. The IBS and HG slowly got worse and the FMS began to appear more and more. I didn't know what it was. My dream of becoming a skilled pediatric occupational therapist was realized when I had the opportunity to work with a well known pediatric PT in Roseville, CA. As my professional skills grew my ability to apply them steadily diminished as the FMS progressed. At the beginning of that ten year period I was able to work an 8 hour day and go home and care for my busy teens and husband. At the end of it, following a move back to S. Carolina and building our retirement home, I no longer was capable of working. I could barely walk across the room due to heart palpitations, sweats, grinding fatigue and what seemed to me to be angina. My daughter was taking care of me when my husband traveled for business. I didn't leave the house alone due to anxiety and depression.

     All my medical tests were normal, including extensive heart tests. An environmental physician told me the aromas of other people's perfumes, scented detergents and my new house were killing me. I was practically living outdoors year round to get away from the new house smells. It gets cold in winter here. I spent two years in total isolation with no contact except my husband and daughter. My family thought I was certifiable and finally convinced me of it. To appease them I went to a family counselor, related what was happening and asked her if I was crazy. She relieved my worries telling me I was merely neurotic and it was a normal reaction to the sort of stress I was under. She told me she would be neurotic too in my shoes. I was so relieved to be thinking normally, I thanked her and never went back! That period of isolation was the first time in my life I was finally free to scratch my "art itch". I spent it studying and practicing. It was a good diversion from the suicide I contemplated when my mind was unoccupied.

     In 1998 the knot in my rope had started to slip. In desperation I put both my brother's (he was sick too) and my name on a 24 hour prayer list. It seemed the only thing left. Less than a month later I serendipitously (or not) met Dr. St. Amand and Claudia Marek online. Dr. St. Amand told me I had FMS. As an OT I knew FMS and I did not have it! I told Dr. St. Amand he was crazy! Bless them, he and Claudia did not give up on me. Four and a half years later I am a GuaiGroup Administrative Team Member on this list, supporting Dr. St. Amand and Claudia's work. I now have a small business providing Occupational Therapy to disabled children and their families in their homes, and I am proud to show off my award winning art work. Please visit my website, and let me know what you think of my work. It is created with a great deal of humility.

     Since starting the guaifenesin protocol I have resumed many of my favorite pastimes like wood and needle working, biking, water skiing, canoeing and riding our jet ski. My head is clear enough to play the piano again; alas my skill has not improved. I've even learned to roller blade. Two years ago I took an 8 mile day hike to 6000 feet above sea level at Yosemite. Last year we sailed for a week with our son in the British Virgin Islands. I can power walk two miles in about 30 minutes and swim for an hour for exercise. There's more but you can get the picture.

     We have since discovered our 28 year old daughter has HG and FMS. She started the guaifenesin protocol almost two years ago. She recently was worrying that she is no longer cycling at 3600 mg/day. The look on her face when I told her I thought she was probably already reversed was priceless.

     I think my greatest asset here as an assistant is my knowledge of how to eat for HG. I know this topic because I live it every day. It has saved and restored my life. I don't call eating for HG a diet, it is a life style. It is a tool to keep my body running well enough so I can enjoy my recovery. Without managing HG, the reversal of the FMS is worthless. I am so sick when I eat wrong. Disabled children have been my best teachers. They know it is a waste of time complaining about living with a disability. There is too much life to enjoy and it requires doing what you have to do in order to enjoy it. Disabled kids need assistive aids like braces or wheel chairs to function. My assistive aids are guaifenesin and eating properly to keep the HG under control. I embrace my assistive aids wholeheartedly as I now am able to embrace life by using them. My thanks to my special teachers everywhere!

