Transcript of Episode 86: Hormone Imbalances
With Dr. Daniel Pompa
Dr. Pompa:
Hey, we’re live here with Cellular Healing TV with the most special guest of all. I had to drag her out of her morning Facebook and bring her here to interview. We’ve talked a lot about hormones in the last few weeks and even how to raise healthy babies and having babies at home. All of which she’s really the expert. This topic of hormones—I owe it all to her. She has been my guinea pig. My illness drove me to a level of learning that I would have never, ever been able to do; likewise, I would have never been able to really learn about hormones and its connection with toxicity if it weren’t for Merily.
Before I even go to her—you know, I talk about my story frequently and how it was her that brought me through the hardest time in my life. It was her who was the strength one. I was questioning God. I was questioning why. She reminded me that God had a purpose in the whole thing, and reminded me that I would be here—meaning that I would be having a message to bring to the world. Obviously, that has really happened. We both are now dedicated to this message that we know is really needed throughout the world. It’s a message of healing, and it’s a message of triumph.
Most of you out there probably just know that part of the story—that I did overcome an incurable illness, and it was through that hardship that I learned most of this cellular healing and cellular detox that I teach. That became the calling through adversity. As a matter of fact, Merily and I have a saying that we love and that is, “From pain to purpose.” That has been our life, so I wanted to share some other ends of that. I’m going to bring you all the way back to when you and I met back in college. This may get a little silly.
Merily:
Guaranteed.
Dr. Pompa:
I was into health even back then, right? I came from a family where we cooked everything at home—it was one of those things that I even knew how to cook just from watching my mother for so long. I went into Merily’s apartment, and I opened up the closet. Now, I always say, “Oodles of noodles, pretzels, and peanut butter.” I don’t know, but you always added something else.
Merily:
Salsa and instant potatoes.
Dr. Pompa:
Instant potatoes, okay. That was her closet.
Merily:
I did not eat at home.
Dr. Pompa:
I know, see that’s what I didn’t understand. I never met anyone that never ate at home.
Merily:
I never ate at home. We always went out to dinner—still doing that.
Dr. Pompa:
I said, “How do you live here?” To me, it was like someone lives there because they have food. I was one of those guys that if I met you—even if I just met you I just kind of meandered and started opening refrigerators.
Merily:
He did, everywhere.
Dr. Pompa:
We would walk in -inaudible- and she’s like, “You’re in their refrigerator.” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m just seeing what they have, because it tells me a lot about the person.” In an Italian family it’s like, “Hey, what’s ours is yours,” especially when it came to food. I walked in hers’ and started opening closets going, “You don’t really live here, do you?” The point of that story is this—
Merily:
I did stock up on those pretzels though.
Dr. Pompa:
Yes.
Merily:
So did you when you started eating them.
Dr. Pompa:
She got me hooked on those hard pretzels. Anyway, when we met she had these hormone issues, right? She was taking these big horse pills every time it was her period. I remember her allergies being so bad she would be in bed for days with these compresses on. I was thinking, “What is this?”
Merily:
You’re fast-forwarding to Atlanta, because I didn’t have allergies as bad as when we moved south.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, but I remember that—and the pills I remember as well. The bottom line is severe allergies, severe menstrual cramps, and different things going on there. Then, she started adopting the way I ate, and a lot of that stuff just went away. The pills went away. A lot of the allergies changed and got better. Then, down the road you ended up with a diagnosis. Merily’s tough. You have to understand—
Merily:
A diagnosis? I forgot.
Dr. Pompa:
Yes, Merily is very tough. Through a lot of things she just kept going just like most mothers do. Then, they ended up doing a PAP smear, and it was actually—wasn’t it actually your midwife that did the first one?
Merily:
Yeah, probably.
Dr. Pompa:
Anyway, it was abnormal. They did another one abnormal, so it wasn’t a fluke. Then, you went to a gynecologist. They looked up and said, “Stage III—one stage before cancer.”
Merily:
He fast forwarded about seven years.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s where we’re going here. If I don’t do that this will be a two hour show, so when she pulls into the detail I’m going to keep pulling her out.
Merily:
It was about seven years later, because we had just gotten married, right? It was after—was it—I think it was after I miscarried, actually. Wasn’t it?
Dr. Pompa:
See the details? She has to be so precise.
Merily:
I’m trying to figure it out. It takes me a while.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s go to the bottom line. The bottom line is this—one stage before cancer. Precancerous cells is basically what they were telling her. They wanted to do this whole thing—the colposcopy—
Merily:
They did do that.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, they did do that. They said, “Absolutely, this looks bad. These are bad cells.” Then, they wanted to go in and take out more, right?
Merily:
Mm—hmm.
Dr. Pompa:
You chose, “No.” She said, “No way.” You fasted for 10 or 13 days.
Merily:
Ten.
