Olivia Johnson Facebook ad: “He Cried Into a Bag of Frozen Peas”

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I helped a stranger load groceries into his trunk at the Walmart on East 71st last Tuesday and he ended up crying into a bag of frozen peas in front of me. I didn't know what to do. He was maybe 72, in a thin tan jacket even though it was almost 80 degrees out, and his hands were shaking so bad he couldn't get the milk into the trunk without dropping it twice. I'd just finished loading my own car two spaces over and I just walked over and said, "Sir, can I get those for you?" He looked at me like I'd offered him a kidney. I'm Olivia. I'm 58. I live in Tulsa, off Yale, in the same brick ranch my husband Roy and I bought in 1994 when we still thought we were going to have a second baby. I'm telling you this story because of what happened after the groceries went in the trunk. Not because of the groceries. Because that man, whose name turned out to be Howard, told me something in that parking lot that I have not been able to put down since. And three weeks later, I'm sitting at my kitchen table at 5:47 in the morning with a cup of coffee getting cold in front of me, and I'm typing this out because if even one person reads it and asks the same questions I did, then maybe Howard's wife didn't die without somebody learning something from what happened to their family. I know that's heavy. I'm sorry. Let me back up. Howard was buying frozen vegetables. A lot of them. Like, 14 bags. Steamfresh broccoli, the peas, those mixed Asian stir-fry ones, all the way up to the top of his cart. And a loaf of wheat bread. And one rotisserie chicken in the shell. That was his whole cart. I asked him if he was stocking up for the family. Just making conversation. I figured grandkids coming over, something like that. He said, "It's just me now." And then his face just broke. Right there in the parking lot. Sun beating down on the asphalt, a kid screaming three rows over because his mom wouldn't buy him a Squishmallow, and this 72 year old man in a tan windbreaker just started crying into a bag of peas. I didn't know what to do. I asked him if there was somebody I could call. He shook his head. I asked him if he wanted to sit in my car for a minute, get out of the heat. He said no. So I just stood there. With my hand on his cart. And he told me. His wife's name was Maureen. They'd been married 49 years. She passed in February, sitting in her recliner watching Wheel of Fortune. He found her when he came back from the bathroom. He said her tea was still warm. He said it just like that. Her tea was still warm. She'd had a stroke. A terrible one. And by the time the ambulance got there, there was nothing they could do. He'd been buying frozen vegetables ever since because Maureen used to make him a hot dinner every night and now he didn't know how to cook anything that wasn't a microwave button. But there was something else. Howard said he'd been having stomach problems for years. Bloating. Cramping. Days when he couldn't go to the bathroom. Other days when he couldn't stay out of it. He'd been told he had IBS. And last month his doctor told him his iron stores were very low again. His vitamin D was low too. He'd already tried iron tablets, different diets, probiotics, and enough digestive supplements to fill a kitchen cupboard. And he was still so weak he could barely load his own groceries. Howard said, "I thought if I kept eating the right things and taking the pills, eventually I'd feel normal again." He looked down at his shaking hands. "Now Maureen's gone, and I can't even carry a gallon of milk." I don't remember exactly what I said back. I think I said something stupid like, "I'm so sorry, Howard. I'm so sorry." I asked him if he had any family. He has a son in Wichita and a daughter in Phoenix. The daughter calls. The son doesn't. I helped him push the cart to his car. A maroon Buick LeSabre with a Vietnam vet plate on the back. I loaded all 14 bags of vegetables into his trunk. He thanked me. He apologized for "carrying on." He shook my hand and he had this real thin grip, almost no pressure to it, like a piece of paper. I watched him pull out of the parking lot. He drove very slow. I sat in my car for I don't know how long. The dashboard clock said 3:47 when I finally turned the key. I'd been parked for almost an hour. I went home. Roy was on the couch. Roy is 61. We met at a Sonic when he was a sophomore at OU and I was working the carhop. He used to deliver auto parts up and down the turnpike for a living. Now he drives a forklift at a warehouse in Catoosa three days a week and we've been talking about him retiring early but he says he can't, because of "things." Things meaning the house, the truck note, our grandson's school, my mother's storage unit in Broken Arrow that I keep meaning to clean out and never do. I walked in. Roy had a bag of Cheetos open on his stomach. He was watching the History Channel. There was a Coke on the coffee table. And I just looked at him. I don't know how to explain what I saw. He's the same man I married. Big, soft, gentle, the kind of guy who'll get up at 2am to bring our grandson Tylenol if his daughter calls in a panic. But sitting there on that couch, with that orange bag, and that drink, and the same exact divot in the cushion he's been parked in for I swear 11 years, I saw something I hadn't wanted to see. Not Howard. Me. I saw myself on the other side of that grocery cart. I saw Maureen's tea getting cold. I went into the bathroom and shut the door and I sat on the lid of the toilet and I