Gretchen Parker
Strict HG diet; Guaifenesin Protocol since April, 1998.
Copyright Gretchen Parker 2004

Jan Houp
Admin Team Member

     I am not one of those who can say they have suffered from fibromyalgia for a certain number of years. I don't know exactly when I "got sick." I just know that I was diagnosed with FMS in 1999. I am a nurse and had been working for the previous 15 years in very high-stressed areas, working all kinds of unpredictable and long hours, working nights, trying to sleep during the day and always "feeling bad." I was always getting the "flu." I had constant allergy and sinus problems. I had headaches daily. On and off I would have bowel problems. It seemed like I always had "something" wrong with me. I just never felt good. I blamed it on my job. I thought I was burned out, so I changed jobs to a doctor's office. I became settled in a nice, calm job in a quiet environment. But the strange and vague symptoms did not leave. Instead, they gradually got worse. I was taking antidepressants. I was on medicine for bowel problems. I was always taking a pill for something, like headaches, allergies, foot pain. I was always feeling bad. I was beginning to feel like a hypochondriac. I had always had back pain, neck pain and headaches, but in 1997 I started having pains all over my body. I never associated all my symptoms together to be any one thing. I just thought they were all different things wrong with me. I went to a cardiologist for the chest pain. I went to the allergist for the allergies. I went to the gastroenterologist for the stomach problems. I went to the rheumatologist for all my aches and pains. I went to my family doctor for the various other things. I often thought to myself that if I sat down with one doctor and told them every single thing that was wrong with me and what I was feeling he would think I was crazy.

     But, I just felt there was something else wrong with me. I had suspected I had chronic fatigue syndrome, but never gave fibromyalgia a second thought. After all, I was able to still keep a job and make it to work (most days!). I changed doctors and after ruling everything else out, she diagnosed me with fibromyalgia. I felt angry and alone. I knew people with FMS who had to quit working and were much sicker than I was. I didn't want to get that way. I started to educate myself about the disease. I bought every book I could find. I tried some of the ideas in some of the books, but I was becoming weaker and sicker. By January of 2000 I was ready to "throw in the towel" and apply for disability. I was barely making it to work most days and when I did go to work, I couldn't wait to get home and back to bed. I spent every non-working hour in bed, exhausted and barely able to move. My husband and I had discussed selling our house because I couldn't climb the stairs anymore. I didn't want to keep living the way I was living. I had no life. I was miserable. Then I opened up one of the books on my bookshelf. It was written by Devin Starlanyl and the part about Guaifenesin jumped out at me. I had seen it before, but I just dismissed it. I had thought it was just a sinus medicine and how could it possibly help something as bad as fibro? But I was desperate. This was my last hope. I figured I had nothing else to lose. I went out and bought Dr. St. Amand's book the next day and started the protocol. I already had the guaifenesin because I was taking it for sinus problems. I took the information to my doctor and she supported my decision to try it. I never expected it to work, but I was surprised. Within three months I was starting to have a good day here and there, and by six months was having more and more good days. After one year on the guai I was so much better that I was starting to feel almost normal again. After 2 1/2 years on guai I have gotten my life back and have noticed huge improvements in all areas. One of my noticeable improvements has been in my allergy problems. They have improved drastically. My all-over-body pains are gone, bowel problems are gone, foot pain gone, depression gone, sinus problems gone. I feel almost normal on most days.

      The guaifenesin has been a miracle for me and I have Dr. St. Amand to thank for that. As a result of my success with the protocol, I have made it a mission to educate others about it. It is a privilege to be a part of this administration team, to be able to promote the discussion of the guaifenesin protocol, and to help others who are just beginning.

Jan Houp
Guaifenesin Protocol since January, 2000; Strict HG since September, 2002
Copyright Jan Houp 2004

Cris Roll
Admin Team Member

     If you don't think you can feel wonderful and still have fibromyalgia, take a look at my photo. This was taken on March 3, 2004. I'm not cured, but I am well.

     I was born into a sick family. There's no way I can prove it now, but I know in my heart that FMS came to me from both my parents. My mother was sickly all her life. My dad had a bad bout of what they called mononucleosis at the time. I believe what he experienced was a bad FMS flare. He pushed himself so hard to go back to work that he had a stroke, which was the beginning of the end for him.