Dr. Pompa:
I think it was a little bit longer. I think it was maybe 12. Anyway, the bottom line is—she just water fasted, by the way. We talk about the benefits of beef stock, you know? Water fasting is actually some of my early background where I learned healing. Animals water fast obviously without being told when they’re sick.
Merily:
(Off topic conversation) I have a doodle on my lap in case you’re wondering what I’m doing down here.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s the same doodle that causes this thing to go back and forth, and you see things shaking. This is the one, so she’s been on her lap. Anyway, so bottom line is she fasted, and tests after that at some time were normal. Of course, that’s what they said absolutely would not happen. They thought we were absolutely nuts. However, with that said we still didn’t really go upstream and know why. This is a very big point, because most people just stop there. There were other symptoms that started arising—even some other bizarre symptoms, but we’ll get to that. I’m just going to let Merily tell the story, because I know she’s going to catch me on the things—
Merily:
He’s all over the place.
Dr. Pompa:
I’m trying to get to something.
Merily:
Then, maybe I should tell the story.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, folks you might as well go get a cup of coffee and pack it in. It’s going to be a long morning if she’s telling the story. Go ahead, and tell that part.
Merily:
The point is that I realized I had lead issues. Actually, only because when you were figuring out your problems—and you did the heavy metal test the right way. I just wanted to do it. Whatever he’s doing I wanted to do, so that was the only reason I did that test. When my lead results came back—
Dr. Pompa:
We’re going back many years here, folks.
Merily:
We were shocked, and then I really—because honestly, I really didn’t think I would have had symptoms of lead poisoning. My lead was so high that all of a sudden I became an object of interest.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s just cut right to the chase. Now, I’m fast-forwarding a lot, but we realized it was her mother where she got the load of the lead. Actually, I’ve said this in past shows, but at a certain point we start seeing things in our kids who are never vaccinated and our children who were raised just perfectly. We started seeing GI symptoms, and we said, “Oh, lead test.” All of them had high lead. They got it from her, and that is the number one way—Merily got it from her mom. She also chewed on her green crib—she always talks about that.
Merily:
I remember doing that.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s true. There is lead in everything. We grew up in a lead generation. Okay, so now we fast-forward to where there was a short period of time where she was a vegan and—
Merily:
Pregnancy, and the first—actually, into my pregnancy with—oh, Isaac, too.
Dr. Pompa:
Okay.
Merily:
Both pregnancies I was a vegan, and I nursed. I even nursed when I was pregnant with Isaac—I was nursing Daniel. Then, it was after that—probably around the time when you got sick. It was right before that where I wasn’t feeling well. I was getting these, like taps in my head and—
Dr. Pompa:
Weird anxiety, and it just wasn’t her. She became this different person.
Merily:
I was really preoccupied with how I felt. I mean, you don’t really think about how you feel. You just live life and feel. I kept saying, “I feel as if I’m not in my body.” That drove us to the bookstore.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, the internet back then just didn’t have what it has today. We’re talking early internet here. We didn’t even go to the internet. You went to where there was a ton of books in the medical areas, and that’s where I was a fixer. I was going to figure this out, because it wasn’t like you were going to go take a drug. That just wasn’t who we were.
Merily:
We got onto something. You definitely touched on all of those things.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly, I did. I was sniffing down the right roads then, but it wasn’t until my father’s dinner that one night.
Merily:
It was Easter.
Dr. Pompa:
Easter, there you go. Yeah, and my father said, “You made this beautiful roast.” You have to understand the Italian brick-layer ate meat all his life—finally she ate some meat. The days after that she was like, “I feel amazing.”
Merily:
Yeah, I felt completely and noticeably different. I knew—we both knew that, “Oh, my gosh, there’s something going on with”—obviously whether it was the B-vitamins or something I wasn’t getting. It was also depleted from nursing the kids and being pregnant. That was it. I started eating meat, and that’s when I actually learned the meat wasn’t the problem, but it’s what we’ve done to the meat that was the issue. Remember we had read John Robbin’s book?
Dr. Pompa:
Right, that’s when we started discovering the differences of grass-fed meat versus not.
Merily:
That book kind of freaked us out. We stayed away from it from that point on, but then we learned along the way.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, conventional dairy and conventional meat are toxic as heck. Understanding that it’s what man has done to both of those things—and they’re two of the healthiest foods on the planet when done right—the way for centuries that they should be eaten. Let’s fast-forward one more time. It was the meat that made her feel better, because she was massively methyl depleted. That’s R5 in my five R’s.
Methylation gets depleted in any type of stress; physical, chemical, or emotional. The body’s reaction is the same. Her lead level was absolutely depleting her methylation. Back then, there was really no stress. Pregnancy, I would argue is a natural physical stress that could have—and obviously the meat for the babies depleted you, plus the levels.
Merily:
Your sickness stressed me out.
Dr. Pompa:
Was it before that at that point?
