Nerve Support Community Facebook ad: “Feel Like Yourself Again”

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Ray hadn't come in on a Tuesday in almost a month and I knew something was wrong before I knew what was wrong. I've been waitressing at Sanders Diner off exit 22 on I-65 outside Bowling Green for 22 years. It's the truck stop diner nobody talks about in the guidebooks because it doesn't have a gimmick. No jukebox. No pie case. Just biscuits and gravy and coffee that's been on the burner too long, and a section of booths in the back that most of the long haul drivers know by heart. My section is booths 8 through 14. Ray's booth is 11. Second one from the window, facing the parking lot so he can see his rig. Ray drives for a small outfit out of Louisville hauling auto parts down to plants in Alabama and Georgia. He's been running that route Tuesday and Friday mornings, 4:30 AM, for as long as I've known him. Two eggs over medium. Wheat toast. Sausage patty, not link. Coffee black. He'd pull in around 4:20, back the tractor into the second row so it lined up with the diesel island, and he'd be in that booth by 4:32 reading the paper he brought from the truck. He'd been coming in like that for 11 years. Then in early September he stopped. I didn't think anything of it the first Tuesday. Drivers reroute. Companies change loads. That's the business. The second Tuesday I noticed. The third Tuesday I asked Cheryl, who runs the register, if she'd seen him and she said no. The fourth Tuesday I started to feel something in my stomach I couldn't name. I told my husband about it that night. He said "Doreen, you cannot get attached to every driver who comes through that diner. Half of them are going to be dead in five years anyway." That's my husband. He is not a warm man. The fifth Tuesday Ray walked in at 5:45 AM. Not 4:30. He was gray. Not tired gray, which I know. Gray gray. The color a man's face gets when something has gone wrong underneath and his body knows before his mind does. He came in slow. He didn't have the paper. He didn't back the rig into the diesel island. He was in a rental car. A Nissan Altima. I could see it through the window because I saw him get out of it and I actually thought "who is this and why is he in Ray's booth." Then he took his cap off and it was Ray. He sat down. He tried to smile at me. He ordered coffee. He said "Doreen, I'll take a coffee." That was it. No two eggs over medium. No wheat toast. No sausage patty. Just coffee. I brought the coffee. He wrapped both hands around the mug like he was trying to warm them. His hands were shaking. Not a lot. Just enough. It was 68 degrees in that diner and his hands were shaking. I sat down across from him. I have never sat down across from a customer in 22 years. But I sat down across from him. I said "Ray, where have you been." He looked at me. He said "I had an episode." That's the word he used. Episode. Like it was a symphony movement. He said it three weeks ago he was pulling into a Love's Travel Stop in Effingham, Illinois, right off I 57, and he got out of the truck to go inside and his legs went wobbly and his chest got tight and the parking lot started tilting. He grabbed the fuel door of his own truck and slid down onto the pavement and just sat there. He said a driver from Werner Enterprises found him about 10 minutes later and called an ambulance and they took him to a hospital in Effingham he didn't know the name of. He said the doctor there told him his blood pressure had come in at 218 over 124 when the paramedics got to him. He said he'd been on medication for high blood pressure for six years and he took it every morning and his numbers at his own doctor in Louisville had been running about 158 over 92 for the last two years, which everybody kept telling him was "getting closer to where we want it." He said the doctor in Effingham told him he was very lucky. He'd used the word "silent" a lot. Silent event. Silent damage. Silent progression. Ray said "Doreen, he told me I've been having a war inside my own body for six years and I never heard a single shot fired." They kept him overnight. Two nights. He'd rented the Altima to drive back to Louisville because they wouldn't clear him to operate a commercial vehicle. His rig was still in the Love's lot in Effingham. His boss had sent another driver to bring it home. He'd been sitting in his apartment for two weeks and this was the first morning he'd felt strong enough to drive down to Bowling Green just to sit in the booth he'd sat in every Tuesday for 11 years, because he said he needed to sit somewhere that felt like a life he still had. I have a hard time telling this part without getting worked up because Ray is not the kind of man who says things like that. Ray is 54. Grew up in West Louisville. Went into the Army at 18 and came out at 22 and started driving trucks in 1994 and has driven them since. Never been married. Has a daughter named Camille who lives in Cincinnati and works for a bank and calls him every Sunday at 7 PM whether he answers or not. He doesn't have a big life. He has a small one. And the small one was his booth on Tuesday morning at 4:32 AM with the paper and the sausage patty, not link. The doctor at his own practice in Louisville had upped his medication two more times when he got out of the Effingham hospital. He was now on three different pills every morning. He said his heart didn't feel right on them. His feet had started swelling. He couldn't sleep. And his morning blood pressure at the pharmacy machine at the Kroger on Preston Highway was still coming in at 172 over 98. He said "Doreen, they keep raising the dose and it keeps not working. I feel worse than I did before I was on anything. And my numbers won't move." I told him to sit tight. I got up. I refilled his coffee. And then I did something I've never done in 22 years. I got on the phone with my aunt Doreen. She's the reason I'm named Doreen. She was my mom's older sister. She was a charge nurse at Vanderbilt in the ER for 34 years before she retired to a little house on Center Hill Lake outside Smithville, Tennessee. She's 