The meaning of success?

My Health Highway business by-line is "Fast Track Your Success". But what does this mean? A friend commented to me recently that "most people spend more time planning a holiday of one or two weeks than they do planning their life". How true this is. I think the same could be said for people's health. Most people don't even think about their health until something breaks - for some people, its a small break and "easily fixed" but for other people it may be a great big earth-shattering break that has a long road to recovery, if at all.

Looking back on my own earth-shattering breaks, they actually weren't as "sudden" as they appeared to be. My story includes Chronic Fatigue and Infertility. Both were shattering. Both were debilitating. But both are now behind me forever. So what happened?

At 31 I got very, very sick. I was working a crazy job - long hours, high stress, lots of travel. For several years before this point, I used to get one really bad viral attack each year that laid me low for a week or so but I invariably worked through it, thinking work was all important and I'd get over it, so why stop? In fact, I was totally committed to my career and felt I had to do it all and do it all faster and harder than anyone else.

I'd been through a divorce in my mid-20's, lost a great love in my life, and moved to Melbourne where my career took off. These three events were so huge in themselves I found the only way to cope was to bury myself in work. So bury I did. For 5 years I threw myself into various jobs and although I didn't admit it to myself, my aim was to totally exhaust myself so that time would pass and I could gain distance from the pain. I actually got that wish - be careful what you wish for!

So at 31 I ended up with Chronic Fatigue. I'd had a particularly bad flu and in my usual manner had pushed through it. I'd go to the Doctor when any one symptom became unbearable. At the time I was living in Sydney and I was travelling a lot with work. In the end I'd seen about 7 GPs in 3 states to get a quick fix for whatever seemed worst at the time. I had absolutely no idea at the time that I was dealing with Glandular Fever. I'd wake each morning drenched in sweat, after nightmares and fevers. I'd wash and go to work or to the airport or deal with whatever was "so important" that day. I often couldn't eat because my throat was too sore, but I still kept on.

Deep down I wanted someone to help me, but I had no idea who could. Time off work wasn't an option - we were in the middle of training for a major new account. The GPs had given me scripts and pills but nothing was really providing any relief. I was in the middle of moving and renovating a house and planning my second wedding and in the midst of so much busy-ness there was little time to stop and see how bad my health really was.

The week before the wedding, we were driving in the car with wedding guests and I couldn't speak to them - my throat was too sore, I was too exhausted. My fiance said "this is crazy, you have to find out what's wrong" so we made an appointment with a GP in the area we'd moved to.

When I said I'd had the flu for 3 months, he said "that's ridiculous, no one has the flu for 3 months". Glandular Fever was diagnosed the day before our wedding and not surprisingly the day after our wedding I could not get out of bed. In fact, we never had our honey moon. I couldn't walk from one end of our kitchen to the other. It was sudden and it was total.

Chronic Fatigue is a terrifying, debilitating, horrific illness. Just to participate in life I had to be literally carried around by family and friends. New Year's Eve was spent on the sofa, drifting in and out of consciousness and catching glimpses of the fireworks on TV. It was months of struggling to breathe, struggling to live, struggling to walk, lying on a couch or bed for hours trying to draw strength to eat or drink. Not being able to hold a conversation. Not being able to shop, or cook, or clean. Getting dressed or undressed was totally exhausting and I often needed help. This is not how a bright, promising young career person wants their life to be in the first weeks and months of married life in their early 30's. I can only wonder at how much my husband must have loved me to bear that time. And he lost his job the day I ran out of sick leave - oh what a day that was in our lives! He was a truly awesome man that day and I will never forget his self-posession.

I was truly blessed that the Dr I went to that week before our wedding had a close collegial relationship with another local Dr who practised acupuncture and chinese herbal medicine. I was placed in the care of the most amazing medical team who literally worked a miracle in my life and brought me back from total debilitation. They both totally supported my health and my mental wellbeing and recommended that I see a practitioner for EFT to deal with some of the negative emotions and perceptions I had at that time.

