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SEVEN CANARIES
Following are seven true-to-life case studies, each
illustrating one or more essential issues in the diagnosis and management of chronic
fatigue states. Six of these are my patients, but names have been changed for obvious
reasons. The seventh case history is that of an engineer whose story was published in the
Wall Street Journal.
These case histories demonstrate that these individuals were
set up for later events — they were carrying biological burdens in the form of
allergies, chemical sensitivities, viral and bacterial infections,
sugar and adrenaline
roller coasters, battered bowel ecology states, and toxic metal overloads. One other
factor distinguishes them from others: These persons developed chronic fatigue in
circumstances in which others would not have. They are human canaries. What turned them
into canaries? I address this issue at length in the chapters: Pasteur's Sheep and My
Canaries, What Is Chronic Fatigue? and Where Does It All Begin?
LITTLE JOE: THE FIRST CANARY
Little Joe's mom consulted me because he was "always
tired." Little Joe had been a colicky baby and had "bad diaper rash all the
time." His mother didn't know he was allergic. He frequently suffered from sore
throats and ear infections, and required antibiotic therapy to control such infections.
Little Joe finally had tubes put into his ears. The tubes reduced the frequency of ear
infections but didn't save him from yet more courses of antibiotics. When he was just an
infant, his mother had asked his pediatrician if he needed allergy tests. The pediatrician
told her he was too young for allergy tests. When Choua heard about this, he chuckled,
"Too young for allergy tests but not too young for antibiotics." I asked Little
Joe's mother if she had sometimes noticed mood swings or if he had ever thrown temper
tantrums after eating ice cream and candy. The answer was a resounding "yes."
ZENA: THE SECOND CANARY
Zena was, as Victor Hugo would say, in the youth of her old
age. Fiftysomething, she lived a quiet and contented life with her husband, except when
her daughter visited with her two grandsons, which didn't happen too often. There hadn't
been any surprises at the office for years. The people at work, it seemed to her, had
changed even less than the red bricks on the front wall of the company building. Democrats
hadn't begun to like Clinton yet. Nobody liked Bush. Perot still hadn't pulled out, and
Quayle was still into Murphy Brown. Then everything changed.
Zena suffered a cold. Her doctor prescribed antibiotics. Days
went by but her cold symptoms didn't clear up. Antibiotics followed more and different
antibiotics, and CAT scans followed chest X-rays. Her dry hacking cough persisted, and she
felt very tired. Then she switched doctors. She had several blood tests done and yet more
antibiotics were prescribed. The Lyme disease test was negative but one for Epstein-Barr
virus turned out to be weakly positive. She became progressively lethargic and irritable,
developed muscle and joint aches, and grew anxious and depressed. Days turned into weeks.
She suffered from recurrent episodes of lightheadedness and numbness in her limbs. Her
husband noticed she didn't remember things that had happened just hours before. She
consulted still more doctors who suspected
chronic fatigue syndrome but thought she needed
to see a psychiatrist before they could give her gamma globulin shots and Zovirax for the
viral infection. It didn't really surprise Zena. She herself had begun to wonder if the
whole thing were all in her head. Zena wondered if she would ever get better or if this
was to be the story of her golden years.
FATHER THOMAS: THE THIRD CANARY
Father Thomas looked his part. He was tall, broad-shouldered
and soft-spoken. Listening came to him naturally and effortlessly, virtues that resulted
from years of long professional training. I got the sense he wanted me to succeed, not
because he consulted me for relief of his chronic fatigue, but because he felt I deserved
to succeed. His fatigue, he confided, was not really disabling. It was just that he was
tired all the time and knew that was not right. Sometimes he wondered if he was harboring
a killer cancer somewhere in his body that was silently eating at his innards, causing
fatigue.
LUCIA: THE FOURTH CANARY
During her initial consultation with me, Lucia, a 39-year-old
housewife, smiled and said,
"Dr. Ali, I'm afraid my husband might divorce me if I
don't get my energy level up and don't lose some weight. God knows I have tried, but I
haven't succeeded."
Patients often make such comments with smiles that do little
to hide serious inner concerns. I returned her smile.