71 now. She knows more about the human body than most doctors I've met and she doesn't put up with anyone who wastes her time. I stepped into the back by the walk in and I called her and I said "Aunt Doreen. I have a customer. His name is Ray. He's a long haul driver, 54, blood pressure won't come down, three medications, just had an episode in a truck stop parking lot. He's sitting in my booth right now looking like a ghost. What do I tell him." She was quiet for a minute. She said "put me on speaker and let me talk to him." I walked back out and I sat down across from Ray with my phone on the table between us and I said "this is my aunt Doreen. I trust her more than anyone I know. She wants to talk to you." Ray looked at the phone. He said "yes ma'am." My aunt said "Ray. I want to explain something to you that took me about 20 years in an ER to fully understand, and once I understood it I stopped being surprised by the pattern you're describing. Are you listening." He said "yes ma'am." She said "the inside of your blood vessels has a living wall. It's called the endothelium. It's a thin layer of cells that runs the entire inside of every artery and vein in your body. And that wall does a very specific job. It produces a molecule called nitric oxide, which tells the muscles in your vessel walls to relax. When your vessels are relaxed, blood flows easy, and pressure stays low. That's what a healthy blood pressure looks like from the inside." She said "here's what happens to men your age. Years of stress, processed food, sleep debt, sitting in a truck for 11 hours a day, diesel fumes, gas station meals, all of it wears down that living wall. The wall stops producing enough nitric oxide. So the vessels stay tight. Blood has to push harder to get through. That's your high blood pressure. And here's the part nobody explains to you at the doctor's office. The harder blood pushes through those tight vessels, the more stress it puts on the wall. So the wall gets worn down more. So it produces even less nitric oxide. So the vessels stay tighter. So the pressure goes up. That's a cycle. And that cycle keeps going every day whether you're on medication or not." She said "your pills are doing one thing. They're forcing your vessels to relax from the outside. They're not touching the wall. They're not helping the wall recover. So while the pills are forcing your vessels open, the wall underneath is still deteriorating. That's why your dose keeps going up. That's why the number won't come down. That's why your feet are swelling and your heart doesn't feel right. You're not treating the problem. You're managing a symptom while the problem gets worse." Ray was staring at the phone. His coffee was cold. He hadn't moved. She said "the wall needs support. Not force. Support. And there's not a pharmaceutical in the world I know of that supports the wall. Because there's no money in supporting a wall. There's money in forcing a symptom to be quieter. That's how the whole industry works." He said "so what do I do." She said "there's a fruit that grows in India called amla. Indian gooseberry. Ayurvedic tradition has been using it for 2,000 years and they call it 'the nurse' because it tends to the body. There are compounds in it called emblicanins, and research suggests they help support the inner wall of your blood vessels. When the wall is better supported, it can start producing more of its own nitric oxide, the way it did when you were younger. Your vessels can relax more naturally. The pressure on the wall eases. And when the pressure eases, the wall isn't under the same constant stress anymore. The cycle can start to break. Your pressure can come down. Not because something is forcing it down. Because your body is doing what it already knows how to do." She said "I have been on an amla extract for about 20 months. I take it every morning with my coffee. It's made by a small American company called Auniva. I found them through a former cardiology fellow at Vanderbilt who works in a research lab now. My own systolic dropped from 154 to 118 over the course of about seven months. My cardiologist thought I'd changed my medication. I hadn't. I'd added a fruit." She said "I'm not telling you to stop your medications. I'm not a doctor. I'm a retired nurse and I don't practice medicine over the phone in a diner. What I am telling you is that if you want to give your body a chance to actually address what's causing this, instead of just muting it, this is where I'd start. Two capsules a day. 30 day bottle. And you keep working with your doctor on the medication side. That's not my call. That's between you and him." Ray said "where do I get it." She said "auniva.co. Slash amla. Slash 33. Ray, write that down. It's a small company. Their website is small. There's a 90 day money back guarantee. If it does nothing, you send the bottle back and they refund you every dollar. Which is more than the three medications you're on right now offer you." Ray took a napkin. He asked me for a pen. I gave him mine. He wrote the address down on the napkin. He folded the napkin twice and put it in his shirt pocket over his heart, which I noticed and did not say anything about. He drank the cold coffee. He sat there for a while. He said "Doreen, I appreciate you." He wasn't talking to my aunt anymore. He was talking to me. He said "I've been coming to this diner for 11 years and I never once thought about the fact that you might be paying attention. That means more to me than you know." He paid for the coffee. He tipped me $20 on a $2.50 check. He walked out to the rental Altima. He turned around at the door and pointed at me and said "you saved my life today." Then he drove off. I didn't hear from Ray for three weeks. He didn't come in on Tuesday. He didn't come in on Friday. I told myself he'd forgotten about me. I told myself the diner wasn't his life anymore. My husband, when I told him about the whole thing, said "he was probably too embarrassed to come back." He can be a hard man. Then on a Tuesday in mid October, at 4:32 AM on the dot, Ray backed his rig into the diesel