HOW I GOT WELL, PART ONE
I’d like to tell you my story of how I overcame seemingly insurmountable health problems. It’s so long and extensive, that I can only hope to provide a mere sketch of it in this article.
It was the summer of 1975, just before my senior year of high school. All of my life, up until then, I had been in exceptionally good health. I was very strong and athletic. I could water ski until the boat ran out of gas; and I could swim and tread water longer than all of my friends, without ever feeling fatigued from it. I loved winter sports more than anyone that I knew. I was a very strong figure skater; and I was the only one on my high school, varsity, ski team that raced every race without ever disqualifying. When given the choice, I was always the last one in from outdoor activities in the cold. I was a physically fit “tank.” I slept well, and had normal dreams. I could do all of this without any type of special diet. I studied nutrition since junior high school, so I automatically ate a better than average (American) diet.
All of this changed in one terrible day. Back to the summer of 1975: I cut my foot badly, and as a result, was given a tetanus shot. In retrospect, I know that this single tetanus shot nearly destroyed my health. [The actual, toxic ingredients and effects of vaccinations are not commonly known.] Following that tetanus shot, early in my senior year of high school, I developed the following health problems: 1) Degenerative muscle and joint diseases, such as arthritis, lumbar scoliosis, and fibromyalgia. 2) Agonizing digestive disorders, such as severe candidasis, extreme intestinal bloating, constipation, acidosis, ulcers, and an inability to digest multiple foods (even very healthy foods). 3) Low blood sugar. 4) Hypothyroidism. 5) Goiter. 6) Acne. 7) “Female” disorders. 8) Recurring pneumonia. 9) Chronic bronchitis that I would have for at least six months out of each year; two to three bouts per year, each lasting for two to three months at a time. 10) Raynaud’s Phenomenon, a circulatory disorder that results in the hands and/or feet being hypersensitive to the cold. 11) Thinning hair. 12) Chronic fatigue. 13) Insomnia, accompanied by nearly continuous nightmares when I did sleep. 14) Psoriasis.
All of the illnesses listed above were well under-way within six months of that single tetanus shot. By my mid-twenties, I had also acquired severe environmental allergies and daily migraine headaches.
My muscle and joint pains and my digestive problems were so bad that my state of physical misery began as being frequent, and escalated to being nearly continual. As time went on, I rarely had a day when I wasn’t in substantial pain and discomfort. During the last ten years of these illnesses, I had two days when I felt “okay.” That’s right, two days out of ten years (I actually kept track). The only reason that I didn’t seriously consider suicide was that I had an extremely strong sense of spiritual responsibility toward living beings. I believed that life was so precious that I couldn’t leave any loved ones behind who needed me, animals included. There were no cures in sight. No doctor ever helped me in the long run. To the contrary, all medical treatments tended to add to my demise by harming me. “The cure was worse than the disease.”
During the winter of my senior year of high school, I caught pneumonia, missed twenty days of school, and had to quit the ski team. My fingers and toes, which could previously stand sub-zero weather, all day, with no discomfort, suddenly were swollen, red and in intense pain, with short exposure to moderate winter weather, even if it was 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The next summer, I could only water ski for a few minutes, and then my strength would be gone and my legs cramped intensely. My strength and endurance were shot!
From 1975 until 1989, my health was on a downward spiral, but I continually studied nutrition, including some college courses. I was also a guinea pig for the Michigan State Osteopathic Clinic. Still, nothing that the “establishment” had to offer could make me well. I struggled to get through six years of college. I didn’t finish a degree because I switched majors after three years, and I was too ill after my sixth year for an additional year that would be necessary to complete either degree. I worked part-time when I could, but eventually, I didn’t have the strength to be employed at all. I could barely get through the day, even without a job. I felt like I was dying and that I would only last a few more miserable years, at best.
In September of 1989, I was scheduled to get a diagnostic, barium enema, so the doctors could attempt to “help” me with my digestive difficulties. Through what I jokingly call “compulsive research,” I had learned enough just prior to September to know what to do if I was to decide to take a chance on a wholistic cleansing/detoxification process, including a diet overhaul. Just one hour before my appointment for the barium enema, I cancelled the appointment. That very day, I put my husband and myself on a personally designed, radical health program in an attempt to gain wellness. My husband was very willing (rather desperate) because he had similar health problems, including lifelong, life-threatening asthma.
Well, it worked! Our health “skyrocketed.” Most of our physical agony ended within a few months. My husband, who almost died from asthma (and asthma medications) several times, previously had between one and three asthma attacks on a “good” day. He has not had another one since the end of 1989.
Since then, we’ve studied like a couple of nuts! It has been nearly fifteen years since that pivotal day when I cancelled the barium enema. We’ve passionately continued to explore and experiment with how our bodies respond to “alternative” methods to increase our health and the health of our loved ones (animals included). Our learning process has resulted in continual health improvement. A good ballpark figure for our overall rate of curing ourselves would be at least 95%.