Lucia looked like a strong woman, and her interest in body
sculpting work showed in her bearing. She did not recall any specific illness that was
followed by problems of impaired general health. Rather, she had slowly lost her energy
level over several months. This change in energy level was associated with a host of other
symptoms that seemed to follow one after another, including muscle aches, undue
sensitivity to cold, abdominal bloating and cramps, severe PMS, headache, mood swings,
short-term memory loss and depression. She knew she was allergic but her allergies had
never been diagnosed and never managed.
BRUCE: THE FIFTH CANARY
Bruce, a young man in his forties, walked in for a
consultation carrying a thick bundle of previous medical records. His shirt was obviously
too large for him, and it was equally obvious that he had lost a lot of weight. He looked
exhausted as many chronic fatiguers do. His skin was dry and his eyelids swollen. He sat
down on the chair and looked at me with deeply doubtful eyes as I studied his history
questionnaire.
During the visit, he pulled out from his thick pile of papers
a typed summary of his symptoms that I reproduce on the following pages.
* Birth to three years
Received prolonged antibiotics at age 6 months for pneumonia
More antibiotics for pneumonia at age 2
* 3-6 years
Physically very active More antibiotics for recurrent
tonsillitis followed by tonsillectomy Extended antibiotic therapy for rheumatic fever
* 6-12 years
Physically very active More antibiotics during dental work
Multiple mercury fillings
* 13-21 years
Still physically active but with diminishing energy Weighed
130 pounds at age 21 More antibiotics for acne and for dental work Started some herbs for
health
* 22-23 years
Physically inactive Weight 142 Antibiotics continued for
dental work
* 24-29 years
Very busy with work as financial analyst Physically active,
running 20-45 miles per week Antibiotics continued for dental work
* 30-35 years
Knee surgery at 30 that followed forced running Nasal polyp
surgery at 31 Physically inactive, weight steadily rising to 152 pounds Began losing
weight and energy at 35 years Developed food intolerance and chemical sensitivities
Started elimination/rotation diet and homeopathic remedies. Symptoms progressively
worsened despite therapy
* 35-37 years
Took nystatin continuously, "Life became tolerable, by
far the best I felt in years, but four months after stopping nystatin, chemical
sensitivity became so strong I had to stop working. Was easy to identify problem
substances. Occasional good days, but produced lots of lifestyle constraints."
* 37-41 years
Physically inactive, progressive weight loss (from 152 to
117) Digestive aids helped. Internal cleansing: No matter what, the same pattern occurred:
A brief period of improvement, a slow, steady increase in symptom severity that continued
until the method was stopped.
* Long-term symptoms
Occasional age 14-19 Frequent age 20-29 Constant age 30 to
present
* Digestive and other problems
Excessive gas Always hungry Always underweight Bloated Food
intolerance Leaky gut Cold hands and feet Sensitive to heat/cold/weather Hair loss Poor
posture Depression Hyperactive Apprehensiveness/anxiety/shoulder and chest pain Mood
swings Difficulty staying focused Sensory perception problems (primarily vision, smell)
Physical balance problems Time/space perception problems Coordination, motor skill
problems Chemical sensitivity Heavy metal toxicity Fatigue Hypoglycemia Pancreas/liver
stressed Degree of problems varies with the degree of food/chemical exposure
I'M AFRAID OF HOPE
"I'm afraid of hope." Bruce spoke those words
during his initial consultation with me. The words have stuck in my mind ever since. He
was very eager for me to study his whole case — as most chronic fatiguers are, months
and sometimes after years of hope roller coasters. Hope, I found out early in my work with
chronic fatiguers, is easy to create. It requires much patience and long hours of work to
sustain. I know of many sad stories of chronic fatiguers — people whose hopes were
raised by the promise of seeing some great fatigue researcher at some great out-of-state
fatigue center. Those hopes came crashing down when — after spending thousands of
dollars on sophisticated tests — they were rewarded with a prescription for some
antidepressant.
The subject of hope creates a dilemma for me in my clinical
work. Hope is essential for healing. Yet, hope that does not bring relief is devastating.
Then there are those frivolous people around who sit in judgment of the work of holistic
physicians and who equate hope with deception, duping, and outright fraud. And finally,
there are malpractice attorneys who blatantly advise you against holding out hope for
anyone. Hope, they counsel you, is the fuel for malpractice actions.
