A healthy gut is key to good health. With FND, mine is a mess. Three weeks ago, while awaiting a flight back to the U.S. from São Paulo, I felt ill. I decided to take the flight anyway, one that required 3 connections with no time between stops. I had non-stop diarrhea for the next 16 hour trip, then spent 4 days hospitalized after returning to CA. I was diagnosed with diverticulitis, colitis, and told that I also had an upper stomach hiatal hernia along with kidney failure due to dehydration. I'm still not back to normal, but I've had a good, healthy diet for the past 40 years: lacto-ovo vegetarian, sugar and caffeine-free, shunning almost all processed foods as well. I always thought my lungs were my weakest part of my body, having had pleurisy as a child, and several bouts of pneumonia, the worst during Marine Corps boot camp. Doctors will not order further tests--scans, colonoscopy, or other exams. My wife and I had excellent healthcare while living as ex-pats in a country that offered universal healthcare to residents, but back here in the U.S. we're stuck with expensive, abysmal "healthcare."

Having FND, it's important to cut out stress from my life. I meditate, do Taichi, exercise daily, eat well, and have good social support. Yet, I live on the verge of flipping over to the debilitating effects of FND. I'm still feeling withdrawal symptoms from abruptly stopping Klonopin after taking 2 mg/daily for many decades. It's been over year since I last used Benzos, but I still crave using them. I haven't been able to locate a doctor who will prescribe them, not even very small doses; Even 0.5 mg to take occasionally would help, most definitely when I'm having an anxiety or panic attack, so I'm becoming more and more agoraphobic and housebound. This is not living. We're older, and should my wife die before me, I plan to suicide. I absolutely refuse to end up in a nursing home. I volunteered quite a bit when I was younger and mobile, and after volunteering at was supposedly an excellent nursing home, Sunrise, I saw inhumane treatment such as poor hygienic conditions, lack of medical care, failure to respond to residents' needs, and worst of all, just plain neglect.