Miracles are just things you cannot explain right away. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
I suppose by calling my healing story a miracle you might be disappointed. There were no cracks of thunder or lightening bolts. If you wish for BOLD AMAZING CRAZY this is not the place. Mine were more subtle shifts that happened from the time I was a child. But these shifts kept me alive throughout my time on this planet.
And from the time I was born, my body wanted to be sickly and my heart wanted to be well. My DO found this desire in me and nurtured it.
I come from a family of stoics. My mother’s first words to me before ever seeing the gushing blood or how deep the wound were, “put a bandaid on it and go to school anyway.” We still joke about this in our family.
No one had TIME for illness. And yet- from the time I can remember I WAS the sick child. I had swollen lymph nodes and fevers and horrific joint pain – the way I do now- only worse- because now I have medications that calm it.
Pediatricians shook their heads. No one helped me. “Mono” was always the answer. IV’s of fluid always the answer. Until FINALLY we met my DO… who incidentally was also a DC. I’m not sure which came first for him, the chicken or the egg, but he had both a DC AND A DO and I’ll call him Dr. G. He was not the kindest man. He was compassionate and he was a visionary- but he wasn’t a coddler.
I LIKE TO BE CODDLED. I still do. I have grown up without much of it and so I respond to any sort of physical and emotional gentleness. But Dr. G was not so much… he was more old school – a little more gruff a little more, “tell it how it is.” But he still reached out and grabbed me by my energy and yanked me back in when I needed it. He found me.
He went to my father’s church. And because by this time I had a strong disinclination for ALL THINGS WESTERN MEDICINE even at the age of 5, he told me he was a chiropractor and a doctor of osteopathic medicine. “We let your body heal from the inside, we let you find your innate healing, do you want to do that?” He NEVER treated me like a moron. It is as though he KNEW I could understand, just the way my body did.
This alone probably healed me more than anything else. For once no one waved suckers under my nose while they jabbed needles in my arms. After all this I no longer felt the needles. I could show YOU where the best veins were. I was no longer AFRAID of the needles even. Or the hospitals. I just didn’t believe that western medicine could help me.
I would tell my pediatrician, “I hurt here and here and here.” And he would say, “But Melissa I cannot see your pain.” And he would look at my mother and wink and say, “Growin pains.” (BULLSHIT- early onset RA/lupus).
But I would look at Dr. G and tell him and he would LISTEN to me. He HEARD ME. He sat QUIETLY and listened to what I had to tell him. And he would ask me how long and where it hurt. And he would point to other areas and say, “If I touch here does it make it better or worse?” And lo- the pain would get better! No only did he believe me- but HE MADE IT BETTER, ever so slightly he made me feel better.
At night, I would ache, my limbs would ache where my joints held. They were swollen you see. I was not yet in 2nd grade. My hair fell out on the left side and a terrible discoid rash covered my entire face and left side of my body.
My pediatrician called it ring worm and sent me to the pathologist for biopsies. They all came back negative. No one CONSIDERED checking for lupus. White girls at the age of 7 just never are. But I was not allowed to go to school anyway. I was mortified. It was worse than lice because IT WAS VISIBLE.
Dr. G looked at me more- he CONSIDERED ME. He took an xray of my spine… (something no one else ever did). He said, “would you look at this?” My spine had a severe scoliosis. He sat my mother and me down. “This is actually bad – very bad. You might not walk for long. You might not play sports. You might have pain Melissa. This is where much of your problem is coming from and I don’t know if I can fix it. It is the worst I have seen.”
I looked at him. My GUTS (the ones I have come to learn to trust as an adult) were not yet kicked in- but they were very trusting and becoming intuitive. “You can fix this. I am coming to you because you CAN FIX THIS. I will not go to any other doctor. YOU WILL FIX THIS.
My mother shrugged. If she cared about anything it was always covered by her stoic demeanor. She might have been panicked a thousand ways- but as a child I remember only her bland acquiescence. I was a child who saw only through a child’s eyes. My back was injured, I was broken out in a terrible rash. It made no sense. No one would touch me. It didn’t seem contagious yet I LOOKED contagious. No one had a name for it yet I was a leper.
Dr. G began touching me – HE TOUCHED ME. He did! He would rub my spine and my entire back first – because it was SO TENSE AND TIGHT. I think perhaps he was working intuitively. There was no way he could have admitted this was the worst case he had seen without trusting some God to do the work through him. He was not using his ego.
Some days the adjustments went well. Some days they actually hurt. He was not always gentle. I am surprised I have no fear of the OMT but I do not. They always felt PRECISELY right. If I told you how long I went you would not believe me. But I went for a very long time. From age 7 till Jr High in decreasing amounts of time – first weekly and then bi-weekly and then every three weeks. Until the last visit I remember for a long time. My Aunt had driven me there. Dr. G took an ex-ray to see how I was progressing.
“Stand tall, hold your breath.” “Come here Melissa.”
He put them side by side. One was a curved little spine – in two places one above in the thoracic where no one gets a curvature and one in the lumbar. And the second looked like every spine I have ever seen.
“You did it” he said. “Yes.” I said, “You did too.”
And that was the first “partnership” I had ever experienced with a doctor. All while I went to him he would tell me how my body healed itself intuitively. He would tell me how I WAS allowed to play sports and do ANY exercise I could do. How if I got a cold I should move to help the body clean it out and how my lymphs worked.
He told me I was allergic to wheat (didn’t call it cealiac) 20 years before anyone ever diagnosed me with celiac. I was a child and unable to dictate my food – and so I my or may not have had a better outcome with my auto-immunity if I had. But HE KNEW. He could tell- probably because HE trusted HIS GUTS.