cried for I don't know how long. Quiet, the way you cry when you don't want your husband to hear. Because here's what I hadn't been saying out loud: My last bloodwork was bad. It was bad two years ago. It was worse last year. It was still worrying in March. My ferritin was 9. My vitamin D was 15. And I was still having the same stomach trouble I'd been complaining about for almost four years. My doctor, Dr. Patel, had been telling me we needed to take the iron deficiency seriously, treat it, and understand why it kept coming back. And I kept saying, "I'll make the appointment next month." Next month never comes. And I have not said much to Roy. Because I don't like being fussed over. He starts hovering and asking if I've eaten and whether I've taken my iron and whether I need to lie down. And I get irritated. And I go into the bedroom. And the next morning everything's fine. Except nothing is fine. Because my stomach keeps swelling after meals. My iron keeps needing attention. I keep getting tired halfway through the day. And now I'm 58, looking at a 72 year old man who can barely carry his groceries, and wondering how long I can keep pretending I'm okay. I came out of the bathroom. Roy looked up. He said, "You alright, hon?" I said yes. I went into the kitchen and I made dinner. Chicken thighs. Mashed potatoes. Green beans. He had two helpings. I ate about half of mine. My stomach was already tight. That night, after Roy fell asleep on his side of the bed snoring with his mouth open, I went into the living room with my phone and I sat on the floor in the dark and I started looking up Howard's words. Low ferritin. Bloating. Why does iron stay low even when you're taking supplements? I want to tell you what I found because I'd never heard some of this explained so clearly before, and I've been living with these stomach problems for years and thought I knew everything I needed to know about anemia. I didn't. Here's what I'd always thought. Low iron means you need more iron. You eat more spinach, more meat, you take a pill, the number goes up, you feel better. That's the whole story I had in my head. Turns out that story is missing a very important part. Your body needs iron. It uses iron to make hemoglobin, which helps carry oxygen in your blood. Your muscles need oxygen. Your brain needs oxygen. Everything you're trying to do all day depends on having enough. So why does iron sometimes stay low? This is the part nobody had ever explained to me in a way I really understood. Eating iron isn't the same thing as absorbing iron. Your digestive system has to break down your food, absorb nutrients through the intestine, and move them into your body where they can be used. And different problems can interrupt that. Sometimes you're losing blood. Sometimes you're not getting enough iron from food. Sometimes a digestive condition interferes with how well nutrients are absorbed. And here's the part that put a chill in me. Certain intestinal parasites can contribute to those problems too. Some hookworms attach to the intestine and feed on blood. That blood loss can contribute to iron-deficiency anemia. Another parasite called Giardia can cause diarrhea, bloating, gas, and trouble absorbing nutrients. Different parasites. Different ways of causing trouble. Different treatments. I had never put those things together before. I knew parasites existed. I just never connected them with nutrient deficiencies. I thought parasites meant somebody had traveled to a tropical country or eaten something bad while camping. Not a woman sitting in her living room in Tulsa wondering why she was exhausted after lunch. But here was the important part. Low ferritin doesn't mean you have parasites. Neither does low vitamin D. And bloating doesn't mean you have worms. There are other reasons those things happen. Celiac disease. Bleeding in the digestive tract. Inflammatory bowel conditions. Dietary problems. Sometimes more than one cause at the same time. And in adults with unexplained iron-deficiency anemia, some of those possibilities are especially important to investigate. I sat on the carpet and I read this and I felt something I haven't felt in years. Which is, the situation made sense for the first time. For years I'd watched my iron results come back low and I'd watched Dr. Patel tell me to keep following up and I'd watched myself put things off, and I never understood why eating carefully and taking iron weren't necessarily the entire answer. Now I understood the next question. Why was my iron low? And what was going on with my stomach? Because taking in a nutrient and getting enough of it into your body aren't always the same thing. It was 1:34am. Roy was still snoring in the bedroom. I kept reading. I went down a rabbit hole I am not exaggerating when I say lasted until 4 in the morning. I was reading research papers I didn't fully understand. I was reading PubMed. I was reading articles about intestinal parasites and nutrient absorption. I had 19 tabs open on my phone. And there was one word that kept coming up. Wormwood. I'd never given it much thought. I'd heard the word in church, but I couldn't have told you what the plant looked like. It's a bitter herb. Specifically, wormwood is a name used for plants in the Artemisia group, and some of them have been used in traditional herbal preparations for digestive complaints and intestinal worms. I rolled my eyes at first. Some bitter plant from an old herbal book. Sure. Add it to the pile of stuff that hasn't worked. But I kept reading. Because there was a real history behind it. And some real science