Sarah, UK

My first wonderful client,  who had a pyloric ulcer and fibromyalgia.

I thank you so much Sheryl for all the encouragement, support, research and most of all becoming my friend. I know I could have done it without you but it would have taken me a lot longer and probably would have been more painful in more ways than one. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping me achieve something that I thought was impossible.

Nine years ago I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia after a pretty stressful Ceasarean with my fourth child. I was teaching my children at home and found that very difficult to manage. I couldn't sleep at night as the pain was unbearable, so in turn, I was completely useless to my children in the daytime. They got used to it and we seemed to manage, I set work up for them while I slept on the sofa, not really a good relationship with them but that was all I could manage.

The doctors gave me some anti-depressants to help me sleep and codeine for the pain, very soon I was on the highest dose. It was so frustrating because before this I was very active, lots of bike riding, walking and basically having fun with the family.

In the meantime, I was also looking after my elderly Mum who lived next door but quite often she ended up looking after me, cooking meals etc.

After about 3 years I weaned myself off the anti-depressants as I didn't feel I was having any benefit from them. The pain and exhaustion was still there. I felt absolutely useless as a mother, wife, friend. I started putting on weight as I was becoming so languid. I was beginning not to like myself, so I was comfort eating. I was now a size 14, I had never been that size other than when I was pregnant, then got back to a reasonable size quite quickly.

Last October (2014), I became quite ill and couldn't eat as it was very painful and last Christmas was just awful, I was in so much pain, in and out of the Dr's. They rushed me in to Hospital just after Christmas and discovered that I had a large ulcer on my Duodenum which was preventing the food from going down properly. They did an Endoscopy to discover this and decided to use a balloon like thing to enlarge the tube so that the food could go down. They said that I would have to have this every 6 weeks for a year and then reassess. After a year if it hadn't cleared up or became worse they were talking about doing an operation that would turn my stomach upside down. I looked into it and realised that that was quite an invasive, long (4 hours) procedure, something I wasn't really looking forward to.

That's when you helped me Sheryl, you did lots of research for me and we came up with a plan to try and eradicate the ulcer. I went on a very strict Paleo diet and ate lots of cabbage. I thought I would struggle, particularly no carbs but really embraced it. I tried a couple of different supplements that you suggested as well.

I had about 5 Endoscopies and on that 5th one the Dr said that I didn't need anymore as the ulcer was no longer big enough to give me anymore problems. I was flabbergasted, I couldn't believe that eating only raw fruit, veg, fish and meat could have such a profound effect in such a short period of time.

Another wonderful thing happened along the way too, my Fibro was becoming less tense and I was taking less pain relief. I am now off all my pain relief and living the life that I once had, only I feel even better now than I did in my 20's. I get up at 7 and go for a brisk walk before the family get up, I can play football with my children again, I don't sleep in the day, we go out for long walks together( last week we were out for 5 hours walking) and I have just joined a Tennis club. I do lots of activities with my children on a daily basis and I haven't had any pain relief for 1 month now.

My life has been transformed.