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80 percent of her stomach was removed for a problem that turned out to be in her colon. The surgery was on May 14th, 2022, at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho. I was the one who drove her home from the hospital that Friday. I was the one who held her hand through the next 24 months. I am the one writing this now because last Tuesday she sent me a text message at 4:17 in the morning that said "Megan, I think I made the wrong decision two years ago and I do not know what to do about it now." I read that text 14 times before I responded. Then I drove the 14 minutes to her house at 5:32 AM, in the dark, in my pajamas under a coat, because my mother does not send text messages at 4 in the morning unless something inside her is breaking. What I found when I got to her house is the reason I am writing this on a Tuesday night in October to a woman I do not know. I am 31 years old. I am her only child. I am a fourth grade teacher in Boise. And what I found in my mother's kitchen at 5:47 AM last Tuesday is what I want to tell you about, because if you have been told that the answer to your bloating is surgery, there is something you need to know before you say yes that nobody told my mother. I want to tell you what I saw on her kitchen table. I want to tell you what she said to me when I sat down across from her at 5:51 AM in her bathrobe with two cups of coffee neither of us touched. I want to tell you what we did in the next 7 days that has both of us, for the first time in two years, sleeping through the night. But first you need to know how my mother ended up missing four fifths of an organ she had needed for 54 years. It started in 2013. I had just left for my freshman year at Boise State. I came home for Thanksgiving and noticed my mom had gained weight. I did not say anything because I was 18 and I did not know what to say. By Christmas of 2014 her pants did not fit. By summer of 2015 her stomach was hard to the touch when she hugged me. She made an appointment with her primary care doctor, Dr. Halverson, who had been her doctor since I was in kindergarten. What Dr. Halverson said to her on June 12th, 2015, sitting in an exam room in Garden City, Idaho, with my mother on the crinkly paper of an exam table in a paper gown, was the first sentence in a 9 year story that ended with a knife. Dr. Halverson said, "Diane, your weight is up but your labs are clean. This is probably perimenopausal bloating. Try cutting out gluten." That was June 12th, 2015. Seven years later my mother was in an operating room. I want you to think about that timeline for a moment. Seven years. Of being told it was perimenopausal. Then dietary. Then hormonal. Then behavioral. Then, finally, surgical. My mother sat in front of 4 different doctors in 7 years. Not one of them asked her a single question about the SHAPE of her stomach. Not one of them ordered an imaging study of her colon. Not one of them tested her for what we now know she had been carrying for at least a decade. What every single one of them did instead was hand her a printout about the Mediterranean diet, refer her to the next specialist, and write a note in her chart that read "patient is non-compliant with dietary recommendations." By February of 2022 my mother was 54 years old. She weighed 211 pounds. She had spent over $5,000 on supplements that had not touched the bloating. She had been crying in the bathroom at her dental hygiene job for so long that her coworkers had stopped asking if she was okay. And on a Wednesday afternoon in late February, Dr. Halverson called her at home and said, "Diane, I am going to send you to a bariatric surgeon. I think we are out of conservative options." My mother said yes. I was teaching fourth grade in Coeur d'Alene when she called me to tell me. I sat in my classroom after the students had gone home and stared at a wall for 20 minutes. Something inside me, something I had been ignoring for 9 years, was telling me my mother did not need that surgery. I did not know what that something was. I would not know until 4:17 in the morning last Tuesday. The surgery was on May 14th, 2022. I want you to understand something. My mother is not a stupid woman. My mother is a retired medical professional. She had read about bariatric surgery for two years before she said yes to it. She knew the statistics. She knew the recovery. She knew the lifelong dietary restrictions. She said yes anyway, because Dr. Halverson, who had been her doctor for 17 years, told her in February of 2022 that based on her bloating, her resistant weight gain, and her quality of life scores, she was a "textbook" candidate for vertical sleeve gastrectomy. My mother believed her doctor. That is not a stupid thing to do. That is what every woman in this country has been taught to do since she was 9 years old. I drove down from Coeur d'Alene the week of the procedure and stayed at my parents' house. The morning of the surgery I sat in the waiting room with my father from 7:15 AM until 11:47 AM. When the surgeon came out he said the surgery had gone well. He said her stomach had been "stapled and reduced as planned." He said she would be in recovery for two hours. I went outside. I sat in my father's truck. I cried for about 20 minutes. I was not crying because I was scared. I was crying because the something inside me was screaming and I did not know its name yet. My mother lost 38 pounds in the first 6 months after the surgery. By Christmas of 