How I Lost More Than Half My Blood in The Last Year and How I Built It Back Up In a Month Without a Transfusion.

Dear Friends,

This is going to have to be a two or three part blog post, but I hope that what you read here gives you something to think about.

A little more than a year ago I went to the Emergency Room in the middle of the night with massive uterine bleeding. I went to the ER because I was worried I might lose so much blood I would die. After they did their thing, it was deemed that there was nothing physically wrong with me. The blood loss they said was not too much yet. I wasn’t going to die. They offered me some birth control to stop the bleeding. I turned them down and I left.

I sought other methods of help and healing. Other methods helped for a little while, but the next year was up and down. A few months were good and then I’d have another crazy episode. I didn’t bother with the ER. I knew how it would go.

On my natural healing path I started to feel uncomfortable about some things. I believe in natural medicine, eastern medicine, hypnotherapy, energy healing, etc., but I was feeling a lot of pressure from one of my practitioners to only do it her way. She kept telling me I just needed to be consistent. I knew her intention was to help, but I didn’t want it. I stopped going to her because I realized I was giving my power away.  

When I took back my own power I then had to take accountability.

I prayed to know what to do. I took a few small actions, but mostly I just ignored the issue until it presented itself. I wanted an instant healing like the woman with the issue of blood who just touched the hem of Jesus’s garments and was healed. But it didn’t work that way. I need to learn things and share them.

I had a bad episode the night before my wedding and I even fainted at my wedding. Don’t worry, the angels brought me back safe and sound, and the bleeding actually stopped completely for a few hours after that. Thank you, Angels.

After the wedding, things got better for a bit. I plugged along. But I was tired. I would drag myself out of bed every day for my morning yoga and meditation practice. I usually felt way better after. But if I didn’t have anywhere to go that day, I’d go back to bed. And I’d go to bed early in the evening. I said I just loved my bed. In fact, I felt so much love for my bed that I wrote a love sonnet about it.

When I got back from Portugal I followed my intuition and went to the lady doctor covered by my insurance. She was old and sweet and funny and must have been following inspiration when she ordered blood work.

My hormones were fine, but my hemoglobin levels were 6.5 ish. (The normal range is 11.7-15.5.) That means I lost more than half my blood in the last year. And the body doesn't rebuild blood very fast at that level. Those are transfusion numbers. 

She got me into a hematologist pretty fast. He couldn’t believe I was having no other symptoms besides tiredness. He looked at me like I was strange for having no chest pains or shortness of breath. I said, "No I am just tired."

I liked this doctor a lot. He listened to me breathe and he asked if I did yoga. I told him yes. My practice has been keeping me alive.

He said if I didn't want to get a transfusion we had to try IV iron infusions, because when you lose half your blood, you become very anemic. And the body needs iron to build blood. 

All this took place at the Cancer Center with people getting chemotherapy and I had to fill out all these forms about next of kin and power of attorney and living will--not your average doctor’s office forms. It made me think of death. And of my mom, who died when she was the age I am now. She went through this kind of thing for 5 years. I felt so much sadness about it. 

After my first infusion I came home and put on a Yogi Bhajan lecture to try to right myself from all the emotion of being at the Center Center.  He was talking about healing. He said that there are five different systems of health, “One is called the Ayurvedic system, then comes naturopathy system, then comes the Greek system, then comes homeopathy, then comes allopathy, including surgery.” He was saying that every system has advantages and disadvantages. Yes…

Then I fell asleep.

When I woke up I was feeling a little like a looser for sleeping so much, but Yogi Bhajan was still talking and he was saying that the most healing exercise one can do is sleep. Nice.

I did a lot of sleeping that month. Building new blood is a lot of work. Two weeks later my blood level was 9.5. But then my labs came back and they learned about another problem.

The blood work showed I super low in some nutrients that everyone should have (especially B12). Not just low--Death Valley low. Lowest place on earth low. The doctor was uber concerned.

You need these vitamins that help you cope with stress, build the body, prevent alzheimers, have brain power, be happy, etc. This wasn’t just caused by blood loss. This was a years-long deficiency, mostly likely caused by non-supplementation and improper absorption, or (he thinks) non-absorption.

Of course, my first thought was, what does this represent? What am I not absorbing? I was sorting thought thoughts: Love? Prosperity? Who knows what? And how has this escaped my notice when I'm normally super intuitive and body connected? (That's for another blog post.)

Non-absorption through my gut be darned.  He ordered some injections of the vitamin directly into my muscles. Every day. Then every week. Then every month for …. He seemed to think that if I wasn’t absorbing I would need them for the rest of my life.

I told him I’d go along with his plan for a little while, but then I would just get my gut to start absorbing. He asked how I would do this. I said "I am going to hypnotize myself and talk to my digestive system and ask it to respond appropriately."

His eyes widened and then he said. “I totally believe you.”