I’d like to share with you readers as much as possible about what our methods were/are that have worked for us. That will have to be covered in a “part two” of my story. Part two will be a sketch of which wholistic practices worked for us. I’d like to leave you with the names of two books that will prove to be very helpful to anyone who wants to know the basics of what we’ve discovered and what we actually did to get well. I believe with all my heart that these two books are well worth everyone’s time.
Jensen, Ph.D., Bernard. Vibrant Health From Your Kitchen: Dr. Jensen’s Food Guide for Family Health and Well-Being.
[This book may be very hard to locate. Try Amazon.com or your local library.]
For more information, read:
Miller, Neil Z., Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective?
[This book is available through New Atlantean Books: (505) 983-1856, through their website: www.thinktwice.com/books.htm or through your better health food stores.]
P.S. No matter which books you may have already read, you’re bound to be surprised and enlightened by these two classics. They should be shared with your loved ones until they are worn out. Oh, how I wish that I had them back in 1975!
Also, before you vaccinate yourself or anyone under your care, get on the internet and look up the
HOW I GOT WELL, PART TWO
By Kathleen Ellis
“How I Got Well” was a dramatic, return-to-health story; but it was only part one, which told you what I recovered from. This is part two, which is all about how I recovered; in other words, the wholistic health practices that worked for me.
Please note: People are very different from each other, so what works for one person may not work for another. Also, what works for a person at a certain time in their life may not work at a different time in their life. We are individuals that are ever changing, keeping life challenging. However, you will find that most of my methods used to gain and maintain health are pretty universal.
My husband and I are genetically very different from each other (totally different nationalities and different body types), but the alternative health methods that are on the list below have worked wonders for him and many others in their quests to survive and be in good health. He was briefly mentioned in “Part One” of my story, so it’s worthwhile to mention the fact that the following methods worked to cure him of chronic fatigue; lifelong, life-threatening asthma; and severe environmental allergies. As a matter of fact, he had the worst grass allergies that his allergist had ever seen in twenty-six years of practice! He would have severe asthma attacks if he went anywhere near a lawn being cut, and every year, he had to spend the entire grass cutting season indoors, with all windows shut! This changed so dramatically that he was able to cut his own lawn himself, and he has not had an allergic reaction to grass or an asthma attack in sixteen years.
The following is a list of alternative/wholistic health practices that resulted in the attainment of our health:
· A diet consisting of only whole, mostly organic, mostly raw, fresh foods. The primary types of foods are mostly fruits and vegetables, very little grains, no wheat, and plenty of sprouted, ground up, or soaked and then blended nuts and seeds.
· No more milk products.
· No more meat; no flesh of any animals.
· No more eggs.
· Blending, juicing and juice-fasting, especially in the first few months, when our digestive systems were in the process of cleansing and rebuilding. Juicing is a brilliant thing to do when a person’s digestive system is too weak or damaged to properly digest raw produce. It’s critical in the healing phase because it provides semi-digested (broken-up) foods/nutrients in liquid form.
· Whole food supplements, or near whole food supplements, such as dandelion, parsley, kelp, spirulina, flaxseed oil, cod liver oil, lecithin, garlic, bee products (royal jelly, pollen, propolis) and other nutritional or medicinal, raw, plant herbs and oils.
· Numerous bottles of liquid chlorophyll, especially in the crucial, beginning stages of our detoxification process. Chlorophyll [“plant blood”] quickly builds and cleanses the blood of humans and animals like nothing else can.
· Lots and lots of fresh-squeezed lemons and limes, for their liver-cleansing and concentrated nutritional values. For the first year, lots of lemon and lime juice mixed with water, psyllium powder and slippery elm powder for intestinal cleansing. After the first year, up until the present, the juice of a whole lemon or lime per person, with almost every meal.
· Frequent, hot water bottle style enemas for the first six months (one or two a week). Note, if you first start taking large doses of the psyllium concoction on the two days preceding a heavy-duty enema (or colonic), you will probably see all sorts of wildly interesting things expelled into the toilet that you carried around within your innards for a long time, maybe for years, or even decades. Expect to see tough, long, rubber-band-like mucous, and globs of unidentifiable objects that used to be in you, making you sick, toxic and digestively compromised.
· Bentonite clay, for its powerful detoxification properties, for two days, before each enema.
· Removal of amalgam /mercury dental fillings.
· No more vaccinations or other unnecessary medications.
· More focus on the spiritual/mental causes of illness. Some of our ailments could only be cured with therapy on the spiritual/mental (energetic) level. We became adept at several forms of “energy work,” which accelerated all types of healing. We discovered that the invisible aspects of our health deserve much, much more attention and constant re-evaluation. An example would be illness caused by trauma or loss, resulting in our bodies using (and therefore losing) excessive amounts of certain nutrients. Possible therapies would be changing our mental response to this super-stress, and supplementing with the very nutrients that were lost.
Be well!
