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I'm always interested to know what motivates those in the kava industry. I feel there is usually a genesis story to every kava bar, and this one is quite touching.so you’ll understand why.
Six years ago, a family member awakened screaming with severe lower right quadrant abdominal pain. I immediately thought it was a ruptured appendix. She told me that when she laid on her right side she could feel something tug that direction, and if she turned to lay on her left side, whatever it was would tug (very painfully) to the left. Strange.
I took her to the ER where they performed a CT Scan. They didn’t find anything and sent her home to see her PCP.
When they didn’t find anything, she became
Quite anxious to the point of not sleeping. Over the next several days her sleep worsened and worsened as her anxiety did as well. Her abdominal pain persisted
Without going too in depth into a long drawn out 6 year ordeal, she went from one specialist to another after another and another. Gastroenterology who had performed a Colonoscopy 3 years prior and refused to do another so soon, Gynecology who said the pain was to low to be ovaries, neurology who said it wasn’t neuro, physiology who didn’t know what it could be aside from a possible injury, etc etc etc.
She was told that she has a psychiatric somatic disorder and that her symptoms were all in her head (which understandably only made things even worse). She was placed on antidepressants and went to psychotherapy. Nobody believed her symptoms. I even began to have doubts because the experts said so. Her sleep problems worsened and worsened to the point of only sleeping 30 min to 2 hours per night. It was horrible. Between that and soon obsessing about her sleep to the point where she couldn’t speak of anything else, her life spiraled out of control.
She began to, 4 years later, show a large bulge to her right groin. The PCP said, “yes, it’s “asymmetrical” “ and left it at that. The bulge was painful and tender. It was located directly over where her original pain was located.
We finally went to see another gastroenterologist who performed another colonoscopy and found something that looked like a ping pong ball inside her colon.
Referred to OHSU and they did another colonoscopy but couldn’t find the same thing and said that it was likely the scope protruding into her colon. Took pictures of it but it didn’t look
Anything like the ping pong ball.
All the while her obsessing of pain and sleep kept getting worse.. very severe depression ensued with all the symptoms associated with it... including even that one symptom that nobody likes to talk about.
I took her on vacation to get away. We went to a kava bar where she had a shell of Kava. Almost immediately her anxiety, obsessions disappeared and even her sleep problems went away
All the stress though played a role in myself having a massive heart attack. I almost died.
Kava literally saved her mind.
Finally went back to the gastroenterologist and she was the first to believe us and referred to surgery.
Surgeon says, “wth, let’s take a peek”. They did exploratory laparoscopic surgery and found and removed a golf ball size tumor located within the Mucous lining outside the cecum (end of the large intestine). The bulge in her groin immediately went away bc there was no more hard “golf ball” growing in her groin.
Her pain totally went away after surgery and she came back to life. Kava had eased her obsessions about symptoms (although in retrospect I doubt they were obsessions at all as much as they were a 6 year long persistent crying scream for help- can you imagine?) and her sleep completely normalized. At least the Kava allowed her to worry less, panic less, and be able to function again where prescribed medication for an incorrectly diagnosed somatic disorder had failed.
I tell you this because it’s the reason I brought LovaKava to Eugene. I wanted to share it with everyone.
Kava is a root of a pepper shrub that’s found in the Polynesian Islands of the South Pacific. It’s consumed for its calming, relaxing, soothing, emotion lifting properties.
So if you’re walking down W Broadway and you see this little Place called LovaKava Kava Bar & Restaurant, please stop in. Drink a bowl (called a shell) of Kava and let it wipe your stress and worries away and lift that mood.
We give away a lot of vegan food to random people. We give away a lot of Kava just because. Of course we have to stay in business to do all of this. So when you see us doing buy one get one or some other promotion on Kava, it’s not so much because we are discounting to get people to come in for a sale as much as it is our belief that Kava should be shared as much as we can afford to do so. Next time you think to go someplace to eat, please consider us. Our hearts are in it to make your experience memorable
*** FDA Requirement
This product is not for use in the diagnosis, cure, prevention or treatment of any medical condition or mental health disorder.
Blah blah blah... it saved her life along with a couple of physicians who decided not to listen to the other physicians.
My next post will be about why we are vegan.
Btw..I still cry every single day in private at some point just thinking about all this. Some people may think that’s not “manly”. I really don’t care if it’s “manly or not”.