Merily:
No.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s what I’m saying. Anyway, at that point there was really no other—
Merily:
I mean, no—but you being sick was extremely stressful.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I know. Fast-forward though—yeah, that was before. The bottom line is at that point it was mostly just the physical and the chemical stress from the lead that was depleting her methylation. The other problem with that is that when you deplete methylation that you need to adapt to stress. It doesn’t matter what kind of stress. You take your methyl groups from many places, because you need these groups to activate cortisol, which is a stress hormone—to deactivate it so you’re not running high cortisol which is very damaging, dangerous, and throws off insulin and glucose levels. It’s very bad.
You also need to activate adrenaline and other hormones. Think of these little carbon3 hydrogens—these methyl groups—as switches that tell your DNA what to do. It protects your DNA. It even has a lot to do with glutathione. When methylation drops, your body’s cellular detoxification pathways drop a lot of things in the cell—that’s why it’s one of the main R’s. So many people today have massive methylation—I call it the epidemic within the epidemic of neurotoxins today. Methylation was a problem. If you remind me, we’ll talk a little bit about the MTHFR, because that’s so popular right now. I had some issues there, but we’ll get there.
The bottom line was that she became massively methyl depleted. She didn’t have enough of these little carbon3 hydrogens, because its other job is to get rid of toxic hormones. Now, we started seeing these other hormone problems, and we run a 24-hour hormone test. That shows that she has toxic hormones—toxic estrogen building up. There’s two ways the body gets rid of it, a phase I and a phase II detox, right? Phase II is really dependent on these -inaudible- that attach to these toxic hormone metabolites and it gets rid of them. She was devoid. I mean, she had nothing there. Even her phase I where she wasn’t converting these hormones was disrupted. You can talk a little bit about your mom—but her mom died of cancer. We know that her mom had lead issues growing up in the lead generation. A lot of her hormone problems she never got upstream to it. Tell a little bit about your mom’s story.
Merily:
I think I took that test right after my mom died. She’s been gone now about eight years.
Dr. Pompa:
I think you’re right, because obviously we were scared.
Merily:
Yeah, right. I felt I was on the path of what had happened to her. She had breast cancer when she was 50. After removing the lump and radiation—ten years later she had uterine cancer, and within two years she died. She didn’t do anything to get to the cause. Of course, we tried to encourage her to do that. It just wasn’t in my mom’s personality, I think. I honestly think some of that lack of initiation had to do with her lead, which is interesting—it’s sad that some of the inhibitors emotionally become so you make excuses for things. You can see patterns like that. I can relate to them, I guess—
Dr. Pompa:
Mercury and lead both are known to cause different psychosis. I always saw your mother as having a couple different personalities. She was a sweet lady, but she just had this thing about her like, “No, we’re not going to go down that road.” You could tell that there were some mental issues looking back. Even when I look back at my mom I think, “Oh, my gosh. If I only knew what I know now.” My mom had a stroke and ended up with dementia. If I look back at my mom’s life I see these patterns that just show—
Merily:
Mercury poisoning.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. It’s like, “Wow.”
Merily:
Yeah, your mom would fly off the handle.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh my, gosh yeah. In her mom, we definitely saw this pattern of lead. My mom had this pattern of mercury, and I’m going, “Oh gosh.” That’s where I inherited my first batch of mercury in utero—your first batch of lead in utero. We’re going to talk a little bit later about that, because in every pregnancy you kind of just have different or new symptoms.
Merily:
Yeah, I remember the worst was—
Dr. Pompa:
It was always after. During pregnancy you were fine. It was always after.
Merily:
Yeah, and I think the worst was with Daniel—the first one.
Dr. Pompa:
The first one. During pregnancy you get rid of things. One of the things is women tap into their bone, because it’s a great nutrient source. There’s a lot of demands on the body, so women lose bone during pregnancy which is normal, but the problem is that lead is stored mostly in the bone. It was from the time you were a baby. Then, pregnancy comes and all of a sudden out comes the lead into Daniel. Thank God, Daniel caught a lot of that, right? He’s still getting it out. We’ll talk about that too. Afterwards, of course you’re being affected by lead. By the way, autoimmune—a lot of it started after pregnancy.
Number one, you have the physical stressor of the pregnancy and often times an emotional stressor. Then, you have the lead coming out of the bone which is the perfect storm of three stressors. That’s how autoimmune gets triggered. Many people who don’t feel well are autoimmune. I read a great article, “Autoimmune Answer.” You should read that article. Symptoms started, and then each pregnancy was kind of a repeat. Things happened through those pregnancies, because you were releasing lead. Then, after the pregnancies certain things would happen come and go. There was just no explanation. We started getting rid of the lead, and really that was the only way that we got her 24 hour hormone test to actually get better. As the lead came out, methylation—then she was able to get better without having to keep taking a lot of methylation. You still take methylation periodically, and so do I.
