Month: March 2025

mindset matters thymoma healing myasthenia gravis

Mindset Matters In Healing Journey

On By IreneIn Faith, Grace, Healing, Mental Fitness, Myasthenia Gravis Healing Journey, Season of Life, Suffering, The Beloved Who Suffers Well, WorthLeave a comment

The difference between a strong mindset day and a weak day can be felt in my body. On days I feel strong and possible, it normally go that way – strong and possible, symptoms at bay. When my mind are being cluttered with objections to what’s possible, my body gets the bashing – symptoms flare. After years of living with Myasthenia Gravis (MG), my observation is that it is way better to have a strong mindset. It takes time to build up those mental muscles and the good news is that our brain is pretty dynamic to serve us better.

Mindset in the context of healing basically covers how strong or how deep is our belief that our body has the capacity to heal. Do we believe that healing is possible? Knowing the answer to this will help us to see how far we will go. If our belief in healing is not that deep, we can change that because again our brain is dynamic and those mental muscles can be retrain towards serving us better. The next question to ponder is; are we willing to do what it takes to get to our desired bodily healing?

I sure am willing but I was also painfully aware of my own limiting beliefs. It was like a tug of war in my head; I really desire and believe that healing is possible for me and at the same time there’s an opposing voice throwing doubts. My prayer at times like that mimics the father from Mark 9: 24 – Lord, I do believe, help my unbelief. His grace indeed does not disappoint as He continued to help me to strengthen my belief.

During the early days of diagnosis, things can be overwhelming and I was not spared of that. I remember hearing so many noises and I did not know which one to believe. All I knew at that time was that the journey of healing is going to be grace-filled for me. I started learning about more about MG just to gain better understanding on what’s going on with me. The things I learnt did not always sit well with me; in fact some of the information or medical labels was personally quite discouraging. One example is the definition of autoimmunity. It is commonly expressed as your body fighting against you. That did not sit well with me because I believe in a God who made all things well and that includes my body. Our body is made to fight for us, not against us. It is made to protect us but why autoimmune happened then?. That question led me to dig deeper into the health rabbit hole that I got into and I found a definition that resonates better with me. 

What causes disease is first of all a weak body as a result of toxin accumulation. The accumulated poison in our body can then confused our immune system. Therefore my body needed of help and time to detoxify, and then heal itself. With a picture like this, I felt at peace with my body. Knowing full well that my body is not at war gave me confidence and even built up my endurance in the healing journey. Just the change of view or label if you’d like that; change my whole perspective which in turn change my belief system to a more life giving one.

The opposite of life giving is life taking and what often caused that is FEAR. Fear is an integral part of life, necessary for survival but there is also fear created by our hypervigilant mind. These fears are often a result of a traumatic experience. For those of us who live with a chronic condition, it is a traumatic experience to be diagnosed with something that change our lives forever. For me I can no longer be that energizer bunny I used to be; my level of efficiency dropped and it takes me way longer to complete a task that used to be easy for me; at the peak of the symptoms I cannot even tie my own hair. There was a period of time when driving was so hard that I gave up for safety reason. It was hard and it can be scary. So I recognized how my hypervigilant mind would “warn” me about dangers that were often irrational. If not properly addressed, these fears can cripple us to the point of not living well.

Just a few weeks ago, I went for a walk on a lonely road surrounded by beautiful forest accompanied by the sound of the river. On the side of the road were lands owned by independent farmers, so on one of side of the road, I spotted a few empty chemical barrels. Immediately fear kicked in; my heart rate went up and I started to feel symptoms rising. In Apr 2023, I had a myasthenic crisis requiring ventilation that was caused by chemical induced pneumonia. Long story short, I was exposed to pesticides while walking at a park. The memory of the ICU stay came rushing in and it was not pleasant. My survival mind said: I do not want that again. Thanks be to God I became aware of what’s going on in my mind, it was my hypervigilant mind going on high alert and it was irrational. I started doing pursed lips breathing to calm myself. As I calmed down, I started thinking more clearly: I was in a way better state than I was in 2023. I’ve done a lot of work on my body, so my body has way better ability to detox, plus the thymoma shrunk by 50% and scripture said that no poison shall prevail against me (Mark 16: 18)!. I said a prayer and told myself that it is safe, that I am strong enough for this and that if any chemical has been sprayed, it would have been some time ago as evidenced by the appearance of the grass.