involving related plants. I learned about compounds in Artemisia species that researchers had studied for different biological effects. Then I found something that surprised me. The 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Part of that prize recognized Tu Youyou, whose work on sweet wormwood led to artemisinin, a medicine used to treat malaria. The other part recognized the discoveries leading to ivermect*n, a treatment used for certain parasitic infections. I sat there staring at my screen. Because I'd heard people mention ivermect*n. And I'd seen wormwood parasite cleanses advertised online. But I'd never understood the scientific stories behind them. Or how often the two were mixed together in advertisements. I read more carefully. Sweet wormwood, Artemisia annua, was the species involved in the artemisinin discovery. That wasn't proof that every wormwood supplement treated intestinal parasites. And ivermect*n wasn't some universal treatment for every organism either. Different infections need different medicines. Then I came across something else. An old combination of herbs. Wormwood. Black walnut. Clove. And, in many modern formulas, pumpkin seed. The combination had been popularized by a controversial alternative-health author named Hulda Clark. She claimed the herbs could work against different parasite life stages. But I couldn't find convincing human clinical evidence proving that the combination eliminated adult worms, larvae, and eggs the way the advertisements said. I found interesting laboratory research on certain plant compounds. I found a long history of traditional use. But that was different from a clinically proven treatment for an infection. I sat there at 3:30 in the morning with my forehead in my hand and I thought, oh my god. That's the part of the picture nobody had ever explained to me. You could be curious about traditional herbs without deciding they were a miracle cure. And you could take the possibility of an intestinal infection seriously without assuming every stomach problem was parasites. I opened another tab. Started reading about the ingredients one at a time. Wormwood has bitter plant compounds scientists have investigated. Black walnut contains juglone. Cloves contain eugenol. Pumpkin seeds have been examined in research involving certain worms. But none of that meant I could swallow a handful of herbs and know I'd eliminated an infection. You need to identify the infection first. And if one is present, use the appropriate treatment. The traditional herbs were a separate question. I'm not a doctor. I'm a 58 year old woman who used to work the front desk at a chiropractor's office and who now runs a little Facebook group for women who knit prayer shawls. I'm telling you my level. I'm not pretending I understand all the science in some deep way. But I understood enough to know I'd been asking the wrong question for years. I kept reading until the sun came up. Around 5am, on a forum I won't name, I saw a comment from a woman talking about her own experience with long-lasting digestive problems. She said she'd spent years buying one supplement after another, convinced there had to be one secret answer. Then she'd finally gone through a proper investigation of her symptoms and nutrient deficiencies. She said she still enjoyed learning about traditional botanical ingredients. But she no longer treated a supplement label as a diagnosis. One line got me. "I wanted my old self back." That last word is what got me. Back. Like she'd been gone, and now she was trying to find her way home. I closed the phone. I went to the bedroom. I laid down next to Roy. He had one foot sticking out from under the blanket the way he always does. I just put my hand on his back. I didn't say anything. I just laid there until the alarm went off. The next morning I made coffee and I sat across from him at the kitchen table and I said, "Roy. I want to try something." He looked at me over his cup. I told him about Howard. About the Buick. About the bags of vegetables. About Maureen and her tea. I told him I went down a rabbit hole. I told him about iron, about nutrient absorption, about the different ways some intestinal parasites can affect the gut. I tried to explain it the way I'd understood it. I sounded like an idiot. I kept saying "like putting food into a machine that isn't processing it right" and waving my hand. But Roy listened. Roy is good like that. He doesn't interrupt. When I was done he said, "What do you want me to do?" I said, "I want you to help me take this seriously for 90 days. That's it. I want to follow up with Dr. Patel. I want to find out why my iron is low. I want to stop guessing what every stomach cramp means. And I want to understand the supplements I'm taking instead of just buying whatever somebody recommends." He thought about it. He drank his coffee. He said, "Okay." That was 11 weeks ago. I want to tell you what's happened since then but I want to be careful about how I say it, because I am not a medical person and I'm not making promises about anybody's body. But. Three weeks in, I got off the couch one Saturday morning at 8:30 and went and worked in the front yard. Not because Roy asked. Not because the HOA had sent another letter. I just got up and did it. Then I pulled weeds. Then I came in and made myself a sandwich and went back out to water the flowers. I hadn't done the whole front yard myself in two summers. We'd been asking Roy to take care of most of it. Week five I started waking up before him. Roy has always been the early one in our house. But now I'd get up at 6:45 and