LOVE AND HATE
How Biological Dentistry Saved My Life (Part 2)
In my last essay I detailed the unforgiving road of mysterious chronic illness that led me to take a deep dive into the world of biological dentistry. Here’s what happened next…
I sat in that dentist chair in Santa Barbara for five hours, with my head tilted to the right for most of the amalgam removal procedure. In an effort to distract myself from the shrill noises of drilling and cracking I fixed my eyes outside the window onto a hummingbird feeder and the sweet grassy California knoll behind it. My mind swirled between grief and gratitude. Hope and hopelessness. Most of my thoughts were sketchy droppings suspended by discomfort and curiosity. It was hard to keep track of what was real and what was being channeled through the heaviness of the mercury in my brain. Occasionally a translucent shower curtain would open inside my mind, briefly - showing me the way forward. I repeated this mantra over and over again “Thank God this place is beautiful and I don’t have to spend five hours staring at the Bayonne Bridge”.
In times like these gratitude is the only lens that can save you from stark raving madness. I wondered if in time I would actually feel physically better from having done this? OR, is everyone around me correct? Is this procedure just a crazy scam for kooks and no one is really “allergic” to their fillings? Was I “allergic” to my fillings? Was that really written on some FDA website? Or did it land there because people like me provably exist and the FDA doesn’t want to lose any more business than they already have over outcries from a public that is far more toxic than any civilization in recorded history. It appears when the FDA website was updated in 2020 they reluctantly admitted on it that mercury fillings may not be for everyone…or….well…anyone sane.
Do you know that most people I spoke with during this era (2016-2019) had NO idea that mercury inside the body was toxic? By the way, some of these people went to Ivy League schools. Several of them even received MD’s. Can you imagine what else they don’t know about the human body?
“If you have a root canal, you have a 40% chance of having a blatant infection at the tip of the root canal. And then you know that if you have that blatant infection, you have a 530% increased risk of a cardiovascular event”.
—Dr. Stuart M. Nunnally (esteemed US biological dentist)
What went wrong in our modern civilization to allow the atrocity of modern dentistry consumed with mercury fillings, root canals, and fluoride to thrive?
I really didn’t know who or what to believe anymore. How could have my life have split the universe into two distinct realities; mine and everyone else’s? I had drifted through the world (from my bed) for three solid years with deep shock and awe that nothing and no one was as it appeared. I thought I knew people. I thought they knew me. Turns out we were both wrong. The only thing I was certain about at this point was that I couldn’t trust anyone but me with my body, and that I was being gently guided to rely on forces I couldn’t see; like my own internal guides. That was a novel idea for me. No one told me that was a possibility! Could my own intuition be the one and only force that could guide me to safety? Time would tell.
Finally, after 5 long hours it was over.. and I was starving. I was instructed not to eat anything solid or use a straw. Penelope, my one and only rock at the time was waiting for me in the lobby as a I stumbled out. She was my sole connection to the outside world. With her I could be “normal” and “sick” at the same time. She was a unicorn to me. She didn’t care about anyone’s status in the world, she just wanted to get and give kindness. What kind of crazy cult did she grow up in I wondered? She became a divining rod between two worlds for me. I knew once I was on the other side of this health crisis, I would understand her world better. For now, my psyche was still in limbo. It was dinner time and I wanted to treat Penelope to a nice meal (considering she had put everything aside to accompany me here for this semi-questionable procedure). We found a charming Santa Barbara-looking restaurant with an outdoor covered seating area where we managed to get a table. Looking around, people here seemed to reek of the good life. The mist of the summer ocean air reminded us all how lucky we were to be here, in this dreamy coastal town. It still felt special to be a Californian back then. Like we were part of some uniquely privileged group others could only gaze at from a distance on TV. Truth be told, it was Three’s Company that seeded my life-long obsession with California. I swore to myself I would live on the beach and have cocktails at the Regal Beagle when I got older. Well, my tastes changed from the beach to the hills of Highland Park and instead of the Regal Beagle I became a regular at Ye Old Rustic Inn in Los Feliz. That was in my BEFORE life. I used to have this childish fantasy that people in California never got sick. Everyone always looked so tan and healthy. Everyone was always smiling. Maybe the good life obscured the truth for us? Maybe the culture of California tricked us into trusting something that wasn’t entirely real?