I told Bruce that I couldn't work without hope. Hope is what
sustains my patients — sometimes for those interminable months when relief from
symptoms escapes them. Hope is what sustains me — sometimes during months of strong
doubt and a punishing sense of personal inadequacy. And — I told Bruce not knowing
how he would take it — I truly do not know where true hope ends and false hope
begins. Indeed, I do not know if hope is ever truly false. Some attorneys know better.
Editors of our prestigious medical journals know better. Some folks who sit on state
licensing boards know better. But I don't. Next, I told Bruce that if he wanted me to work
with him, we were going to begin with hope. And that it was okay with me that he was
afraid of hope.
JOHN: THE SIXTH CANARY
John was a financial analyst before he became a full-time
chronic fatiguer. That happened four years before I first saw him in the conference room,
slumped in a chair during a workshop. I was speaking about how some liver enzymes detoxify
environmental pollutants in the body. "Speak for yourself," he muttered to
himself, but loud enough to be heard by others. When I turned my head to see where the
words might have come from, John became flustered. John, I learned later, knows more about
chronic fatigue than most people, including most physicians I know. He told me to speak
for myself because he knew his detoxification enzymes were not working, and that was his
main problem.
Unfortunately for John, long before he educated himself
intensively about the impact of his environment upon his genetic makeup, he had been
prescribed extensive broad- spectrum antibiotics for recurrent infections and other drugs
for symptom suppression during his childhood and teen years, and then again during the
early years of chronic fatigue. John developed severe, unrelenting fatigue, muscle aches,
and a diffuse, dry, red rash all over his body that sometimes cracked and oozed. He
rapidly developed multiple food allergies and chemical sensitivities, lost weight and
became emaciated. By the time he learned the true nature of his suffering, he was
seriously ill most of the time in spite of the care given him by some knowledgeable
holistic New York physicians.
THOMAS LATIMER: THE SEVENTH CANARY
Mr. Latimer is not my patient. I choose his story as told by
the Wall Street Journal to illustrate some other aspects of the chronic fatigue pandemic.
Thomas Latimer used to be a vigorous, athletic man, a
successful petroleum engineer with a bright future. Then he mowed his lawn. On a summer
Saturday in 1985, Mr. Latimer spent an hour or so cutting the grass, picking up the
clippings and edging the walkway around his modest two-bedroom home. Soon, something was
terribly wrong. He felt dizzy and nauseated. His nose was
running, and his chest was tight. He had a pounding headache. Ten days later, he was still
sick.
The Wall Street Journal October 14, 1991.
This is not an unusual beginning of what, sadly and only too
frequently, turns out to be a horror story. The essential clues in such stories stare
physicians in their faces but are seldom heeded.
The man in the Wall Street Journal story was "a
vigorous, athletic man" who was in perfect health and then became suddenly ill after
mowing his lawn. Dizziness, nausea, headache, tightness in the chest and runny nose are
symptoms that cry out for recognition as a severe systemic reaction to an environmental
poison. Was it recognized? The Journal continues:
Now six years and 20 doctors later —after liver
biopsies, spinal-fluid taps, CAT scans, radioactive brain flow studies,
sleep studies and
many other tests — Mr. L, 36, accepts the diagnosis of doctors: that he was poisoned
by an organophosphate pesticide used to treat his yard.
Why did it take 20 doctors six years to diagnose pesticide
poisoning? Because this type of illness does not fit into our blessed double-blind,
cross-over model of disease classification in the prevailing drug medicine. It is far more
convenient for us physicians to deny such illness. The Journal continues:
A toxicologist, three neurologists and two
neuro-ophthalmologists who examined him all concluded independently that the Tagamet
suppressed the normal role of his liver in metabolizing the poison and expelling it.
How did these specialists arrive at that conclusion? I
wondered about this question. After all, that is the precise reason why physicians who
practice environmental medicine have been crucified for some decades. What has been the
sin of practitioners of environmental medicine? They searched for the cause of illness in
their patients in environmental pollutants? When a clinical ecologist suspects that
formaldehyde exposure causes headache, or trichloroethylene (dry cleaning solution) causes
skin bruising, the drug doctors jump at him and threaten his license because he is not
"scientific" enough. When three neurologists and two neuro-ophthalmologists
conclude that Tagamet suppressed the normal role of his liver, no one asks how did they
support their conclusion? Did they study the cytochrome P-450 enzyme levels in the liver
cells in Mr. Latimer? They didn't. Even if they had, how could they prove that liver
enzymes were injured several years previously on that fateful day when he mowed his lawn?