Later- when I went to college I became increasingly sick again and again, “Mono” they said, “I would come home to him and he would give me an adjustment here a manipulation there. We would talk. “You cannot have mono five times in your life Melissa.” I know I said, but they keep giving me IV’s to keep me hydrated.”
He shook his head. It was out of his hands because I was away at college. Everything worked until the lupus hit my CNS when I was 23. THAT was a defining moment for what a DO can do that surgery cannot.
Unfortunately I was guided more by fear than by what I knew. My left side was paralyzed. It wasn’t sciatica. Nothing worked. No doctors could figure it out. MRI’s OBVIOUSLY picked up on a sonic fuck ton of spinal injury. What else would you find on someone who had been healed from scoliosis and played so many sports for so long?
Dr. G. was unconvinced. This is not a disc problem. This is nerve damage and nerves can heal. This is not a disc pressing on your nerves – this is pressure coming from somewhere else.
I do not know why after all this time I did not trust him other than it was time for me to spread my wings a bit. I was grown. I had gone to him my whole life. He felt like a small town doc. He spoke to me like one. “You’re gaining weight, if you get fat you’re make it worse. You’re still eating wheat – you know you’re allergic. If you do not help yourself your body will not help you.”
I did not like the way he spoke to me anymore. It smacked of my parents. I left them at age 18 and suddenly I wanted to leave him too. And so I did.
A surgeon looked my MRI and said, “I can operate on that.” And me, being 23 and INGORANT of medical language heard, “I can make you feel better, I can take away the nerve pain, I can heal you.” I had my spine surgery. And guess what- EVERYTHING GOT WORSE.
My body was doing its very best. Dr. G had given me a lifetime of affirmations and love for my body. He helped me RESPECT my body. I was not allowed to BE ANGRY at my body. And yet- I had betrayed it by cutting into it when it did not need to be cut. I felt mortally wounded.
After my surgery I had a series of awakenings – deep powerfully spiritual awakenings.
In one dream an angel revealed to me that I would become incredibly ill – with not only lupus but cancer over my lifetime. I would suffer deeply – and in my suffering I would heal from the inside out and bring meaning to the others and find healing within myself.
I called Dr. G because I was too ashamed to visit him. I cried on the phone. And for the first time his voice was loving and gentle. He always had a subtle stutter.
“Sometimes the only way in is way out. And sometimes Melissa, the only way out is way way in. Trust your process. I love you.”
That was the first time I realized that he had given me himself his whole life. He had put himself on the line when he took a 7 year old body and healed her. I was getting discoid lupus from the time my mother can remember. I broke out in lesions and crazy patterns all over my back and body from the time she can remember – even age 3 or 4.
And when I told him how profoundly I hurt - HE LISTENED. He GAVE ME HIMSELF. When I called him – like a prodigal child – he opened his arms to me and gave me his love. “I love you too.”
“What now?”
“Heal.”
When I moved to Atlanta to accept my first faculty appointment 2 years later he was too far away to touch me but he put me in touch with some of the best chiropractors and DO’s he knew – colleagues from school and people he trusted. I got tai massage, acupuncture, meditation techniques, and had an amazing healing journey.
Surgeon after surgeon saw my MRI’s and all wanted to cage my spine and fuse it with rods. And I trusted my guts. “No – no science can promise that you are able to heal it. You are still practicing an art and I am doing my own art.”
Just last week before my move I went to my DO and I got a manipulation. It was gentle and loving. He’s not Dr. G but he got me through three rounds of chemo and three years of the most profoundly awful sickness I have ever been. He was there for me the entire time offering me tips and ideas for getting through lupus and the subsequent fall out from autoimmunity. He did crazy things too – things you might not believe in – things you might think medically wack. But I love THEM.
He offered me insights into myself that are different than Dr. G- but because I TRUST my process I also trust his. I trust that we are each on our own journey. I trust that when I meet with a healer now with the name “doctor” we can vibe now and I can build a relationship with them. I go to a rheumatologist who believes that people can see colors and energy. Did you know that?
I believe now that I CALL IN my healers in all forms. I am less limiting and believe M.D.s can be integrative and holistic too. I no longer limit myself because I can no longer BE limiting. I no longer hate doctors. I no longer hate western medicine.
I had profound experiences once in Turkey and once in Chicago where I realized that I must succumb to western medicine as well as my own inner healing. I must take my medication IF I WISH TO HEAL WELL. It is time for me to be partner with my own body.
AND THIS is the story of how I have been saved – perhaps many times – by a DO. Yes- it is not a screaming success. Yes- you might consider it boring. But I do not. I believe he gave me the tools for a lifetime of healing. He gave me techniques for BOTH believing in my own bodies signals AND listening to them. Something most people do not do.
When my thyroid began being attacked several years ago I went to an endo with the same trust that I would Dr. G. And she blew me off. I was SO FRUSTRATED! I THOUGHT EVERY DOCTOR would be like him! But no. Only a few of you are. I still do though – I still go to my doctors with the same trust and the same matter of fact honesty. “My thyroid is pulsing in my throat- I wish you would test it.” I said to my rheumatologist… and this time SHE DID. And of course –they found more.
Too little, too late.
TRUST YOUR BODIES MESSAGES. Dr. G gave me tools. He gave me HIS TRUST. He gave me his time. He LISTENED TO ME. He HEALED ME WITH HIS HANDS. He put his hands on my body – my body that screamed for attention and touch. My body ACHED FOR LOVE FOR TOUCH FOR THE RELEASE OF THE DISEASE THAT WAS INSIDE.
This is a healing story. This my healing story. And it is STILL inside me. I have more to heal. I have more doctors to see. I am still on my path.
Sometimes the only way out is way way in. –Dr. G