While staring at the menu in search of the perfect liquid paleo dinner I heard something soft and familiar in the background. There was a song playing on their outdoor speakers. It was a song I had been listening to for several years, since the beginning of the excursion through hell which began in 2014. (Love and Hate by Michael Kiwanuka.) However, what I was hearing now was very different from the same song that I listened to in the car just yesterday. You see, one of the side effects of severe mercury poisoning is that the brain no longer responds to certain external stimuli like music as it once did. As a multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter, music has always been a religious experience for me. I feel it viscerally, emotionally, and spiritually all at once. Music isn’t something ambient to me, it’s everything that is inside me and around me all at once. It’s a virtual reality light show that permeates every cell in my body. It makes me move unconsciously and heals the aspects of my subconscious that I didn’t even know were there. For three years, I could only “hear” the music I couldn’t “feel” it. In some ways this was the worse symptom of the illness for me. Suddenly, as I looked around at the other restaurant patrons, I felt the reverb on the electric guitars cycling up and down my internal organs. The octaves being played on the piano during the intro made my hips move without my knowledge. Then the strings! Tears welled up in my eyes as they undulated back and forth between the bending of individual notes. Maybe I could play piano again one day? Maybe my life wasn’t over after all? Where was all this hope coming from I wondered? The waiter arrived. I listened to him read off the specials AND embodied the music at the same time. My brain could do two things at once. This was the first miracle of many I noticed after the procedure.
She won't take me somewhere I'm not supposed to be
You can't steal the things that God has given me
No more pain and no more shame and misery
- Michael Kiwanuka, Love and Hate
We grabbed some waters for the room and headed back to our boutique motel. The last rays of pink sunlight bouncing off the ocean gave me another little mental boost. Something was happening, but what?
Exhausted from the procedure, and the drive from LA, I fell asleep in my clothes. Penelope was beside me sleeping peacefully. Our hotel room was small, but clean which is the only real requirement I had. You can tell it was once a run down motel that was “upgraded” to a cute boutique motel. All the rooms surrounded a pool area where people enjoyed their California birthright of “the good life”. We were only a few hundred yards from the beach. Morning came fast, and as I stirred in the early hours the sound of a bird outside the window caught my attention. I’ve heard birds before in the morning, but these sounds were exquisite. Like nothing I had ever heard in my life. I blinked opened my eyes and was instantly captured by the radiance of the California sunlight dancing across the chairs where we had lazily dropped our clothes. I didn’t know when I tossed my sweatshirt on that chair that the scene would be alchemized by the morning light and turn into the first day of the rest of my life.
It hit me, there was something new and also something familiar about the way I felt. Scanning my body I realized I felt lighter. That's the best way I can describe it. Much lighter. There was more room inside me now. It was like a fat suit of dark energy had been stripped off of me throughout the night. Something else happened. I could smell the ocean air. Had my sense of smell returned? It hit me that for years I wasn’t really smelling the world as it was. This created a stir inside of me I hadn’t felt for years. I knew eating was going to be a challenge but there was nothing I needed to have. I was ok with what was. We got dressed and walked towards the pier hand in hand. Life made little more sense today than it did yesterday. I looked around and wondered if I was re-entering the “life is good” California culture.
A download dropped in from the sky like a present as the hot sand covered my feet - “Love is the frequency that yields prosperity”.
Over the course of the next three years, I went on the have two root canals extracted by the same biological dentist in Santa Barbara and flew to Texas to have cavitation surgery done by the best biological dentist in the country, Dr. Nunnally. What unfolded for me was nothing short of one miracle after the next with respect to my brain health. My chronic migraines, brain fog, and severe depression/confusion all lifted. My short term memory returned. I was able to return to work full-time in March 2018 and although my health issues weren’t resolved fully I was able to once again create and manage large scale budgets for film and TV, work 10-12 hours a day, as well as travel to distant locations and even lose myself at the piano from time to time. Life was slowly returning and the story would continue to unfold in ways I could never have predicted from the prison of my body during those years I laid in bed praying for a miracle.
Happy New Year!
Prayers for peace within and peace in the world in 2024.
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