2022 she weighed 173. Her surgeon was thrilled. Dr. Halverson sent her a Christmas card. My mother bought a new dress. We took a picture of her in front of the Christmas tree. I will not show you that picture because the woman in it was already starting to suspect what we now know. In January of 2023 my mother sat down to eat her first holiday roast since the surgery. She made it through about 3 ounces of meat before she had to stop. Three ounces. The size of a deck of cards. For the rest of her life. By April of 2023 she had a chronic pain in her upper abdomen that her surgeon could not explain. By August she had developed severe gastroesophageal reflux disease. Her doctor told her, almost in passing, that this was experienced by approximately 30 percent of women after the sleeve procedure. He had not mentioned this in any of the pre-surgical consultations. By December of 2023 she had stopped wanting to eat dinner with my father. She would prepare his plate, set it down in front of him, and then go upstairs to lay down because the sight of a full plate made her cry. She had lost 53 pounds total at this point. She weighed 158. Her body looked different. Her stomach, however, was still HARD. It was still distended. It was still the same size in the morning as it was at night. The bloating that the surgery was supposed to fix had not gone away. It had not even budged. My mother had given up four fifths of her stomach for a problem that was not in her stomach. She did not know that yet. I did not know that yet. We were still telling ourselves the surgery had worked, because she had lost weight, and because that was what we had been told would happen. Now I want to take you back to last Tuesday. 5:47 AM. I parked my car in front of my parents' house. The porch light was on. The kitchen window was lit. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table when I let myself in with my key. In front of her on the table was a printout. It was 14 pages long. It was a Reddit thread. The thread was titled "I had the sleeve in 2021 and it was the worst decision of my life." There were 847 comments under the post. My mother had been reading them since 11 PM the night before. She had been awake for 6 hours and 17 minutes. She looked up at me when I sat down across from her. Her hands were shaking around the coffee mug. She said, "Megan. I have read 200 of these. Every single one of these women has the same story. They had the surgery. They lost the weight. Their bloating did not go away. They are all still bloated. And I think the reason is something none of our doctors checked for." I asked her what. She said, "Megan. I think I have parasites. I think I have had them this entire time." I want you to understand what was happening in my mother's kitchen at 5:51 in the morning. My mother, a retired medical professional, was telling me at her kitchen table that she had spent two years recovering from an irreversible surgical procedure that had removed four fifths of an organ for a problem that was, possibly, never in that organ to begin with. I did not know what to say. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I opened my laptop on her kitchen table and I started looking for a gastroenterologist who had ever, in their career, treated parasitic infections in adult American women who had also had bariatric surgery. I found him at 8:14 AM. His name was Dr. Wei. He was in Reno, Nevada. His Google reviews included three different women who described scenarios almost identical to my mother's. I called his office at 8:31 AM. The receptionist told me he had a cancellation on Thursday. My mother and I drove to Reno on Wednesday. The drive from Boise to Reno is 7 hours and 14 minutes. We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express near the medical plaza. On Thursday morning, at 7:15 AM, Dr. Wei performed an abdominal ultrasound on my mother that took 23 minutes. He stopped talking halfway through. He left the room and came back with another radiologist. The two of them looked at the screen for another 11 minutes. Then Dr. Wei sat down on his rolling stool, turned the monitor toward us, and asked my mother a question Dr. Halverson had never asked her in 9 years. He said, "Diane. Has anybody, ever, in any of your appointments before today, asked you about the SHAPE of your stomach? Whether it is soft or hard? Whether it changes size throughout the day?" My mother shook her head. Dr. Wei said one sentence I have not stopped thinking about. He said, "Mrs. Patterson, what I am seeing on this screen is not residual weight. It is not adiposity. It is a parasitic infection that has distended the lining of your colon. Based on the imaging, you have likely been carrying this for at least 10 years." The room went quiet. My mother did not move. I sat in the chair next to her and squeezed her hand. Dr. Wei said, "I am sorry, but I have to be direct with you. The surgery you had two years ago was for a problem in your stomach. The problem you actually have is in your colon. Removing 80 percent of your stomach did not address it. It will not address it. And the surgical changes you now have to your digestive tract will make some of the standard treatments more complicated." My mother started crying then. Not the way you cry when you are sad. The way you cry when something inside you that has been screaming for 11 years finally hears somebody else say its name. Dr. Wei did something I want you to remember. He looked at the door. He looked at the closed blinds