By the way, let’s have the methylation conversation. Right now, it is in vogue—the MTHFR SNP genotype. I am homozygous. What that means, folks is that I have the worst genes for creating methyl groups. My pathways are genetically weaker, if you will, that I don’t do well. I can take regular folate and it’s said that people with homozygous methylation issues can’t. I have no B12 issues. I didn’t have the issues she had. She has no SNPs on these genes. She has perfect genes when it comes to her methylation. I guess my point here is the stressors matter more than the genotype. I don’t care what genotype you are, that does not make you sick, folks.
I know there’s a lot of these things where people are looking at their genetic type saying, “Oh my, gosh. I have to do this, this, and this.” I’ve been looking at these genotypes now for several years going, “Well, I’m not sure what to do with it anymore, because the things they say apply we’re not clinically that they’re saying are true.” Many of these people like myself that are homozygous can take regular folate, and some can’t. We just don’t have enough research there yet. I think that’s going to continue to advance.
Right now, if you have genes—listen, on those genetic tests I have three of the four most predictable obesity genes, three out of the four, and I sit before you not obese. Prove my point. I’m violating all my bad genes. I do know this, I have some genes that predispose me to building up heavy metals that’s for sure, and methylation could obviously be a part of that. There’s some reality to it, but the boy’s intelligence figured out a way around these genes—trust me, it does. Here we are. We go through the lead, and her tests got better and better, and better, and better over time.
Merily:
Oh my, gosh years. I mean, I’m still—
Dr. Pompa:
Let me talk about that, because it came back up.
Merily:
We’re talking about the metals not the hormones?
Dr. Pompa:
Yes, so over years it gets better. By the way, lead takes longer to get out of the body than it does mercury. I think one of my pet peeves in this area of heavy metals via muscle testing, hair, and who knows—a lot of inaccurate ways. I detoxed for that already—a long time. I think three months. Folks, listen. There was a great study just last year that was out—fifteen years on average to get rid of lead. That’s how deep it is in the bone. I could not agree more based on my clinical findings. That’s why my goal—and you know this, is that I don’t ever treat anybody. I teach them and coach them the process of how to do this themselves, because it takes years. This stuff is deep just like mercury. It is deep into the nerve tissue.
I chelated for four years with on and off cycles. If you haven’t read my article, “True Cellular Detox” please do. If you haven’t read the article on when detox is dangerous, please do. All the 5R articles—I think this story that we just told is in R5, all of which you can find on my Dr. Pompa website. It took years to get rid of it, and we did. We got it down, down, down, down, and then Merily hits perimenopause and new symptoms. This was just recently and I said, “Gosh, you should have brought a lead test.” Let me tell you the symptoms—none of the crazies as much. Did I just say crazies?
Merily:
Yeah, I’m not crazy.
Dr. Pompa:
I know. I know. I was waiting for the response, but I said none of that.
Merily:
Next up, we’ll talk about his crazies.
Dr. Pompa:
We can talk about it now. I’m not afraid. Anyway, the pain—so she starts getting all this pain like, “I did this. I did that—oh, my hips.” I’m saying in perimenopause you’re getting these certain hormones that are releasing and there is expansion going on. I could tell—
Merily:
Nobody wants to see that, by the way.
Dr. Pompa:
Expansion, that’s a bad one.
Merily:
Yeah, that’s a bad one.
Dr. Pompa:
I couldn’t visually see expansion—
Merily:
You know what happens when you’re pregnant and your hips move out? I’m like, “Okay.”
Dr. Pompa:
Ligaments become lax—is that a better word?
Merily:
Yes, you should start saying, “Ligament lax.”
Dr. Pompa:
All right, so the ligaments start becoming lax, and then it’s like you just have these injuries and re-injuries. The bottom line is that I’m always upstream. I’m always saying, “Why are these hormones reacting not as normally as they should?” We ended up running another lead test. I was right. Her lead was back up, but not nearly what it was before, but back up.
Merily:
Back up significantly from where it had been for quite a while. It kept dropping—
Dr. Pompa:
Right, so then she started detoxing. Once again, it was like the first cycle and you said, “Oh my, gosh I slept better.” You had noticeably different—
Merily:
I haven’t quit detoxing, but I just haven’t been doing it as regularly.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s normal. That’s the way we do it. We do it every once in a while once you get it down.
Merily:
I definitely try to be more regular on the cycle, because obviously I have to get rid of this stuff.
Dr. Pompa:
I just don’t want to gloss over that point. There’s been some studies, even recently that showed there are these times of life that we get rid of lead and even mercury. Through puberty is one of them when girls and boys start maturing. Obviously, here we are in perimenopause which is one of them. Also, in older age they’ve been linking the heavy metals, especially lead coming out of the bone as we get older and lose bone. Then, here comes the lead again and how it was linked to strokes and dementia. This is significant, and it shows you how deep-rooted these metals are. The same happens for mercury. We get into different phases of life and the lead comes out. Tell Daniel’s story a little bit.
