About Lisa
It has been five years since I hit rock bottom and found myself in hospital fighting for my life. Through hard work and dedication to recover, I am finally in remission and feel almost completely back to myself. I know that everyone’s journey is different, no pathway to recovery is linear, and recovery can be a long, slow process. No matter where you are on your journey to recovery, I believe that by making one small change at a time, you can set yourself up for success and begin to tame the inflammation that is affecting your body and support your body holistically to become a place where real healing can take place. No matter where you are on the recovery continuum, the changes that I implemented can make a difference (research also supports this) by helping to bring your immune system back into balance and heal your brain. It’s up to you to prioritize your health. I challenge you to become the owner of your immune system, not the victim.
Using her experience in public health, Lisa took a devastating diagnosis of autoimmune encephalitis (brain inflammation), and implemented real changes to diet, mindset, lifestyle and her environment, alongside conventional medicine, in the pursuit of recovery. Before becoming ill with what was eventually diagnosed as LGI1 Autoimmune Encephalitis, Lisa, her husband and three sons, spent many years living, working and travelling in South-East Asia, Venezuela and Canada, before finally settling in Houston, Texas for 10 years. Their last move in 2020 was to the beautiful mountain town of Nelson, British Columbia, Canada.
The moment that changed everything…
It was a beautiful summer’s day on July 5th, 2017 at our family cottage on a picturesque lake several hours north of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. The temperature was perfect, the sun was sparkling on the lake, and there was not a cloud in the sky. My eldest son was at his summer job in the hardware department of the general store in our idyllic little town and my two younger sons and I had just made smoothies and were sitting lakeside on the deck contemplating an imminent boat ride. We were having a lazy day after a week of company that included my two adorable young nephews, charming brother-in-law (a neurologist), and his lovely wife (a pharmacist), who had all left the day before. My husband had also left with them to fly back to Houston, Texas for work. It was a perfect day for relaxing at the cottage.
As I settled into a deep red Muskoka chair and we discussed the fun we’d had over the last few days, I looked out over the sparkling lake and suddenly saw flashing lights in the sky and a strange pulsating movement. “I don’t feel very well”, I remarked to my boys. The next thing I remember is waking up lying on the deck, cheek on the sandy, wooden deck boards, and feeling very tired and disoriented. I could see the legs of paramedics and firemen around me and hear my friend Karen’s voice calmly repeating, “sweetie, it’s ok, you’ve had a seizure”. This was my first grand mal seizure. From that day forward, it would take almost seven months to finally find a neurologist to determine that the cause of my illness was LGI1 Autoimmune Encephalitis (AE), a rare disease that results in brain inflammation and can cause a wide array of symptoms such as seizures, memory loss, brain fog, fatigue, difficulty walking, and more depending on the type and area of the brain affected.
In hindsight, I had neurological symptoms for 11 months leading up to the grand mal seizure. But the seizure really marks the beginning of my journey with Autoimmune Encephalitis as I finally started being taken seriously by doctors and we gradually started inching closer to diagnosis. I spent the next five years, first becoming increasingly more ill and incapacitated, and then gradually rebuilding my life and my health through a committed and holistic approach to recovery. It became my mission to not only survive, but also to thrive and do everything I possibly could to overcome this devastating diagnosis. In the early days of my illness, when I was having about 30-40 small seizures a day and sleeping about 20 hours a day as a result, losing my ability to multitask as a busy mom of three boys, losing my ability to find the right words, to spell and to walk independently, a dear friend said to me, “Your job is to get to the next step”. Those words became my mantra and remain so to this day.
Through my journey to recovery, I implemented changes to diet, mindset, lifestyle and environment to decrease inflammation in my body and make it a suitable host for the healing that it needed to do to regain what I had lost through the process of this autoimmune disease. With a public health background, I believe whole heartedly in the role of conventional medicine, without which, it’s likely I would not have survived. All the changes I implemented to nutrition, mindset, lifestyle and my environment, were made alongside my choices to follow the advice of doctors for conventional medical treatments. Like many who suffer from autoimmune disease it would take visits to numerous neurologists and ultimately involved a trip across the country to finally receive a diagnosis. My journey also involved the discovery of conventional approaches to rehabilitation such as physical, occupational, and speech therapy, as well as vestibular and vision therapy. In my journey to recovery, I learned firsthand that there are many ways to bring your immune system back into balance and promote brain healing. It starts with a commitment to prioritize your health.