on the window to the hallway. Then he leaned forward across his desk, lowered his voice, and said, "Mrs. Patterson, I am about to say something to you that I cannot, in any official capacity, put in your chart. I cannot send it to your primary care doctor in Boise. I cannot include it in the report I will send to your surgeon. Do you understand." My mother nodded. He said, "What you have is treatable with two ingredients that have been used for this purpose for 2,000 years. The first is oil of oregano. The active compound is called carvacrol. The second is black seed oil. The active compound is thymoquinone. Together, taken daily for approximately 90 days, they have shown the ability to clear what is currently in your colon." I asked him where we could get it. He said, "Any pharmacy. Any health food store. But listen to me very carefully. The two have to be combined. Oregano oil alone will not do it. Black seed alone will not do it. And the concentration of carvacrol has to be at least 80 percent or it will not have the antimicrobial action you need." He paused. Then he said, "I am not allowed to tell you which brand to buy. I can only tell you what the ingredients are." He looked at my mother for a long moment. Then he raised his right index finger and placed it gently in front of his lips. SHHH. He said, "What I am telling you is between us. If anybody asks, I gave you dietary guidance. Do you understand." My mother said yes. I said yes. We drove back to Boise the next morning with two ingredients written on the back of a Holiday Inn receipt. Oregano oil. Black seed oil. Combined. 80 percent carvacrol. 90 days. We went to the CVS on State Street in Boise the day we got home. CVS had four oregano oil products. None were combined with black seed. None listed a carvacrol concentration above 65 percent. We went to the Whole Foods on Front Street. Whole Foods had six oregano oils. One combined with black seed. The carvacrol concentration was 70 percent and the second active ingredient was diluted with grapeseed oil. We went to the Natural Grocers in Garden City. Same problem. Different brands. Same issue with concentration. We went home. I sat down at my mother's kitchen table that night with my laptop and I typed into Google exactly what Dr. Wei had told us to look for. OIL OF OREGANO COMBINED WITH BLACK SEED OIL 80 PERCENT CARVACROL CONCENTRATION. The first three results were generic oregano oil brands sold on Amazon. None paired with black seed at the right concentration. The fourth result was a small company I had never heard of called Herbies. Their product was called Oregano+. It was the only product I could find online that combined wild Mediterranean oregano oil with cold pressed black seed oil at the concentration Dr. Wei had specified. I read every word on their website. I read the lab tests they had published. I read 84 reviews. By 11:14 PM I had ordered three bags for my mother. They arrived four days later in a small padded envelope. She started the protocol on June 18th, 2024. I am not going to lie to you and tell you something happened overnight. It didn't. Day 4, my mother had her first normal bowel movement since 2017. She called me crying from the bathroom of her house in Boise at 7:43 AM. She did not describe what she saw to me. She just said, "Megan. There were things in it." I did not ask her any questions. I did not need to. Day 11, the hard distension in her abdomen had visibly reduced by what looked, to me, like a third. Day 19, she went out to dinner with my father at the Cracker Barrel off I-84 and ate a small portion of meatloaf without crying. It was the first dinner out she had had in 11 months. Day 33, my father called me and said, "Megan. Your mother is in the garden." She had not been in the garden in two years. Day 47, my mother stood in front of her hallway mirror in her cotton bathrobe and said, "I have been gone for so long I did not know I had left." Day 67, she went back to Dr. Wei in Reno for the follow up ultrasound. I drove her again. We stayed at the same Holiday Inn. Dr. Wei did the ultrasound himself. He was quiet for 7 minutes. Then he set the wand down and said, "Mrs. Patterson, your colon distension has resolved by approximately 80 percent. The parasitic burden appears to be cleared. Whatever you found, please tell other women. Quietly." He raised his finger to his lips again. SHHH. We drove home. I am writing this on a Tuesday in October, four months after my mother started the protocol. She has gained back 6 pounds. She does not care. She can eat a normal portion of dinner. She does not have reflux every night. Her stomach is soft when she hugs me. The surgery is not undone. She still has only 20 percent of her original stomach. She will have that for the rest of her life. What she does not have anymore is the bloating that the surgery was supposed to fix. And what I will tell you, as her daughter, is that if I had known in May of 2022 what I know in October of 2024, my mother would still have her stomach. I am writing this for the women whose mothers are about to walk into a surgical consultation they did not ask for. I am writing this for the daughters who are sitting in the waiting room while their mothers are being sold an operation that may not address the actual problem. I am writing this for the mothers themselves, who have been bloated for 5 years or 10 years or 15 years, and who have been told that the answer is to remove a healthy organ. I am not saying weight loss surgery is wrong for