Regulating back to safety reinforces in my mind that the irrational fear can be overcome. I finished that walk feeling stronger, climbed about 800m of distance in a 200m ascend without the need of mestinon (the anticholinerase drug I used to help manage symptoms). 

Stronger mindset is a life time of work. As we build our mental muscles, we will also grow more resilient and will be able to do things that was seemingly impossible when we were not living with chronic illness.  Do you find this helpful in your journey? Let me know in the comment what helps you to build a stronger mindset. Let’s connect to support each other in our journey of building stronger mental muscles.

Our being is body, mind and soul. To achieve bodily healing, actions need to be taken to give our body the best chance. I will share more in depth in my next post.

With lots of love,
Irene

Healing is Possible – Thymoma 50% Shrunk!

On By IreneIn Healing, Myasthenia Gravis Healing Journey, Suffering, The Beloved Who Suffers WellLeave a comment

So I had a flare early Dec 2024 which took a worse turn after 2 sleepless nights. With the symptoms of Myasthenia Gravis (MG) not stabilizing well enough by my routine appointment in early Jan, I caved in to 2 doses IV immunoglobulin which required hospitalization. Since I was warded, my neurologist asked if I’d like a chest CT scan done. It has been almost 2 years since my last scan, so I thought why not (even though it was not exactly pleasant). And that turned out to be such a blessing because the scan showed a 50% reduction in size of the thymoma! What a great sign and sight of healing!

What my neurologist said when he showed me the scan report was even more remarkable. He said: “Irene, your prayer works!”. I was so in awe of the scan report that it took me a bit of time to take in what he said. That was a testament of my faith and this faith comes with work (James 2: 17). When I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis (thymoma present), we were getting ready for me to have the thymectomy surgery done once I was stable enough. However, God has a different plan.

As I was preparing myself mentally for the open chest surgery, I told everyone in my family that was the plan. My mother was devastated considering the nature of the surgery which was pretty major. She asked me to reconsider and look for alternative. But at that time, there was no alternative presented to us. MG was really new to us and it doesn’t help that it is also a rare condition with a vast variability. Looking back I understand now that we were responding to a crisis situation that was pretty traumatic. Our lives changed overnight and we were faced with the unknown. In that situation, we just jumped in to whatever that was available.

As I stabilized, the Cardiothoracic (CT) surgeon was not available. That was on top of the lockdown chaos where everything was in disarray. A year later, I started wondering if God was inviting us to see another way. So I prayed for clarity. The blessing that came out of being sick with MG was my openness to learning (and unlearning). I ended up in the rabbit hole of health and discovered so many things that was shocking to me. Shocking because I have been accustomed to a certain way of living, a certain way of “intelligence” and a certain way of processing information. In the midst of the rabbit hole adventure, I discovered that the thymus still has important functions and roles for our immune system. What a shocking discovery! I was told the thymus is basically useless in adulthood but that is far from truth. So I started to lean on the direction of foregoing the surgery.

Part of the learning process also brought me to the knowledge that Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) modality of acupuncture is helpful for MG. So there I was, praying for a good one and God did not disappoint. I met my TCM Physician who has a Masters in autoimmunity, not only that, he also has someone dear to him that is in remission of MG. What a blessing! Through them, I discovered that it is possible to shrink the thymoma naturally with herbs. So that sealed our decision to go the natural way.

The thymoma diagnosis also made it possible for me to do this. It is well encapsulated and not pressing on any of my organs, so it’s actually pretty stable. With almost zero information (or evidence) on natural shrinking of thymoma, we entered our journey with faith (2 Corinthians 5: 7). At that time, we did not know if anything was going to work. The encouragement I got from people were generally to do the surgery while I still can. And after the MG crisis in 2023, I even told my husband if nothing change in my thymus, perhaps it’s time to reconsider the surgery. Right actions after that led me to feeling better and I sort of forgot about surgery. In the midst of that, we discovered ONE documented case of thymoma shrinking. That was giving me hope. And that hope and faith was rewarded with sight on Jan 2025.

I was overcome by joy and was really in awe of my Good God who sees, known and loved me. Filled with hope, I’d like to share this hope with you. In my subsequent posts, I will be sharing more of what I’ve done and changes that has contributed to the physical healing of my thymus. Do share with me your thoughts on this miracle I am experiencing and if you are in similar situation, do connect with me and let’s help each other in our journey of healing.

With lots of love,
Irene