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Got prescribed Lexapro today. 10mg. For "fatigue-related depression." My ferritin is 18. My B12 is 340. My TSH is 2.1. My vitamin D is 28. Every single number is technically "in range." And they're telling me it's my serotonin. The same thing they told my mother. --- September 5. I keep thinking about mom. She got prescribed Prozac at 41. For "exhaustion with depressive features." Her labs were normal too. Year 1: Prozac. Said it helped a little. Mostly she felt numb. Year 3: Added Wellbutrin for the afternoon crashes. Two pills now. Year 5: Levothyroxine. Her TSH crept to 4.2. "Subclinical hypothyroidism." Three pills. Year 7: Adderall. 10mg. Because the fatigue was "medication-resistant." Four pills. She started losing her hair. Year 9: She stopped going to my piano recitals. Too tired. She'd sit in the car and wait. I could see her through the auditorium window. Year 11: She was on six medications. Prozac, Wellbutrin, levothyroxine, Adderall, Ambien for the insomnia, and gabapentin for the nerve pain nobody could explain. She was 52 and looked 70. Year 14: She stopped leaving the house most days. She said the couch was easier. She said everything was "fine." She was on those medications for nineteen years. She was still exhausted when she died at 63. Heart failure. The doctors said it was unrelated. I have her prescription pad now. I'm 42. Lexapro. 10mg. Same story. Different decade. --- September 12. The Lexapro makes me feel like I'm watching my life through a window. Not better. Not worse. Just... distant. Still exhausted by 2pm. Still can't find words mid-sentence. Called the dishwasher "the plate machine" in front of my daughter's teacher. She just smiled. I wanted to disappear. My ferritin is still 18. --- September 28. I started a list of everything I've tried. Writing it down made me sick. Iron bisglycinate — 65mg daily for 8 months. Ferritin went from 14 to 18. Doctor said "improvement." Methylated B-complex — $42/month. B12 went from 290 to 340. Doctor said "in range now." Vitamin D3 + K2 — 5,000 IU daily. Went from 22 to 28 in four months. Doctor said "good progress." Magnesium glycinate. Ashwagandha. Rhodiola. CoQ10. Probiotics. L-theanine. Adrenal support complex. Fish oil. $94 a month. Fifteen bottles on my counter. My husband calls it "the pharmacy." Elimination diet — six weeks. Felt slightly better. Crashed week seven. Keto — one month. Lost four pounds. Gained them back. Energy identical. Total spent since 2021: north of $6,000 on supplements alone. Plus $1,800 on the functional medicine practitioner who ran the DUTCH test, organic acids panel, full thyroid antibody workup — and told me my cortisol curve was "suboptimal." Four months on a $200/month adrenal protocol. Cortisol improved slightly. Energy did not. She suggested a different protocol. I didn't go back. --- October 4. Saw my endocrinologist today. I asked about my ferritin. "Eighteen is low, but it's not deficient. We don't treat until it's under 12." I asked about the afternoon crashes. "Have you tried adjusting your caffeine timing?" I asked about the brain fog. She paused. "Your TSH is 2.1. That's perfect. Your free T3 is 2.4 — low normal. Your antibodies are negative." She looked at me: "Honestly? I think you need to give the Lexapro more time." I sat in my car in the parking garage for twenty minutes. --- October 17. 2:43am. Wide awake. Again. I was on a chronic fatigue forum. Hundreds of women posting the same numbers I have. Ferritin in the teens. B12 "in range" but low. TSH "normal." All of them supplementing. All of them still exhausted. One post stopped me: "My functional medicine doctor tested for something nobody had checked — parasites. Standard tests miss 75% of infections. She put me on a three-herb protocol. Within two weeks I had more energy than I'd had in four years." Below it: "Your supplements aren't failing. Something is consuming them before your body can use them." I read that sentence five times. --- Not a hormone problem. Not a thyroid problem. Not a cortisol problem. Something LIVING in my gut. Intercepting iron, B12, amino acids — every nutrient I'd been supplementing for three years — before my body could absorb any of it. That's why ferritin wouldn't climb past 18. That's why B12 supplementation barely moved the needle. That's why $6,000 in supplements felt like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom. I was feeding them. Not me. --- October 18. I spent all day researching. Published studies: intestinal parasites consume host iron, B12, amino acids, fat-soluble vitamins. Create deficiency patterns that look "normal" on standard bloodwork. CDC data: parasitic infections affect millions of Americans. 13.9% of the US population has Toxocara antibodies. Standard stool tests miss up to 75% of infections. The symptom list: unexplained fatigue despite normal labs. Brain fog. 2-3am waking. Sugar cravings. Supplements that work temporarily then stop. I have every single one. Three herbs kill the full lifecycle: Black Walnut Hull — adults. Disrupts metabolism. They can't produce energy. Wormwood — larvae. Contains artemisinin. Won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine. Creates free radicals inside parasites that destroy them from within. Clove — eggs. Eugenol prevents hatching. Without it, the cycle never breaks. All three together. Or it doesn't work. I found a company called Vello that combined all three. Liquid drops. Once a day. --- October 22. Started the drops. One dropper in water. Tastes like earth and spice. October 26. Day 4. Stomach woke me up. Not pain — movement. Deep, rolling movement. October 29. Day 7. Woke up before my alarm. Didn't hit snooze. The fog isn't gone. But it's thinner. November 5. Day 14. Got through a full workday without the 2pm crash. Didn't reach for my afternoon coffee. Cooked dinner. Standing up. My daughter asked if I was "feeling special today." I almost cried. November 12. Day 21. In the shower. Washing my hair. Looked down at the drain. Hair — normal, I've been losing it for two years. But mixed in with the hair were dark strands. Thin. Rope-like. Not hair. I stood there with the water running and stared. This is what had been living in me. This is what had been eating my iron, my B12, my energy. I got out and sat on the bathroom floor for ten minutes. I wasn't scared. I was angry. --- November 19. Day 28. Sugar cravings gone. Not managed. Gone. Drove past the bakery I stop at every Wednesday. Didn't slow down. Didn't even think about it until two blocks past. The woman on the forum was right: "The cravings weren't yours. They were feeding something else." December 3. Week 6. Ran my own labs. Ferritin: 31. Up from 18. Same iron supplement. Same dose. B12: 488. Up from 340. Without changing anything. Vitamin D: 36. Finally moving. My body is absorbing what I've been giving it for three years. The only thing that changed was what I removed. December 20. Month 2. Took my daughter hiking. She's nine. Three miles. She asked if we could go further. We did four and a half. I carried her backpack the last mile. That night she looked up at me: "Mom, you're not tired anymore." She'd been watching the whole time. --- I stopped the Lexapro. My doctor wasn't happy. My daughter is. 👉 https://tryvello.co/products/cleanse P.S. — I still take the drops. Cycling protocol: ten days on, five days off. Every month, my labs look better. Every month, I feel more like the person I was before this started. If you've been supplementing for years and your numbers barely move — the supplements aren't the problem. What's consuming them is. P.P.S. — I mailed my mother's prescription list to my aunt last week. Nineteen years of medications. Six different drugs by the end. If someone had just told her at 41 that something was living in her gut, stealing her nutrients, making every pill she swallowed pointless… would she have lived past 63? I don't know. But she would have had a chance.