     Throughout childhood, I experienced myriad symptoms: Stomach pains from eating certain foods; an inability to keep up with neighborhood kids; constant colds and infections; a chronic feeling of having to urinate accompanied by tenderness; and constant, endless fatigue. On Saturday mornings when other kids were outside playing and having a good time, I was sleeping, and my brother and sister were as well. Because my mother never really felt well herself, she never pushed the three of us if we complained of not feeling well. She knew better. During one of my childhood illnesses, I remember having to crawl to the bathroom because my legs wouldn't hold me up. My mother took us to the doctor if things got bad enough, but people in my small town didn't go to specialists in those days and we were poor. I lost so much school as a child that it was a miracle I wasn't held back a grade.

     As a teen I had symptoms of what I now recognize as IBS. I never knew there was a name for these things that happened to me. In some ways, I thought it was normal. If you don't know anything else, anything can seem normal. I remember once when I was about 16, I stayed home from school and slept for the better part of three days. Other kids dreamed of their futures and what they were going to be when they grew up. I found it hard to have those dreams. Sometimes I wondered if I was dying slowly but I never told that to anyone. All I knew was other kids my age weren't sick all the time.

     I ended up not graduating with my class because I had chronic stomach problems between my junior and senior year of high school. I got a job in a department store and went to night school. I didn't seriously consider college until I realized I couldn't spend my life on my feet. I had started having bad pains in my metatarsal arches, like someone driving a hot spike through my foot. I spent two paychecks on a pair of ugly prescription shoes that gave me some relief.

     Fortunately there is a small university in my town and off I went to school, casting off my prescription shoes in a display of vanity. I was 24 by then. College was great. I made new friends and loved it. I got a work/study job in the library and that was about all I could handle. It took me an extra semester to get through because I couldn't push myself too hard. If I did, I would get sick. I could never stay up all night to study like some people. If I did, I couldn't function the next day. All the same, I had some pretty good years there for a while.

     In my 30s, I began to lose more people in my life. My brother died at the age of 38, an alcoholic with congestive heart failure. His poor body fell apart. He too had been sick all his life. I had always had a problem concentrating. After my brother died, the brainfog really set in. I had to stop reading because I had such a hard time comprehending things. At work, I found a way to deal with it. I was the editor of a small newspaper for senior citizens and I needed my wits. I found if I couldn't handle one task, there might be another that I could do until my head cleared.

     I moved in with my mother's older sister in my 30s. She was going blind and needed help. I loved her dearly. She was a friend as much as an aunt. I worked very hard when I lived with her. I did things I had never considered doing before because they needed to be done. I caulked windows; painted; hauled sapling trees out of the woods to plant in her field; cut our own Christmas trees and dragged them back through the snow. It was amazing to me that I could work that hard, but looking back on it now, I realize it fit in with the cyclic nature of FMS that Dr. St. Amand talks about in What Your Doctor May NOT Tell You About Fibromyalgia. It was one of the good cycles that eventually come few and far between and then stop.

     Then, one by one, I started losing more family. I had several elderly cousins I watched over. They died, two of them within a week of each other. My aunt spent a year in long term care before she died. I noticed I couldn't seem to walk two miles anymore without needing a nap afterward. In the fall between my 39th and 40th years I tried walking around the lake at my sister's place and had to go right to bed afterward. I was lucky I hadn't collapsed on the way. I had taken an aerobics class and the first round really energized me. By the time I got to the second round, I couldn't keep up anymore. I would lie down on the floor to rest. I finally stopped going.