How can anyone conclude something like that after years of exposure.
The real answer is that practitioners of environmental
medicine make clinical judgments based on repeated patterns of symptomatology that follow
exposure to environmental agents. Then they exclude those pollutants and manage other
related burdens on detoxification enzymes and clinically observe the outcome. This is as
good a science as any other in medicine.
The canary in Mr. Latimer carries some important message:
First,
seemingly innocent drugs such as Tagamet used for stomach
ulcers by millions of people can slowly but relentlessly injure energy and detoxification
enzymes and lead to serious chemical consequences.
Second,
drug therapies administered to "treat" such
illnesses only compound the problem — they turn easily manageable clinical problems
into irreversible immune disorders.
Third,
the practitioners of drug medicine can accept the precepts of
clinical ecology only after prolonged drug therapies have inflicted substantial additional
damage.
Fourth,
in environmental medicine, we see cases such as that of Mr.
Latimer almost every week — most of them recover relatively early with nondrug
therapies. When the drug doctors are stuck with such cases, they become media events. What
surprised me was not that an organophosphate in pesticide had poisoned an engineer, but
that the Wall Street Journal was so impressed by the case history that it put the story on
the front page.
GENES AND CANARIES
Little Joe, Zena, Father Thomas, Lucia, Bruce, John and Mr.
Latimer are human canaries. Their genes set them up for chronic fatigue states — to
render them vulnerable to life in a highly polluted and toxic environment. They become
chemically-sensitive and tolerate our miracle drugs poorly. They benefit little from our
Star Wars medicine.
"DNA legislates life, Environment interprets the
laws,"
Choua once told me. " You physicians seem to understand
that in theory," he continued, "but in clinical practice, it is a different
matter. You ignore both essentials. Drugs and knives are the tools of your trade, and
there are no drugs nor surgical procedures to cope with either. Chronic fatiguers suffer
needlessly because environmental and nutritional medicine have been declared quackery by
the high priests of Star Wars medicine. The champions of N2D2 medicine believe such
therapies are treating diseases that really do not exist. Their injured enzymes are
ignored because Star Wars medicine has no drugs that can undamage’ the damaged energy
enzymes — unoxidize’ the oxidized and denatured enzymes. Women and men who bow
at the altar of the gods of the double-blind, cross-over and scientific vigor have
pronounced that all methods of treatment except those that use drugs and scalpels are
unproven and unconventional. I have no trouble with the unconventional part, but unproven
is simply not true. They are proven for those who use them every day and see their
clinical benefits, clearly and unequivocally." "Choua, you have a one track
mind. You can't help yourself. Everything has to end with an indictment of the medical
profession," I complained. "In the old days, miners carried canaries deep into
their mine shafts," Choua continued darkly, "so the birds could warn them of
poisonous gases. The canaries died, but the men lived. Chronic fatiguers are the canaries
that tell us something about the shape of things to come. Are the high priests of your
Star Wars medicine listening? Do they see the havoc our technology has wrought upon our
environment? Do they see the chemical avalanches we have unleashed upon our planet Earth?
Do they recognize the impact upon human and animal biology of environmental pollutants? Do
they understand what polluted air, contaminated water and toxic foods do to living things?
Do they realize how the delicate gut ecology of babies is destroyed with indiscriminate
use of antibiotics?" "Choua, it's changing. Even the New York Times knows
antioxidants are good for preventive medicine." I tried to ameliorate the situation.
"Yes, the Times has finally learned that! But do you think those men of scientific
vigor on the editorial boards of medical journals know that?"
Choua now referred to an editorial I had written for the Life
Spanner in which I commented on two studies published by the New England Journal of
Medicine. These two large multimillion dollar studies clearly showed the protective value
of vitamin E against coronary heart disease. Yet, the Journal concluded both articles with
the recommendation that the use of vitamin E beyond the
RDA: Rats, Drugs and
Assumptions value of 30 units should await
further studies. This was a stunning conclusion for practitioners of nutritional medicine,
who have safely used 400 to 800 units of this vitamin for years. I said so in my
editorial.
