A Co-Learner’s Journey with Lyme Disease and Chronic Pain
Testimonial to Riordan Clinic: written by a co-learner
I may not be running any races or even walking all that well yet, but what I can say for sure is that my digestion is night-and-day better, my pain level is down from 7.5 to maybe 2 on a very good day and I don’t get sick from bronchitis like I used to.
Best of all, my latest blood tests are astonishing even to the regular doctors for how good they look,
compared to the imbalances and deficiencies of three years ago,before I started at
the Riordan Clinic in Wichita, Kansas.
My diagnosis at that time, having just been released from a nursing home after my second broken leg, were: Lyme disease, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis and any number of other maladies regarding digestion, chronic pain and a history of breast cancer. Regular doctors could think of nothing to do for Lyme disease and only Avonex injections for MS. The breast cancer was treated with a bilateral mastectomy and has not recurred. The rest of it, as they put it — “at my age”– I should just learn to live with. Fortunately for me, I have a good caregiver who found the Riordan Clinic on the Internet and another who was willing to drive the 600 miles to help me get there.
So the story of exceptional lab testing, beyond what regular doctors do, and supplementation, over and above what anybody else will prescribe, got its start. Recommended treatments began with intravenous vitamin C, which I managed to tolerate for about six weeks until my veins broke down. Then, unable to consider the installation of a PICC line without medical support, I was reassured that I could heal just as well with high dose supplementation by mouth. It was just going to happen more slowly. I said I was fine with slowly and so we stocked up and started metering out the medicine.
It was, and continues to be, a complex regimen requiring many adjustments to diet and dosage based on what my body can handle, but the quarterly blood tests were showing results. Again, I am fortunate to have a caregiver who is knowledgeable in biochemistry and vitamin-powered healing. She supports my hope that the Riordan Clinic is right and that diseases such as Lyme, MS and cancer can be healed by the body itself, if the body gets well enough to handle eviction of such invaders. She is also the one who keeps track of my daily medication schedule, empties out the capsules as powders (since I choke on pills), and sees to it that I have the right food available.
Food is another matter of great importance, and since the Riordan Clinic tests to determine one’s sensitivities and allergies, there is a long and helpful list of foods to avoid and foods to use — a list which is currently pasted to the front of my refrigerator for reference. A lot of it my caregiver already knew; some of it she has learned along with me. All of it, along with the digestive enzymes, Repairvite healing powders and liposomal vitamins has redounded, as they said it would, to my great digestive benefit. And since digestion is central to just about everything else to do with healing, living and staying healthy, this new absence of heartburn, regurgitation, intestinal gas and overall indigestion is a complete turnaround. Now my body can access the nutrition it needs, my sleep cycle can benefit from this reduction in pain and my overall energy, creativity and optimistic outlook — once seemingly lost and gone forever — has slowly and steadily begun to return.
My regular doctors — general practitioner, internist, neurologist and oncologist — won’t talk about vitamins or alternative healthcare and refuse to acknowledge this work being accomplished at the Riordan Clinic and elsewhere. They insist that such clinics sell the products they say will cure the deficiencies they diagnose and therefore can’t be trusted with anything but their own self-interest. However, our experience has been that there is no hard sell. If we can find the same supplementation they offer from a less expensive and equally reliable source we are welcome to do so and if we test for genomic patterns and add on more ideas for detoxing, for example, I don’t get rejected as a patient the way I have been by “regular” doctors for daring to think on my own. In fact, my Riordan doctors are themselves familiar with genomes and are happy to include all such new information into my program! For everything to do with my overall improvement, I am grateful to Dr. Mike Bauerschmidt, who did my first intake; to Dr. Jennifer Mead, who continues to supervise my progress and to Dr. Ron Hunninghake, who oversees medical testing.
I will therefore keep on taking trusted vitamin, mineral and enzyme formulations;
eating lots of greens, wild game and root vegetables; doing water aerobics in my therapy tub,
and trusting my body to do what the Riordan Clinic says it can do: get well!
Thank you,
Norma S