     That winter, I became really ill again. I had constant infections in my throat and bladder and muscle weakness. If I squatted, I had unbearable pain in my legs and found it difficult to get up again. I had pain in my armpits. I would get up in the morning, eat and take a shower and not have the strength to get dressed. I remember lying on the bed one morning and crying and wondering what was wrong with me. That's when I first heard the term chronic fatigue syndrome. It seemed to apply to how I felt. I gradually got a little better with time and plenty of rest but it seemed that each time I had a setback I lost more out of my life. And that was the year I lost my mother. I became convinced that whatever was happening to me was tied up somehow with all these losses. Stress had always made me sick.

     Despite everything I managed to buy a house, thanks to a new job at the same library I worked at while I was in college. When my sister's husband died in 1994, I knew she would have to live with me. She couldn't take care of herself. She has FMS and several other coexisting conditions. She would end up in a nursing home if left on her own. I felt sure of that. Being a caregiver again really put a strain on my already strained system and I got sicker and sicker. Then, in the summer of 2000, I got very sick again. I was really scared this time because I didn't know how much longer I could support myself, much less care for my sister. It terrified me that I could lose the home I worked so hard to get.

     My dear sister made a casual comment one day when I came back from the ENT with a bottle of guaifenesin that he had prescribed for my sinuses. She had read something in a women's magazine about using guaifenesin for fibromyalgia. I knew some doctors considered chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia to be facets of the same illness. I hunted and couldn't find the magazine. I got on the internet. Maybe this guaifenesin stuff would help me. I was desperate and I didn't have the money to go from doctor to doctor. Eureka! I found the Fibromyalgia Treatment Center website.

     I read What Your Doctor May NOT Tell You About Fibromyalgia. As I turned the pages I kept saying yes, yes, YES! Everything fit. I knew Dr. St. Amand was writing about ME! I discovered I had been hypoglycemic all my life. The symptoms of that part of the illness have caused me an endless amount of heartache. Now that I follow the HG diet I am, in many ways, a different person. My coworkers and friends say I cope with problems better and I don't become devastated over every little setback in my life. I wish I had known about hypoglycemia thirty years ago. I never knew my anxiety was caused by low blood sugar.

     I started the HG diet in Oct. 2000. Within 48 hours, my ankles stopped hurting. I had been hobbling to the bathroom at night. I had to sit on the edge of the bed and rotate my ankles to loosen them up before I got up to use the bathroom, but not anymore.

     I started taking guaifenesin at the end of November, 2000 and I haven't looked back. The first six months were hard. I slept a lot when I wasn't working. I was very, very good to myself. My cycles were less clear in the beginning but have become more obvious over time. My improvement has been slow, steady and sure. In the summer of 2000, I was in such agony I had to leave my garden cart in the middle of the yard and go to bed. By the summer of 2002, I was able to accomplish some gardening and painting tasks that had been waiting for me for two years. In the fall of that year, I planted over 600 bulbs in my garden (mostly small ones) and huge daffodil bulbs (100) in a friend's garden. It was wonderful to be able to accomplish all that.

     In the late winter of 2003, I started walking again. By the end of the summer, I had worked my way up to 2.5 miles, something I never thought I would ever do again. In the fall of that year, I traveled from my home in northern Michigan to Kentucky to sit in on one of Claudia's presentations to Jan's support group. It was the first long trip I had taken in many years and I was delighted that I was able to handle it so well. In March 2004, I traveled to California to see Dr. St. Amand and meet Gwen and Char and see Claudia again. That trip was a real victory for me, not to mention a lot of fun! I am now also riding an exercise bike five days a week and hope to take an actual bike ride one of these days. I haven't ridden a bike in more than 20 years.

     I couldn't have done any of this without Dr. St. Amand's guaifenesin protocol. If it has not exactly saved my life, it has certainly saved the quality of my life and for that I am most profoundly grateful. I invite you to travel this road with us. It won't always be an easy journey but it will be the best one you will ever take. I never thought I would ever feel this well again, and I am looking forward to a much healthier old age.

     Come join us. We'll help you.

Cris Roll
Guaifenesin Protocol since November 2000; HG diet, mostly strict.
Copyright Cris Roll 2004