It was my first exposure to complimentary health care. It was the first time I had been totally dependent on someone to help me just to live. To add blessing upon blessing the EFT practitioner I saw was the leading expert in Australia and I was so lucky to come across this form of therapy. It has been invaluable in my life over the last 11 years. I responded extremely well to acupuncture and EFT and the nutritional approach gradually, milimeter by milimeter, drew life force back into my body. My "alternative" doctor very gravely told me that I had to think of my energy as money in the bank. At the end of each day, I had to make sure there was a balance left. I could never, ever go into overdraft again.

In 6 months I was back at work a few hours a day, although I had crossed a line with my life and I knew I could never work as I had. The new job was delightful and in that I was lucky again. I was so careful though. So very careful. And I was careful for years and years. When you live with fear day in and day out you get used to it. But I was so grateful for life after what I'd been through, even if I had to control every aspect of it to cope.

In a few years we moved to the country. We wanted to start a family and with so many years of illness this had not been an option. The country life offered a slower pace, a less polluted environment and promise of better health.

But within a year of moving to our dream home in country Queensland, we discovered that one reason for our lack of conception was a massive fibroid, requiring a myomectomy. Then slowly, but surely, as the months passed our options narrowed into IVF. I was a very unwilling participant. Having been through Chronic Fatigue, I was worried about how I would cope with pregnancy, how I would cope with a child, how I could possibly survive night feeds and the tiredness that new parents spoke of. I had so carefully controlled my life in the years after the illness that the fear of losing "normal" life was greater than my desire for a child. I was past my mid-30's. I worried whether the child would be healthy - were there greater risks for us, with the history of Chronic Fatigue?

So months of treatment dragged into years. I resisted each step of the process. And I juggled my caution with my anger and questions of "why me?" Why Chronic Fatigue? Why IVF? With miscarriage, my grief and my confusion were unbearable. It was months before I could face the thought of trying again.

But this part of the story has a happy ending. In May 2005 I conceived and our beautiful baby boy was born in January 2006. The most amazing moment of my life. There is nothing to describe the emotion of bearing a child. I was 38.

Several weeks later as we were sitting in the local Medicare Office, a lady sitting next to us struck up a conversation. She commented that the baby was beautiful and must be very precious. I told her she had no idea how precious, that it had been a long journey to hold him. She asked if I knew about harmful ingredients in baby products? I admitted I had been too scared to use anything but water on his skin since he was born and that I really wanted to know about safe products.

That lady, that stranger, is now Godmother to our second child.

I believe without a shadow of a doubt that we would not have our second child if she had not spoken to us that day and started us on a new path of healing and happiness.

The products she told me about are the main stay product range I promote through the Health Highway. They have healed our life in so many ways. They gave us a child.

I started this post because I was musing on why I had chosen "Fast track your success" as my byline. Because when I found out that the harmful ingredients in every day products in our home cause reproductive complications, amongst so many other terrible things, I was angry and saddened to think that I had been using those harmful products every day that I was on infertility treatment. When that lady told me she had suffered from Chronic Fatigue for 14 years and had been healed by using these products within months, she won my heart. We have become very close in the four years we've known each other. And through her I have met people who are now amazing mentors and healers in my life. She brought me into a new family and a new life which I am thankful for every day.

I can now look back at the last 11 years and be thankful for the illness and thankful for the IVF, the surgery, the fear, the controlled life. Because you can't truly understand gratitude for freedom if you haven't been in prison. Am I well now? Oh yes. Totally and wonderfully well and I no longer carry any fear of Chronic Fatigue.

My most heartfelt desire is for others to know what I know now. For them not to have to go through years of IVF to hold their baby. For them not to have to experience Chronic Fatigue before they can embrace fantastic health. For them to spend time planning their successes, whether those successes are goals for health, for prosperity, for career, for family or simply for life experience.

Through the Health Highway, I want to reach out to women, especially working women, who want to know what its like to have the best of everything. I want to share my story to let them know that they can fast track their success because I can show them the tools to get there.

Can I help you?

Be well. Be truly well. Claim success in every part of your life. Deidre.