Merily:
Honestly, most of you that know me or know us and our story know that Daniel was a ski racer. That’s his heart. Unfortunately, when he had gone—he went to school at -inaudible- and it was right then after he got there that he—and our kids obviously go through puberty a little late because of the way we’ve fed them.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, that’s a big issue because they’re not hitting puberty until 16 or 17, and it was my fault—trust me.
Merily:
It was an emotional trigger for them, because they’re not equal with their peers. Honestly, for our kids it’s a couple years. Anyway, Daniel was away at school, and he started growing, fortunately. He was obviously beginning to ski at a different level, and a lot of the pressure from different things—at first, we thought it was from his boots. It was like, “The boots are too tight.”
Dr. Pompa:
The bottom line is that he wasn’t healing. He was not healing.
Merily:
Unfortunately—it wasn’t like he was limping, but then that added an emotional stressor for him, because he couldn’t do what he wanted to do which made it even more difficult. Finally, he ended up coming home and staying home in April. They let him finish the year from home, but he actually developed compartment syndrome. It was really during his understanding—because you finally said—because we were initially thinking, “It’s the boots. It’s tight. It’s new. You have to eat this. You have to do that.” All of a sudden, one day Dan was like, “Oh my, gosh.”
Dr. Pompa:
Just like with her perimenopause. I said, “It’s the lead coming back out.” They ran the test, and it was. It was at a 26 again. I was just stunned. Like her, as soon as he started the first cycle it was remarkable. After a few cycles his body healed it.
Merily:
It’s been two years, and now he tried to ski at Park City, and he couldn’t. The same thing would happen. The growth combined with the demand on a physical body—he kept trying, and it just wasn’t working. Now, he is so dialed in. It really is his life. He is on schedule. He feeds himself.
Dr. Pompa:
He went into ketosis—keto adaptation. It worked tremendously. He gained all this muscle and got super lean.
Merily:
In, like two months.
Dr. Pompa:
Obviously, he was very consistent with his detox this time. When he was younger we were literally waking the kids up at night—it was unbelievable what we had to do. We were utilizing true binders and the whole process that I teach. I had to apply that to every one of my family members. As a matter of fact, even out of the twins—it’s like, now Olivia is doing it, and she’s off in Spain. She is detoxing.
Merily:
Her mom was Rh-negative. She was also a dental hygienist, so not only did they give her 65 mcg of mercury in the RhoGAM shot—
Dr. Pompa:
It was funny because—and if you know our story—now I’m going to talk a little bit about that more again. We ended up with twins through a tragedy which changed our life. I really want to bring that up. The boy was vaccine damaged around four. There were signs when he was vaccinated earlier that we saw, and we were trying to convince his parents not to vaccinate Dylan.
Merily:
Even when he was born.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. That went on, and I had dad convinced at one point. Of course, all the family members ended up vaccinating him and sent him over the edge on the autism spectrum. Fast-forward and we ended up with both of those children, because their parents tragically died. Dylan, I just started applying what we’ve learned here—what we teach on this show all the time. Dylan is an amazing child in this case. He’s 19-years-old, and you’d never know anything went wrong. He is the shiest of our children. Olivia was always the fine one—the fine one.
Now, all of a sudden she gets to be a teenager—one of these transitions, right? She started to get sensory issues for taste and sound. Here it comes. Now, later here in life we’re detoxing her. She was normal all through that time, and then later in life all of a sudden her metal issues start coming out. Literally, all seven of us have been through these protocols. We’ve detoxed the heck out of Simon. Now, Simon’s on the diet. Our 11-year-old who was basically raised at the most stressful time of our life—we’ll get there in a second.
When I say these protocols for cellular healing were born out of pain and this great purpose. I cannot believe that we had to literally take every one of our children and ourselves through this process. My wife’s over here welling up, because it was a very emotional journey. I can’t remember where we were on that subject.
Merily:
We were talking about Daniel, so Daniel—
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, okay.
Merily:
Anyway, Daniel is not—
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, he is amazing now. The point is that lead came out during that time. It’s a process of pulling it out. I have to say, folks, it’s a pet peeve of mine, because heavy metal detox or any detox has to be done correctly. It’s not about taking Karela. It’s not about taking cilantro. It’s not about these things. When you talk to scientists, they understand that in real detox you have to upregulate cell function. That’s key. That’s where it starts. You have to go upstream to the cellular level.
People do colon cleanse, or this cleanse, or that cleanse. All of it is downstream. Nothing is wrong with any of that, but it’s downstream. You have to get up to the cell, and that’s really where it starts. Utilizing true binders that are really strong enough to grab onto a heavy metal and escort it out of the body is another part. Read the article, “True Cellular Detox.” I don’t have time to get into that, but if this was learned I think you’ll appreciate the article more. That information was learned through this—no doubt through this.
Merily:
It tells you what not to do, too.
