The bottom line here is that I’m upset. Not mentally per se. It’s physical. I had a relapse last weekend. It’s Friday now. I have exceptional tingling and pain in my legs. I can’t walk nearly as well as I was. It’s a loss. I hurt. I’m frustrated. There’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it.
I spent 1 1/2 hours with Dr. Tim Shannon late yesterday afternoon. I reviewed the problem in his drill down inquiry sort of way. “Tell me again the symptoms you are feeling?”
“And, when did this start again?”
“What happened just prior to this bout of trouble?”
“Had anything like that happened before?”
“Did that seem familiar to you? In what way?”
Dr. Tim is relentless but in a good way. I am convinced he cares. He asks detailed questions. I feel they are in the service of getting to the bottom of what’s going on with me rather than in some voyeuristic way.
“What did that remind you of?”
“Have you been having any specific kind of dream activity?”
I think there is a sense that my mind may know more than it’s telling me. We pick our way around my conscious awareness.
“Do you have an affinity for animals? Or not so much?”
“When you think of water, is that something that resonates with you? Or, not really?”
There’s no judgment in his inquiries. He is like Sherlock Holmes hunting for the clues. He doesn’t look like Holmes other than being long and lean. He always has reading glasses perched at the end of his nose looking at me over the tops of them while he feverishly takes notes on his computer, gathering data, and cross referencing it.
“What is the number one symptom that bothers you the most? What does that mean to you?” I had to start sitting with Tim to understand how this approach helps him define the nuances of my condition.
“I haven’t tried this before with you. But, some people in Europe have gotten good results with their data with this modality. They’ve found a correlation between people who prefer certain colors responding to the same treatment regime.” He opened a little book with color squares covering the rainbow spectrum.
“So, when you look at these, does any one feel more comforting?”
I point the teal blue one out to him. “Are there any others?” Dr. Tim’s voice is well modulated. While friendly, he gives no indication that there is any right answer. I point out another couple colors and smile because I know the answer to this one. I pay a lot of attention to colors in how I pick my ties. He patiently listens to my little diversion about ties.
The colors are on a grid. He notes the color codes and gabs another book, presumably some sort of key, and frowns into this second book apparently cross referencing something.
Dr. Shannon and I have been working together for 2 1/2 years. He treats my conditions with homeopathy. That is finding the symptoms that mimic the use of a substance like lavender or something potentially more harmful like strychnine. If an over exposure to that substance causes symptoms similar to the ones I am experiencing, the theory is that a extremely minute dose of that substance can cause my body to proactively react and develop a kind of immunity resolving the symptoms. It sounds to me like a sort of inoculation.
He has references to thousands of different substances and their affects on the human body with data from all over the world. Tim worked with a specialist in Italy for ten years. He has a good history of successfully working people with serious psychiatric conditions over the years including trauma veterans in both the wars and childhood. He also specializes in other conditions. In some people’s lives, he is the option of last resort and his treatment can be surprisingly effective.
My own experience of this treatment has been at times very successful and others less so. When we started, I told him I would hang in there for one year. I am self paying with no insurance coverage for this so I was making a major commitment.
However, I did get initial results. My main concern was walking of course. I also have mental health issues that include very violent nightmares. Having one of these nightmares would cause me to wake up with an exacerbation of physical symptoms.
What Tim gives me is in the form of drops. I put four drops of the substance under my tongue once a day or more. This is not hard nor labor intensive. The bottle of drops costs $17. Thus, other than the money for seeing him, it’s not hard to try.
Fairly early on, I had some significant results. We found that four drops a week caused my nightmares to stop being so gruesomely violent. Whoa. What is this? They were consistently less violent. I have had these violent nightmares several times a week since I was a small child. You are telling me that four drops a week can make this difference?
Dr. Tim likes to tweak these treatment paths because he wants optimum results which I appreciate. However, tweaking the nightmare drops involving reducing them for whatever reason caused the nightmares to return in a few days. No Way!
So, back onto the weekly drop regiment I went. In fact, I told him no more playing with the nightmare drops! I’m happy with this. In fact, nothing over the last 40 years had made a dent on these nightmares. Think about it, no therapy, no zillions of psychiatric drug regimens, no improvement on lifestyle, my relationship, my work life, sleep habits, meditation, exercise, nothing. And, here it is significantly improved with four little drops a week that don’t even taste bad? Impossible. And yet, remove the drops, the nightmares return with their early morning physical symptoms. Restart the drops and the nightmares become less violent. It’s clear what my choice is.
He has had less consistent success on my leg pain, lack of leg control, and walking. We have had brief times of improvement followed by failure. More recently, I had several months of improvement for which I am always grateful. Yet, I just had a relapse. But, Tim is willing to hang in and keep pitching. However, even brief respite from walking issues of either weeks or months, is a welcome reprieve for me.
So, I sit here after several months of some significant easing in my ability to walk for short distances and hope for another improvement soon.
I am reminded of an old joke my brother and I used to tell each other to make us laugh:
“Do you ever lay at night being bothered by a buzzing mosquito? Well, the male mosquito is the one that makes the noise, and males don't bite. It's the females that bite, and they don't buzz. So, the next time you are laying listening to a buzzing mosquito, relax and roll over because it's a male. But, if you hear nothing...”
I may hear nothing. But, that doesn’t mean something isn’t happening.
L’Chaim.
Joceile
8.31.18
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