Where It Started

Jennifer had spent years watching her world shrink. What began as troubling symptoms in 2021 grew into something devastating by 2022 and 2023 — debilitating vertigo and migraines that arrived like clockwork, consuming up to 15 days out of every month and leaving her confined to bed rest, working from home over Zoom only because a gracious boss refused to let her go. Then came the Parkinson's diagnosis, and with it, a new layer of loss.

Every morning she woke with her hands shaking uncontrollably — tremors that crept in overnight as her medication wore off. She needed it three to four times a day just to function. Her legs would collapse without warning. Once, stepping out of the car in ice and snow, her legs simply gave out. She slid back to the car door, unable to feel or command her own limbs. After that, she never left the house without her husband — and never without her rollator walker.

The fatigue was total. She'd spend her days flopped on the sofa, unable to cook, unable to play with her grandchildren, unable to walk the peaceful hiking trails she and her husband had always loved. He started taking her on convertible rides just so she could feel the sun on her face. “I was existing,” she said simply.

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“I had fear because I fear what's going to come that I'm going to have to deal with. I fear this getting worse. I fear the debilitation increasing because I know scientifically and medically it should.”

What Changed

Jennifer had already done her research. She knew about mercury from dental work, knew she'd been exposed to mold, and had been searching for answers. But when she found the Pompa Program, something shifted. “I had a knowing in my spirit,” she said. “I knew this was it.”

What surprised her most was what she hadn't accounted for. As a recently retired director of a victims advocacy program, she had spent decades responding to crisis calls at 2 a.m., rushing to hospitals after sexual assaults, carrying the weight of other people's trauma. She had never considered that a stressor. The program helped her see the full picture — not just the physical toxins, but the years of compounded emotional and physiological stress that had accumulated without her realizing it. Growing up barefoot on a Louisiana farm in the 1970s, exposed to pesticides like Paraquat, was another piece of the puzzle she hadn't fully connected.

Her coach, Vanya, became a steady presence through the harder stretches. “I would be in tears and she'd say, 'You're doing good. You're amazing.'”

Life Now

The changes didn't announce themselves dramatically — they crept in quietly while Jennifer was simply living. She and her husband had traveled out of state for an extended trip, and somewhere in the middle of it, she realized she hadn't had a migraine or vertigo episode in at least a month. Maybe two. Those “twin sisters,” as she called them — the vertigo and migraines that had shadowed each other for years — were gone.

The tremors stopped. She no longer wakes with shaking hands. Where she once needed her Parkinson's medication three to four times a day, she takes it once.

The fatigue that had imprisoned her has lifted. She went 12 miles on her under-desk pedaler. She gets on the floor to play with her two grandchildren — both under two — and gets back up without pushing off with her hands. She's back in the kitchen, cooking the Southern meals she loves, checking the Pinterest recipes she'd saved for the day she felt well enough to make them.

When she returned home after three months away, her family was stunned. “You said you were better, but *wow*, Mom.”

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“I actually feel like the Pompa program has given me my life back. I don't have fear now. I just can't. It's been wonderful to see the changes in my body.”

Her advice to anyone just starting: don't compare your journey to someone else's, and don't give up when progress feels slow.

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“Don't get weary in well doing. The condition that I came from to where I am now — I did not expect this. I expected an increase, but not a flip flop. Not the flip flop that I've had.”