Dr. Pompa:
Part of our story—I said it last night to someone, or they said it to me. They said, “You know, if you all didn’t go through this you would never, ever be able to carry this torch—carry this mission.” He said, “Dr. Pompa, you would not be the same person.” He’s so right. We were actually even discussing some other things. When we inherited the twins life changed dramatically. I won’t get into the details of the exact story, but I just had gotten on the tail side of myself getting better. I was very excited about that. It wasn’t long after that, maybe two weeks that we got a phone call. I was saying, “Oh my, gosh. I’m on the other side of this thing, and I’m so excited.”
Merily:
I can’t wait to ride my bike. I can’t wait to have a normal life again.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and then we got the phone call that Lisa, her cousin and best friend growing up—her husband shot her, and then he shot himself. That’s the tragedy that ended up with two seven-year-olds, a boy and a girl—one vaccine damaged on the autism spectrum in our home. You can imagine—we just had Simon six weeks before that, so we went from two kids to five in about six weeks. I was still in my multi-chemically sensitive mode, so I still wasn’t myself. I was better. The fatigue was gone. I could sleep through most of my nights. However, I was still chemically sensitive and trying to figure that out. I was allergic to the world.
Then, we get these kids in our home, and that alone is enough to floor people, because we had this massive disruption in our family. Maybe the curse of it all was the fact that there was a trust. There was some money left over from the insurance, etc. That became the biggest—I don’t even know what to call it.
Merily:
Nemesis.
Dr. Pompa:
Nemesis, yeah. The grandmother of the kids basically said—and it really wasn’t even about the money. It was more about control—if you take these kids, then basically you’re going to regret it, and you’re going to spend your life in court. We still have that e-mail, right? We still have that e-mail.
Merily:
She actually warned—that was a warning, I think over the phone. Then, later it came in an e-mail. She reminded us of what she was intending to do.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and she had spent—
Merily:
This was my aunt, by the way.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, but she was never stable. She had her life in wills, trusts, and the legal department as a paralegal. She knew what to do.
Merily:
She is a smart woman.
Dr. Pompa:
Basically, they came after us with massive legalities. At one point, the headline said, “Chiropractor steals from orphans.” That’s when we lost everything. I lost my practice. I lost everything.
Merily:
It was so clear to me, because when Danny got sick—I mean, when he got sick he got so sick. The bottom fell out of our life—it was completely, in a night, different than it was the day before. I remember saying, “What is going on? He’s never even sick.” I remember God just spoke to my heart and said to me, “Your husband’s going to get well. He is going to take a message to the world.” That was it. I was angered in that I didn’t have to think about it. There was just no insecurity in that. That’s obviously why I was so capable of encouraging him, because I just knew that God had it. Then, when this happened, which was just inconceivable to who we were—to be accused of things that were—
Dr. Pompa:
I think the worst part about it was that we had advisors and some of the people who had actually helped us—
Merily:
Right, we weren’t making decisions.
Dr. Pompa:
They were putting that money into our bank account and my money that we earned and were just spending as a family. That ended up being the root of the thing that made us guilty, right? We couldn’t track every dollar spent on those particular kids. We had adopted the kids. They were our family. We were just living life as a family.
Merily:
That is why we adopted them to be a family, so they would have security knowing that they were wanted.
Dr. Pompa:
Unknowingly, that’s not what we should have done. Actually, we’re -inaudible- in Florida, because that’s where they lived at the time. That’s fine to do, and that’s where the advice is. Stupidly, we moved the trust to Pennsylvania, and there’s a lot of differences.
Merily:
The bank wanted that. They actually wanted—
Dr. Pompa:
They wanted us to do it that way.
Merily:
We look back—you know, you live in hindsight.
Dr. Pompa:
We should have looked into it. It’s just the way we were—
Merily:
We were in survival. He was sick. We had little kids. We had two traumatized kids. I literally—I look back and I spent my life driving Dylan to vision therapy, taking Olivia to counseling, and running around. The grocery store wasn’t close. Just doing all the things you have to do as a young mom, but a young mom of five and trying to make these two kids part of our existing life, and realizing within that, that nothing is ever going to be the same. I still lived my life from a position of my expectation, and that was the hardest thing to let go of. It literally took me a decade to realize that this life wasn’t going to work out the way I expected.
Dr. Pompa:
One of my prayers was that we were allowing the kids to go to the grandmother’s for every other weekend and different things like that. It was their grandma. God really put on my heart not to—that was really the only person that connected them to their past life. I just said, “I don’t ever want them to hold that against me.” We let them go, but what we didn’t know was what she was feeding into them that, “They’re trying to kill you.” Literally, these are the things that were said. As they grew up, they told us these things later. They knew—it’s looking back that was wicked and wrong. They would come into our house and it would be this massive separation.
My prayer—remember when God just spoke to me? I mean, not spoke to me this way, but in my heart was a clear three things that he was going to restore. One of those was a united family. We never felt like we were in our home. There was this separation. I can tell you God is amazing. Our family today is absolutely amazing. The twins are amazing. We still are living in that stress, honestly. For so many years we went through the court system and lost everything.