"All you think of is drugs," Choua resumed.
"Drugs for chemical sensitivity, drugs for immune disorders, drugs for degenerative
diseases, and, of course, drugs for chronic fatigue." "It's changing," I
said lamely. "Changing? Changing, my foot! You have some sense of humor. Don't you?
They are revoking Levin's license and you think things are changing. What are the awful
things Levin did that he deserves to lose his license and livelihood? He prescribed
vitamins! That's the punishable offense! Isn't it?" "Levin hasn't lost his
license yet. With luck, the Board of Regents will see the truth and will rule in his
favor," I said hopefully. "Luck! Aha! Waiting for luck. Waiting for Godot!"
MOST PEOPLE WHO SUFFER FROM CHRONIC FATIGUE DO GET
BETTER
Little Joe was doing well at my last visit with him two years
later. Micro-elisa blood allergy tests for mold and pollen allergy and electrodermal
conductance tests for food incompatibilities revealed allergy and incompatibility to
numerous agents. It usually takes children a while to see the relationship between what
they eat and how they feel. Joe was no exception. Initially, he resented changes in his
diet and bitterly fought with his parents. In a few months, he gradually relented and
accepted new foods. Sugar was finally and completely eliminated. Once, when he felt very
well, Halloween's arrival made him very sick. That did it. He began to link the way he ate
and the way he felt. He has not required antibiotics in several months now. His parents
have been satisfied with the clinical results. This turned out to be a simple case of
accelerated oxidative injury caused by sugar roller coasters and food allergy. The case
management was simple, outcome satisfactory.
Zena made dramatic initial improvement. Her fatigue cleared
up almost completely with intravenous (IV) nutrient therapy, oral vitamin and mineral
therapy, allergy immunotherapy injections and stress control. "It's hard to believe
this problem could have been solved so quickly and without any drugs," she told me
after a few weeks. Relapses of fatigue after initial recovery are not uncommon. Indeed
this happened to Zena. She returned for some more IV therapy. Her fatigue cleared again
and didn't return. This was a case of accelerated oxidative molecular injury triggered by
a viral infection and compounded by multiple courses of antibiotics, stress and fear of an
unknown, disabling disease.
Father Thomas proved to be allergic to multiple molds and
pollen with the micro- elisa blood test and had multiple food incompatibilities. With
allergy treatment, some nutrient therapies, food rotation and some autoregulation, his
fatigue cleared up within several weeks. I didn't think he needed IV therapy. I saw him
recently about three years after the first visit. Now his energy level is high. He
continues his nutrient therapy and now takes an immunotherapy injection once every four
weeks. Again, this case turned out to be a simple case of chronic fatigue caused by
allergy and functional nutrient inadequacies that was successfully reversed with simple
nondrug therapies.
Lucia got her energy back, but with some ups and downs.
Initially, she responded only minimally to my initial nutritional, environmental and
self-regulatory protocols (immunotherapy for IgE-mediated allergy always takes weeks to
months to produce clinical result). My advice not to undertake any strenuous body
sculpting work went unheeded. I then decided to administer intravenous nutrient protocols.
She responded rather dramatically to four infusions. Then I didn't see her for about six
months. She returned with the following story:
"I was well for several weeks after I stopped your
therapies. Then slowly — just as I had before I saw you — fatigue returned along
with all the other symptoms. My husband became very frustrated. He took me to this
specialist at a New York university hospital who ordered a bunch of tests for which we
paid over $1,300. His professional fee came to $560. Then he told us that I needed to see
a psychiatrist. I was so mad at my husband. I wanted to come here because I got better
here the first time, but he insisted I must see a New York City specialist."
I reviewed the records again and decided to follow exactly
the same management program that had worked so well the first time. As she was leaving my
office, she turned back and spoke,
"Dr. Ali, if your fatigue book is not finished yet,
please write about me. Maybe it will save other patients a lot of aggravation and a lot of
money. When you suffer from chronic fatigue, and many other problems, it really hurts when
a doctor tells you to consult a psychiatrist."
