I spent the day traveling to my new bio-medicine doctor (and napping on the train in both directions). I didn’t really know what to expect — he’s not google-able, and I had very little information from the person who recommended him about how he works or what he does. Just following my gut, and enjoying the opportunity to feel hopeful again. I am coming to the conclusion that conventional Western medicine doesn’t have much more to offer me right now, and at least he wouldn’t be more of the same.
The feeling I had when walking into the office was one of familiarity. The warm comfortable feeling of a practice of alternative medicine — a place that is not sterile. I was an hour early and settled into a chair in the waiting room with my knitting, a book, and a lecture on machine learning. A few minutes late, the doc came knocking and I followed him to his office. He was an older man with a warm smile. None of the slick salesemanship of my last stroll into a new office disturbed me. Rather, he came across as straightforward, caring, ethical, and honest.
Starting yesterday, I’ve been using a cane to get around because of a combination of fatigue and dizziness, but I put it aside indoors, so I was a bit tipsy. I was even more unbalanced when I saw the office — it had more computers than a small computer science laboratory! This was the most high-tech approach to alternative medicine I have yet to experience.
The doc ran tests on a series of machines that measure various forms of electrical currents and resonance. Between the foreign language and the foreign approach to medicine, I did not understand the details of what most of them were doing, but he talked constantly trying to explain what he could to me about the results I was seeing (many of which appeared on the screen as we worked) and what the measurements were. At least three different machines were in use during all of this, and they produced pictures of my body highlighted with areas that were overactive, underactive and so on. He also measured the resonances in different areas and compared them to known resonances for various diseases. In coming up with a diagnosis, he attempted to triangulate (something I appreciate, as described in my post on treatment evaluation), both across machines and across areas of the body.
The upshot of all of this was a diagnosis of Epstein-Barr virus. There was evidence of Babesia as well, confirming that I had had it but not requiring treatment. The doctor’s theory is that the antibiotics helped to control the lyme bacteria, but as they are unable to help with viruses, the possibility that I was also fighting Epstein-Barr may have been overlooked. He believes that this diagnosis is also consistent with my major symptoms (inflammation of the lymph nodes, fatigue, headaches, night sweats, etc.).
The treatment includes vitamins (which he tested to demonstrate effectiveness) as well as a special machine that is programmed to resonate with the virus using electrical currents. The doc would not sell me the vitamins himself because he has seen too many doctors corrupted by the income they get from this (it is a very typical experience to walk out of a naturopath’s office with a slew of supplements).
Regarding the primary treatment (the resonance machine), he started out by saying he understood if I didn’t want to use it as it is quite different from most medicine I had probably experienced. He then proceeded to tell me the general theory about the device (which I have researched before) which is that it somehow interacts with the crystalline form of the virus and causes it to collapse. What amazed me is that he then expressed the same skepticism I had developed myself when researching this possibility, and gave me his own (admittedly unproven) theory about how it might actually work. I don’t mean to speak negatively about therapies that others in the Lyme community have chosen, but for myself, in the past, I came to the conclusion that Rife machines and similar technology were not for me precisely because I couldn’t find strong support for their theoretical grounding (despite finding research published on the topic). So I found my doctor’s skepticism about the mechanism reassuring. At the same time, I am open to using the technology he offered, given his experience with it and belief in its ability to make a difference. Additionally, my research suggests that bioelectric medicine can have an astounding effect on the body (for example in healing surface wounds), that electrical currents can clear micro-organizms from food (also see [1]) and so on. Clearly something amazing is going on here even if its limits and mechanisms are not well understood.
I do not know what will come of all this, but I must say that I still feel both hopeful and in good hands. That this doctor is honest and trustworthy I feel by gut. From the loving way he interacted with his wife/office assistent to the care with which he explained everything and the ethical boundaries he set himself, he left a very good impression on me. His own personal history with lyme disease as well as the patient anecdote I know of both point to the possibility of success. We discussed the need for balancing acceptance against belief in a cure, and his comment was: You don’t have to believe. Just keep yourself open to the possibility. That is exactly what I plan to do.
[1] . Schoenbach et al. (2000) Bacterial Decontamination of Liquids with Pulsed Electronic Fields, IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Vol. 7 N o . 5, October 2000. ”Cellular effects of ultrashort pulses, with pulse durations on the order of and less than the charging time constant of the outer membrane have been demonstrated recently on mammalian cells [52]. Some initial results on bacteria [19] indicate that similar effects might be used for bacterial decontamination.Such intracellular effects might …allow us to reduce the energy consumption for bacterial decontamination in (conducting) liquids.”