Most importantly, my father raised me that your reputation is everything. I lost my reputation. What’s worse than stealing from orphans? It said, “Chiropractor steals from orphans”—practially nothing, right? Isn’t there a saying, “He’s so bad he steals from orphans?” We never got to tell our side of the story. We never got to tell them, “Yeah, we were just -inaudible- as a family. That’s what we were doing. That made us guilty, so we had to settle it. It has been just an absolute—
Merily:
Stressor.
Dr. Pompa:
Stressor coming through, but to take this story full circle it’s made us who we are. I know that I would have never been strong enough to carry what God has for us with this mission. Through the sicknesses, through the challenge, and through that vicious attack on our family God has raised us up.
Merily:
We knew when we—when Danny could not walk away from his patients, his practice, and taking care of those. That’s his heart to care for people. He just couldn’t leave it. I kept saying to him—we didn’t lose a patient. Our patients know who he is.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, through the headlines, and all of that stuff—because she was on every radio show, she was interviewed on television like, “This is what they did.” It was just like—and our attorneys are going, “Don’t say a word. Don’t say a word.” We never did, and this is probably the most we’ve ever said sitting publicly. It was just horrific sitting there going, “Uh.”
Merily:
I knew that if God wanted his practice in Wexford to stay in business, then he would have brought what was needed in order to make that happen. It was so clear that it was not happening. I kept saying to him, “When are you going to let it go? When are you going to let it go?” I hate saying, “It’s only money,” because that sounds like it’s not of value. It’s not like that. It’s just that what he suffered for, what we had gone through as a family, and what we had taken on with good intention had spun to a different angle of something that we didn’t even like the people that were talked about in those newspaper articles.
Dr. Pompa:
People still would be like, “Oh, you still have the kids?”
Merily:
Oh my, gosh.
Dr. Pompa:
It was because they said the kids were taking from us. It was just the media spun it so dramatic. I’m going, “What?!” We were just blindsided. We never did get to tell the story. Let me just make that point. We just settled. By the way, when it all started I just said, “Well, let’s just pay every drop back that we ever used for our family” which is crazy, because we were supposed to use it. Anyway, that was my solution, and guess what happened in the end after all the legal stuff, the battle, just all of the head—we ended up just paying it all back. I mean, it was like, “Gosh.”
Merily:
In it all, you finally knew, “There’s nothing I can do. I have to close the doors.” They were actually closed for us.
Dr. Pompa:
Right, the practice. I literally thought it was for—God knew. He called me to something. I was fighting it, and her and Warren were—and I just wouldn’t let go. I had to let go. I’ve said this in past shows, “When God has something better for you, often times we’re hanging onto something in the past.” Don’t hang on, folks. I know if I would have listened that things would have been different. God utilized—He allows things to happen in our life. That was the leverage that He allowed to get me where He wanted me to go. He forced me out of practice. I see people that are sick and challenged from all over the world virtually now, and I wouldn’t be doing that if I was in practice. I wouldn’t be teaching this message. I wouldn’t be—
Merily:
For those of you who were his patients and supported us, you have no idea how much it means to both of us. We can put a smile on our face, because we have incredible faith. We know God is with us, but you’re still human. You still have to experience the emotion of being attacked, and being falsely misrepresented—totally misrepresented. It couldn’t have been further from who we are, and that is the hardest—that is the hardest thing.
Dr. Pompa:
We thought the sicknesses were hard, but this was hard differently.
Merily:
Different hard—now, obviously God did use what—He allowed it. It went through His hand for His purpose. We said early on, “We are going to become better, and not bitter.” I forgive my aunt. I feel terrible for the pain that she must have within her to try to seek out and destroy the lives of others, especially when she knew from the start when she threatened those things and I said, “This is not a battle with me. This is a battle for you with God. I’m sorry for what you’re going through, but I’ve been called to this.” There was not a doubt in my mind. I mean, Lisa, my very best friend—I even said it in something I wrote the other day on my blog about Olivia’s imagination—
Dr. Pompa:
You should give them your blog.
Merily:
It was, “I never fought myself more in a friendship than in the one I had with her.” She—
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, she’s the one that—the parents willed us the children. It wasn’t like we took the children.
Merily:
Yeah, there was no doubt. It was a conversation—
Dr. Pompa:
The grandma said, “That wasn’t true.” It was in the will.
Merily:
You learn in life, and you learn in your faith that it isn’t about what other people do to you, or what happens in your life and the circumstances that you have to go through. It is about how you interpret and how you respond to those things that matters the most. Sometimes, I wish that we had more opportunities to talk and people really knew, because it’s really hard when you plea something to say, “You have to accept certain things, and that’s really painful” but you also have to realize this is an opportunity for God to be God. He is the one that we trust.