Bruce's progress notes in his own clinical chart written
after I started my environmental, nutritional, self-regulatory and fitness protocols
include the following:
Seven weeks later
Very concerned about continuing weight loss. Mild improvement
in food choices based on food sensitivity profile. Fresh vegetable juices okay. Squashes
give a clear mind — then it crashes. Soreness in ileocecal region. Primer I, II and
III intravenous infusions prescribed. (In the chapter Intravenous Nutrient Therapies for
Chronic Fatigue States, I give my reasons why I defer such therapies for some time after
the initial consultation.)
14 weeks later
First IV (Primer I intravenous Protocol) brought relief for
two to three days. Primer II and III brought relief for four to seven days. "IVs
really good results if there is no exposure". Overall improvement 2+ (scale 0 to 4+);
Fatigue 1.5+ (scale 0 to 4+)
19 weeks later
IV therapy with autoregulation much more helpful than without
it. Now, with permission of the other patient receiving IV therapy in my room, I turn down
the lights and we do autoreg. My initial reactions to IV have almost disappeared. I feel I
am stepping into a transition. Overall improvement score 2+; fatigue score 2+.
27 weeks later
"Dr. Ali, I can't believe it happened. I drove my car
for five hours at a stretch. And that's some thing for me. I have been so sensitive to car
exhaust I couldn't drive for more than half an hour at a time." I told him not to
test his limits that way that soon, but he seemed too elated with his achievement to pay
attention to what I tried to impress on him.
John and I came to know each other well. When I first met him
several years ago, I had no plans for writing this book. He was among the first people who
felt my work had relevance for a much larger audience than I could possibly manage myself.
"Doc, you are the most underutilized resource there is in preventive medicine. And I
have been around," he told me once.
John is highly allergic. We achieved only minimal success
with allergy immunotherapy injections. Those were the days that I was just beginning my
research with intravenous nutrient protocols. One day he dragged himself to the office. He
looked very pale and sick, and was obviously in a lot of pain. He had been mugged a few
days earlier, he told me. Some of the wounds got infected. Then he developed multiple
abscesses under the skin of his legs and abdomen. He wanted me to treat those abscesses
with IV nutrient therapy. I thought he was frightened, in pain and irrational. It is one
thing to try to manage severe viral infection with intravenous nutrient infusions and
altogether different to try to cope with multiple bacterial infections with such therapy.
Antibiotics, it is well-known, do not work against viruses. Antiviral drugs such as AZT
for AIDS are too toxic to be lightly used for nonlethal viral infections. It is different
with bacterial infections that can almost always be controlled with appropriate antibiotic
therapies. I told John I could not agree with his request.
"Doc, you don't know my body. Antibiotics will kill me.
Please do an IV for me, will you?" John pleaded.
I repeated my detailed explanation all over again. Then I
said, "John, I do not have as much freedom as you might think I have. There are such
things as malpractice insurance carriers and state licensing boards." "Give me
more credit than that, Doc. I will sign a consent form that you are giving me this therapy
purely on a compassionate basis. I will sign papers that you advised antibiotic therapy
but that I refused, and that you do not really think that IV therapy can do anything for
such large abscesses."
There was no problem with John's thinking, I realized. He had
thought the whole thing through — the compassionate use of IV and the consent and
release letter. I wondered whether the insurance carriers and folks who sit on the state
licensing boards ever learn about such matters.
I relented, and John received his first Infection Control
Protocol IV that evening and a second one two days later. There was no sign of abscesses
when I saw him a week later. Perhaps he would have healed his abscesses anyway without my
IV nutrient protocol. After all, human beings used to heal abscesses before Fleming
discovered penicillin.
John was trapped in some drawn-out family legal matters.
Neither he nor his sick mother was up to that demanding task. I didn't see him for several
months. He returned one day and asked if I could certify his illness. He could not get
disability benefits, largely because the disability folks could not understand why he had
not applied for such benefits some years earlier. I asked him why he hadn't. "Doc,
because I kept thinking it was just a matter of some weeks before I'd get better and
resume my work in finance. It never occurred to me that after all these years, my
intentions to get back to my work would keep me from getting disability. Ironic, isn't
it?" John spoke with a sad smile.