island and walked into the diner in his usual jacket carrying the newspaper from his truck. He sat down in booth 11. He looked up at me. He said "two eggs over medium. Wheat toast. Sausage patty, not link. Coffee black." I stood there and I cried right in front of him. Not a big cry. A small cry. The kind of cry where two tears come out and you wipe them with the back of your wrist and you keep working. He said "sit down." I sat down. He told me he'd ordered the Auniva's Amla the day he left the diner. He said he took his first dose that Wednesday morning. He said for the first two weeks nothing happened, and he almost called me to tell me my aunt had sold him a bill of goods. Then on day 16 he checked his blood pressure at the Kroger machine and it came in at 148 over 88, which was the lowest number he'd seen in eight years. He said he took it three more times that morning to make sure the machine wasn't broken. He said day 24 he woke up without the headache he'd been waking up with every morning for as long as he could remember. He said day 31 he saw his doctor in Louisville, showed him the bottle, and the doctor read the label and said "I don't have anything against this." His doctor took him off one of the three medications that same day. That was three weeks before he walked back into my diner. In those three weeks his morning numbers had come down to an average of 132 over 82. His feet weren't swelling. His heart didn't feel funny anymore. He was sleeping through the night for the first time since he'd been in the Army. And he'd been cleared to drive commercially again the Friday before. He said "I wanted the first place I stopped to be your booth." He ate everything on his plate. He drank three cups of coffee. He read the paper. He tipped me $30 on a $9 check. That was four months ago. Ray comes in every Tuesday and Friday at 4:32 AM. His last blood pressure reading, which he tells me every week whether I ask or not, was 124 over 78. His doctor took him off a second medication last month. He's on just the one now. He's talking to his doctor about the third. I want to tell you something before I finish this. I am not a person who writes things down. I am a waitress at a diner off an interstate in Kentucky. I have poured about a million cups of coffee. I have listened to about ten thousand men tell me things they wouldn't tell their wives. I do not write things down for the internet. I don't have a Facebook page. I don't have opinions I want to broadcast. But I watched a man I had been serving eggs to for 11 years almost disappear from his own life, and I watched him come back, and I know exactly what brought him back, and I know exactly how many people are sitting in a booth like Ray's this morning at some other diner somewhere in this country with a blood pressure number their doctor keeps calling "close to where we want it" while their body screams at them that something is very wrong. If that's you, or your husband, or your father, or your brother, please read this next part. Auniva's Amla is a fruit extract. It's not a drug. It doesn't replace what your doctor is doing for you. But it works on the wall your medication doesn't touch. Two capsules a day. 30 day bottle. Made in the USA. Free shipping. 90 day money back guarantee. If it does nothing for you, you send the bottle back and they refund every penny. Ray got Camille his daughter to order it for herself last month because her numbers had started creeping up too. She lives in Cincinnati and works at a bank and takes it with her coffee every morning. Don't wait for your Effingham parking lot moment. Ray's parking lot was 500 miles from home in a state he'd never lived in. Nobody knew his name at that hospital. His daughter had to drive four hours to get to him. He got lucky. Half the drivers in that parking lot on that same shift didn't get as lucky as he did. Here is the website. My aunt Doreen wrote it down for him on a napkin in booth 11 and I'm writing it down for you now. 👉 auniva.co/amla/33 P.S. You'll feel it in the mornings before you see it in the numbers. That's what Ray told me and that's what my aunt Doreen told me before that. The headache goes first. Then the sleep gets deeper. Then your feet stop swelling. The number is the last thing to move because the number is downstream of everything else. If you're going to try it, don't watch the machine at Kroger every morning. Watch how you feel when you wake up. The wall recovers before the number reflects it. P.P.S. Auniva has a 90 day money back guarantee. Send the bottle back for any reason. The three medications Ray was on didn't come with a refund policy. Nobody called him after his episode in Effingham to ask if he wanted his money back for the six years his pills didn't stop what happened in that parking lot. The system doesn't do refunds. Auniva does. Think about what that says about who stands behind their product and who just stands behind your monthly copay. P.P.P.S. Auniva is a small American company. They run out of stock. My aunt Doreen had to wait 10 days for her last reorder and now she keeps two bottles in her medicine cabinet at all times. Ray keeps three bottles in his rig, one at his apartment, and one at his daughter's place in Cincinnati. If you're going to try it, buy enough that you're not waiting on the mail carrier at the end of the month. They currently have a buy 3 get 2 free deal. That's the one Ray uses. Not next week. Now. Every day the wall stays worn down is another day the cycle spins and the pressure climbs. P.P.P.P.S. If you know a driver, a foreman, a mechanic, a nurse, a teacher, anyone who's been on blood pressure medication for years and whose numbers are still not moving, order the bottle for them. Leave it on their kitchen counter. Don't make a speech about it. My aunt Doreen said one paragraph on a speakerphone in a diner booth and it turned a man's life around. Sometimes the person who saves somebody's life is not their doctor. Sometimes it's their waitress. Sometimes it's their aunt. Sometimes it might be you. 👉 auniva.co/amla/33

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