Dr. Pompa:
Obviously, we were in the will to have the kids if anything had happened. It was a year before that tragedy happened that we agreed to that, ironically enough. Even the insurance policy—dang it, I wish that didn’t go through, right? It was like one year—one week or something like that—one week that the insurance applied—if that would have happened a week sooner then it wouldn’t have been there. It’s like, “Gosh life would be a lot easier if we didn’t ever have any of that.” We would have still had the kids, obviously. Merily just knew in her heart that taking these kids was going to create disruption, and I intuitively knew it too. Merily was like, “Nope, Lisa wanted this. We’re going to do this.”
Merily:
Kind of. I always said, “I don’t need swallowed by the whale.” God knew in His sovereignty, and He provided.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely, it’s that. Actually, in one of the past shows I thought the idea at Christmas or some time when we’re all here I’m going to bring all seven of us together. You’ll see the outcome of a horrific struggle through sickness—all of us, and through that horrific separation that Satan was working to destroy a family. He destroyed that family originally. God allowed it for whatever reason, and he was after us, and He didn’t allow it.
Merily:
Those are stressors. You know what? Those very stressors affected me hormonally drove me to get to the root cause. It wasn’t enough just to detox the lead and continuing to do so. It wasn’t—I had to also get to the root of the emotion, and I’m still invested in that process. When we finally moved and came here I immediately—everything just kind of came to a head.
Dr. Pompa:
It was unbelievable.
Merily:
Post-traumatic stress is what it was.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it was. She even had an ulcer. She went through this whole post-traumatic stress, but it put her into counseling. That was then, “Here comes the emotional detox.”
Merily:
Yep.
Dr. Pompa:
That was next, so from pain to purpose. Give them your blog.
Merily:
I haven’t written in a while, but I kind of started writing in that blog—I think shortly after a lot of this stuff started happening.
Dr. Pompa:
Put it this way, you’re releasing soon. Just announce what’s coming.
Merily:
My existing blog, which is really just kind of personal and meant to encourage others without being too specific is, “From Pain to Purpose.” Then, my other blog that I just released—and I haven’t worked on it in a few weeks is called, “If the Shoe Fits.” That’s more of the topics of our daily life and the things that we’re passionate about, as well as enjoy about life. For those of you on my Facebook or that I’m on yours, you know that I’m super into my freedom and being politically incorrect, and all the things that matter about—
Dr. Pompa:
My wife stands for -inaudible- but through the much adversity that we have.
Merily:
God is real, and He has—He has just shown us that it’s not always about the circumstances. It’s about the purpose, and he’ll take care of the circumstances. It’s hard, but it’s incredibly—a purpose-filled life. There’s just no question. That is my thing, being able to share maybe to a greater audience what I have personally journeyed through and what I have learned in that. Again, I don’t know—if it’s something of interest, then great. If it’s not—I just feel like I spend a lot of time investing Facebook. I should create this archive—
Dr. Pompa:
My wife has a lot to say in a good way. We’re going to be talking about flu shots in one of the coming up episodes. This time of year—she’s just so passionate about the vaccines. She did birth, our three natural babies at home. Let me tell you something, through this whole stress and everything we’ve been through we can’t say we’re perfect. When I was sick I was asking the wrong questions, but you learn in it. It allows me to coach people. Neither of us were perfect in any of this process, were we?
Merily:
No.
Dr. Pompa:
Those that are out there that are in your own battle and going, “Oh, if I could just be like them” you should see some of our videos—meaning that the camera was on. You would be like, “How are we here now?” You don’t have to be perfect. I just read this the other day—if we just simply get better when we hit these adversities of just asking, “Okay, God. First of all, thank you, because you must want to teach me something in it. What is it Lord that you want to teach me? Thank you for allowing me to be here.” I say that because I didn’t always do that. I had to learn it through this process of pain. It’s like now I know we respond differently to stress. Lord, don’t bring any more. Again, I need to bring this in full circle as this. We are who we are. I would look back and do everything different with the trust, with the kids, and this and that—but it’s what we needed to be here. Here we are. You’ll get the whole family sometime.
Merily:
Yeah, we’re going to do a show of what it was like growing up with Dr. Pompa.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. You’ll hear the stories from my kids. It’s like, “You made me do this, and you didn’t do this with Simon the 11-year-old.” Anyway, that’s the future show. Thank you for standing with us, right?
Merily:
Oh my, gosh. Thank you.
Dr. Pompa:
Thank you so much. We love every one of you. We love your e-mails. Listen, I try to call all of you back. I do. It’s like, if I don’t get to you please don’t be offended. We are very busy people. We work until late at night, and I feel like I let someone down if I don’t get back to a call with them. I wish I could help every one of you. I do. The only way I can help you is because of this pain you just heard. I always say, “That’s my authority.” I learned that in Africa from people that hurt more than anybody. They said, “No, Dr. Pompa your authority is the victory that God gives you.” How true that is. Thank you so much for watching this show. Thank you so much for reading my articles and being with us.
Merily:
Praying for us.
Dr. Pompa:
Praying for us as a family. We know we have something to take to the world, so thank you.