Now I see John occasionally when he totally collapses and
requires some urgent medical attention. He suffers from severe and persistent skin rashes,
for which he uses sauna therapy. Sometimes I see him when he wants me to write a medical
note so that the folks at his sauna do not keep him out because of his skin rash. Sauna is
a therapy without which John cannot catch the three to four hours of sleep he does manage
to get. John's suffering continues — a victim of his genes, of his environment, of
unrelenting fatigue, of universal reactivity, of ever-present muscle pains, of total body
skin scaling, oozing and itching and of recurrent abdominal cramps.
"Now I am frightened the way I have never been
frightened before. Doc, I can't think now. Now I don't know where this thing is leading
me. Where am I going? Doc, do you know?" he asked me the last time I saw him several
months ago.
John, above all, is a victim of Star Wars medicine that
excels only when people are near death, and it has little to offer in preventing
environmental diseases. The irony is that our Star Wars medicine has nothing to offer to
people like John even when they stare into the face of death.
Could John's unending miseries have been prevented? I have
often marveled at the astounding feats of Star Wars medicine when it deals with people in
near-death situations. I have also wondered how utterly ineffective this medicine is in
helping people as they begin to get ill. Could John's untold suffering have been
prevented? Probably — if his genetic handicap had been managed optimally and if his
environmental burdens had been alleviated — at least in part, and if he had been
nutritionally supported well. Instead, what N2D2 medicine offered was more and more
powerful (and toxic) antibiotics, and other drugs. Whatever damage N2D2 medicine spared
him if any, the politics of disability medicine completed it. John continues to suffer.
Mr. Latimer can no longer ride a bike, the Wall Street
Journal story continued. He has difficulty walking. At night, to combat seizures and
nightmares, he takes an anti- epileptic medication. Until recently, he could sleep for
only about an hour at a time. The Journal continues,
The makers of the pesticide Diazinon, and of Tagamet firmly
deny that their products had anything to do with Mr. Latimer's condition. ... . When they
(Mr. Latimer and his wife) discovered Mr. Latimer's cancer, they accelerated their plans
for starting a family, even creating their own sperm bank.
(parenthesis added)
Could Mr. Latimer's prolonged enzyme damage have been
prevented? My answer: The overwhelming probability is that it could have been if he had
been managed properly with holistic nondrug therapies. I do not make this statement
lightly. It is based on considerable personal experience with such environmentally-induced
illnesses. I have had the opportunity of caring for many patients who became suddenly ill
after a major chemical exposure. I managed all such cases with intravenous nutrient
infusions and carefully looked into all the factors that render persons like Mr. Latimer
so vulnerable to chemical exposures, including a focus on stress reduction with effective
self-regulatory methods. None of these patients followed the same course as Mr. Latimer.
His was the common tragedy of environmental illness that is either denied completely
— the old all-in- the-head story — or worse, treated with multiple drug
therapies that further damage the patient's energy and detoxification enzymes.
I end this chapter with a letter I received from one of my
patients.
"I am encouraged and hopeful beyond words. The paths
that once seemed closed now are wide open and beckoning to me. I am coming! The sun is
brighter, the music more beautiful, the flowers sweeter — all this because I feel my
health returning to me. A gift and a miracle I only imagined a year or more ago. Something
I prayed for, cried over, pined for, is at last palpable and real to me. The smallest task
accomplished, the most momentary burst of energy — however brief — the
unspeakable feeling when I can sing a song — a whole recital — with focus and
strength; all these things and many more sit upon me like gold and linger in dark moments.
Each day is a new opportunity, a new adventure and a new chance for fulfillment. I am
glad, proud, thrilled to be here to experience this growth and transformation.
The slow, often painful movement from sickness to health is
full of challenge and is ultimately more profound, more resonant and more satisfying than
any other
I've experienced. I am witness to the undeniable fact that
God lives in me — in my body — and he is working with me all the time and
guiding me towards that perfection which is my birthright.
I let go of the belief in limitation and restriction and
instead embrace the faith in the boundless possibility that resides, undaunted, within the
human spirit.
Amen!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Dr. Ali,
This is the little piece I wrote for our newsletter here at work. (I mailed it
to you weeks ago, but apparently it was lost in transit.) I was feeling
particularly well that day and felt the urge to express it...
I continue to improve all the time,
and I am very grateful for it. Thank you for all your work for the sick.
Your patient, LN
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