That’s when I knew for sure I was being guided to and blessed with the right care providers. He didn’t try to argue with me or tell me it wouldn’t work or subtly roll his eyes when I told him how I’d like to take charge of my healing. He believed in me.

Only now as I am writing this am I realizing that this was the problem with the other professional I was working with. She told me my other ideas for helping myself wouldn’t work or that they weren’t strong enough. She shut me down all the time. While I don’t think this was her conscious intention, people are human, and we are all flawed. I’m sure she doesn’t do that with everyone. Sometimes certain people just interlock with our own special brand of subconscious garbage… and it’s hard to pick up on at first.

This kind of interlocking neurosis has happened to me only a couple of times in my life, and I used to be very alert to avoid it, but it has been so long I was caught unaware. 

The pain this relationship caused me makes me think about people I may have shut down or not encouraged enough and I feel this deep sadness. I am so grateful for four gifts that Jesus offered us: love, forgiveness, repentance and an eternal perspective (I got these from the prophet’s Christmas devotional talk. It was a very inspiring talk if you haven’t listened to it.)  

But back to the narrative. In a month my hemoglobin just tipped the scale at 11.7 

The thing I guess I keep coming back to is that all systems are part of a holistic whole. It’s important to be open and also not to judge others or their intuition and how they are guided to pursue healing. And if it's others judging you, just trust God and believe in yourself.

While I was getting my shots and infusions I kept praying and seeking guidance about how to deal with the root cause and keep it from happening again.

One morning I pulled a hukum from the Bible. I asked, what do I do about the bleeding? I opened to this scripture:

For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs. - Romans 14:2

Wow. I never cease to be amazed at the effectiveness of the hokum for clear answers.

The answer was clear. I was weak. I need to learn about herbs. And eat them. 

I have taken herbs off and on throughout my life. Various healers would prescribe them, but I never knew much about them or the why?

So I set out to get an education. I got one quickly. (You can learn a lot on YouTube  with the right search phrases, a little discernment and supplemental research to verify everything.) I also learned about possible causes for abnormal uterine bleeding, including hormones, adrenal fatigue, stress, nutrition, etc. It’s a bit like a mystery novel and each woman has her own clues and puzzle pieces to fit in to get to the goal of the ideal cycle.  

We are educated to believe that there is a lot of variety in how women cycle. In truth, many of things we are told are normal, are not normal. Cramps aren’t normal. PMS isn’t normal. Heavy bleeding isn’t normal.  But I will go into that in another blog post.

For this post, I want to mention some important things that I learned from this journey. 

1. Getting all our nutrition from food is a wonderful ideal, but it’s hard to achieve without supplementation, even if you think you know what you doing. Most of us don’t. And even then, many people may also need help absorbing.

So I finally have jumped into the supplement thing with my heart body and soul and, of course, was guided to a trifecta of products that I was so impressed with that I bought the distribution rights to them and I have them on auto-ship for life. 

They aren’t the answer to all things, but they are good foundation for helping to maintain optimal health and they also have a product that aids absorption, which is key for me.  I think they are a big part of the reason I am feeling better than I have in 2 years.  

If you are wondering what I am using, I’m happy to share with you! Please ask me! Just comment with your email or private message me on FB (Nam Joti Kaur) or Instagram. @namjotikaur

2.  I realized, if I ended up in this place despite what I thought was good nutrition, a ton of people are way worse off.

This was right around the time that the prophet made the statement about taking your vitamins, which I at first thought was just him being funny—then realized he was speaking to me. His actually quote was: “take your vitamin pills and get some rest, it’s going to be exciting.” So yes. I’m getting ready President Neilson. Thanks for the witness.

Here’s what else:

3.I had a chat with a friend and she said that a ton of people in the yoga community are also messed up nutritionally. Here’s why: people with poor nutrition usually have difficulty breathing, but a yoga practice can mask that.

My yoga practice was saving my life on so many levels, but it was also making me think everything was fine with my health.

4. This then made me think how a daily practice of yoga and meditation can also mask spiritual deficiencies. It can make life so wonderful, make a person feel so connected and spiritually fulfilled—but the truth is, we still need the essential ordinances. We still need to make and keep covenants with God. We need to grow our personal relationship with God.

The daily practice will enhance your spiritual path. It's not meant to replace it. 

Recently I went to the temple and was grateful for the reminder of the need for constant nourishment to body and spirit. 

5. I have been working on prosperity a lot this last years--healing myself and others, and health is our biggest prosperity. I recently asked God what I should do with my wealth, if I was suddenly a gozillionaire--what's the priority for spending my money. The first thing I thought of was building a temple. But then God reminded me that first I had to build my temple body. That is the first priority on which to spend my money. That was super instructional. I think a lot of people are cheap when it comes to their health or nutrition or self-care. But as the saying goes, you pay it now or pay it later in costs of poor health and burnout etc.

In future posts, I hope to share cycle savvy stuff, the role of stress, some herbal learnings, and the root cause of almost all of the problems of the new age.