make the coffee myself. Week seven the divot in the couch cushion started to come back out. I noticed it one day when I was vacuuming. Like the foam was finally getting to rest. Week eight I went out to the garage on a Sunday and started cleaning it. The garage has been a disaster since 2019. I gave up on it. I spent four hours out there. I came in at 6pm covered in dust and I had this feeling I hadn't had in maybe 8 years. Tired in the right way. Tired like I'd done something. I said, "I forgot how good that feels." Roy smiled. I went into the bathroom and I cried again. Different kind of crying. Last week I went to Dr. Patel for my follow-up bloodwork. I'm not going to turn those results into a promise about what an herbal supplement does. I'd been following my medical treatment. Making dietary changes. Keeping appointments. And working through the possible causes of the anemia. But I will tell you that Dr. Patel went through the results with me and we discussed what was improving, what still needed investigation, and what came next. In the car on the way home Roy reached over and put his hand on my knee and squeezed it. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. I want to say something to whoever's reading this whose wife or whose mother or whose sister or whose own self is in the same place I was. You know what I'm talking about. The chair. The bathroom. The doctor telling you your ferritin is low again. The next bloodwork already on the calendar. The dread you swallow every morning like a vitamin. I get it. I lived in it for years. The thing nobody told me, and the thing I wish somebody had pulled me aside in a parking lot and said, is that the reason I wasn't getting answers wasn't that I wasn't trying. I was trying. I was cutting out dairy. I was buying probiotics. I was taking iron. I was doing everything I thought I was supposed to do. But I hadn't followed through on understanding the underlying cause. And until I did, I was going to keep wondering. I finally started asking what was happening inside my digestive system. Whether my iron deficiency had a cause we could identify. Whether the bloating was related. And whether any infection testing was appropriate. That made a difference in how I approached the whole problem. Holior is one of the botanical formulas I looked into along the way. I'm linking it below. I reviewed it on the company's own website because I wanted to see the actual ingredient list instead of relying on somebody else's description. It combines traditional botanicals including wormwood, black walnut, pumpkin seed, and clove. The directions say three softgels daily before breakfast. That may be more convenient than buying separate herbal tinctures. But it hasn't been established as a treatment for anemia, nutrient deficiencies, or human parasite infections. And it's not a reason to delay testing. Check the ingredients. Ask about possible interactions. And read the current product and return terms before ordering. Nobody gives Howard his Maureen back. Nobody refunds the time. And I can't get back the years I spent pretending I was fine. But I can stop wasting the days I have left by ignoring how I feel. That meant something to me. 👉 https://holior.com/products/wormwood-cc P.S. I want to tell you one more thing. I went back to that Walmart two Saturdays ago because I wanted to see if I could find Howard. I waited in the parking lot in the same spot for over an hour. I felt insane. I had written my phone number on a piece of paper and tucked it into my purse. I was going to give it to him. I didn't see him. I don't know if he goes there anymore. I don't know if he's okay. But I'm telling you about him because there's a Howard in everybody's life. There's a Maureen. There's a Friday afternoon coming where somebody is going to walk back from the bathroom and find a cup of tea still warm. I don't want to lose the people I love without making sure they know I'm paying attention. And I don't want to keep pretending my own symptoms will just disappear. P.P.S. I read Holior's ingredient list because I wanted to know what I was considering, not because an herbal formula had been proven to kill parasites. Wormwood, black walnut, clove, and pumpkin seed have histories in traditional remedies, but their combination has not been established as a cure for human intestinal infections. A return policy doesn't establish that either. If you are interested, check the current terms directly and make sure the ingredients are appropriate for you. P.P.P.S. Very low ferritin deserves follow-up. Especially if you've also got ongoing digestive symptoms. Some intestinal parasites can contribute to anemia or nutrient absorption problems, but so can other conditions that need entirely different treatment. Please don't assume it's parasites because an advertisement lists your symptoms. And don't put off the testing just because a bottle sounds promising. P.P.P.P.S. If you have a Howard in your life, check on him. I keep thinking about him in that maroon Buick. I keep wondering if anybody's helped him with his groceries this week. I keep wondering if anybody's sat down and listened to what he's worried about. The reason I wrote all of this down at 5:47 in the morning at my kitchen table is because somewhere out there, somebody's reading this who has been telling themselves they'll deal with their health next month. Don't let next month keep passing. And don't let your person face it alone. 👉 https://holior.com/products/wormwood-cc

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He Cried Into a Bag of Frozen Peas

Holior