everyone. It is not. There are women for whom the sleeve procedure is the right answer. What I am saying is that my mother was not one of them. And neither, possibly, are you. Before you say yes to anyone with a scalpel, please ask one question that nobody asked my mother in 9 years. Ask whether your stomach is HARD. Ask whether it is the same size in the morning as at night. Ask whether the bloating has responded to ANYTHING you have tried. If the answers are yes, hard, no, then please consider, before surgery, that the problem might be in your COLON and not in your stomach. I want to be honest with you about something. I am not a copywriter. I am not paid by Herbies. I have never written anything longer than a fourth grade report card comment in my life. I do not have a social media following. I am a teacher in Boise, Idaho, writing this on a Tuesday night in October because my mother sat at her kitchen table at 4 AM last week and almost broke. I am writing it because last week another woman from my mother's church came over to ask my mother how she was doing and ended up sitting at our kitchen table for two hours, in tears, because she had her sleeve consultation scheduled for the following Friday. She cancelled the consultation. She started Herbies Oregano+ on October 7th. I do not know yet how it will go for her. But I know that she is not going to walk into an operating room next week. That is enough for me to keep writing this. If you are reading this, and you have been told your bloating is "just weight," and you are considering surgery, please order three bags of Herbies Oregano+ before you order an operating room. It is one tenth the cost. It is reversible. It comes with a 90 day money back guarantee. If your body does not tell you something has changed by the end of the second bag, you mail the rest back and they refund you for all three. I would order the 3 bag option, not the 1 bag. One bag is 30 days. Dr. Wei was very specific about this. The protocol needs to be 90 days because parasites lay eggs in the lining of the intestine and those eggs hatch on a cycle of two to three weeks. A 30 day supply clears the adults but the eggs will hatch into a new generation while your body is still recovering, and you will be back where you started. A 90 day protocol kills the adults, kills the larvae that hatch in week 3 and week 6, and kills any final stragglers in week 10 before they can lay eggs. My mother used the first bag through July 17th. The second through August 17th. The third through September 17th. The deepest changes happened in the last 30 days. The energy came back in week 9. The brain fog lifted in week 11. Her skin stopped looking grey in week 12. If you order one bag, you may feel better. You may not stay better. If you order three, you finish the job. It is sold only at herbies.co/products/herbies-oregano. You cannot get it on Amazon. You cannot get it at Walmart. You cannot get it at CVS, Whole Foods, or Natural Grocers. I drove to all of them with my mother in June. The product that worked for her was not in any of them. Only directly from Herbies. If you are a daughter reading this, and your mother has been told she needs the surgery, please send her this letter before her next appointment. If you are a mother reading this, and you have been told you are a "textbook" candidate for the sleeve, please image your colon before you let anyone reduce your stomach. If you are a sister, an aunt, a friend, a neighbor of a woman who has been bloated for years and has been told the answer is in an operating room, please forward this to her now. The Cracker Barrel parking lot off I-84 where my mother ate her first normal meal in 11 months is a 1 hour 47 minute drive from my classroom in Boise. I would like for you to never have to make that drive. 👉 herbies.co/products/herbies-oregano P.S. The protocol comes with a sheet of paper inside the bag explaining how to take it. Read it once and follow it exactly. Do not change your diet, your medications, or anything else you are doing. The protocol is the dose from the bag with a glass of water in the morning. That is the whole thing. My mother did not change a single other thing about her routine. The 16 pounds, the bowel movements, the soft stomach, the energy, the garden, the dinner at Cracker Barrel, all of it came from following the sheet that comes inside the bag. P.P.S. The 90 day money back guarantee is what made me click the order button on June 14th, 2024. Not because I was unsure. Because I had already spent so much money over 9 years on things that did not work for my mother. I had stopped believing in any company that did not stand behind its product. Herbies gives you 90 days. You use the bags for the full protocol. If your body does not tell you something has changed by the end of the second bag, you mail the rest back and they refund you for all three. That is the entire arrangement. I have never been offered that arrangement by a supplement company before. P.P.P.S. If you have a daughter or a sister or a friend who has been told her bloating is just weight, and that she should consider surgery, please forward this to her. I am writing this so that one more daughter does not have to drive her mother to Reno, Nevada, two years after a surgery that did not need to happen. I will keep writing it until my fourth grade report cards are due. After that I may write it again next month. My mother has not asked me to stop. She has asked me to keep going. 👉 herbies.co/products/herbies-oregan