Woman Combines Modern Medicine, Human Spirit To Beat Scleroderma
It had been years since she started suffering bizarre symptoms no doctor could explain or diagnose correctly, and only a week since she found a doctor who had gotten it right. Her hands had hardened into swollen claws, her skin was hard and shiny, and her feet were enlarged. Her face was so rigid, she could barely open her mouth. She was losing her battle with Scleroderma, an auto immune disorder that forces the body to attack itself and overproduce collagen, hardening the skin like a rock, disfiguring her horrible and morphing her extremities into oversized paws.
"It was a Friday night, and I had a high fever, shaking with fever," said Taylor, author of the autobiographical A Place To Go. "I was trying to gobble baby aspirin into my mouth I could barely open. I remember struggling to get back upstairs, and I lay down in the guest room, with three or four pillows under my head. My heart was beating so hard and fast, and I felt like I was dying. I was thinking, ‘just let go,' and another part of me kept saying, ‘Oh no you can't.' Then, I fell asleep, and somewhere in my unconsciousness, I had made a decision to hold on." Taylor's story is less about a woman's search for the proper medical treatment than it is about a woman who finds the strength and wisdom to marry her medical treatment with her journey of inner healing. Taylor not only took back her health, but she also took back her life.
Taylor's troubles were foreshadowed in her childhood, when she began to suffer from fatigue and anemia. In her early 20s, she experienced poor circulation. By the time she was turning 40, she developed aches, swelling in her hands and feet, her skin began to harden, and her head and face went nearly numb.
Then she went to see rheumatologist Dr. Hal Whitman, and he was able to do in seconds what no other doctor had been able to do for the last 2 years.
"He was standing in the doorway looking at me," Taylor recalled. "His salutation was ‘How long have you been like this?' He took my hands, looked at my face, and told me that I had scleroderma, and that it was progressing."
Dr. Whitman said it was incurable, but that he'd work with her. A week later, after her near-death epiphany, she began the hard work toward recovery.
"It was no real overnight miracle," Taylor said. "I started my macrobiotic diet and my antibiotic therapy, and I began to notice little improvements. My skin was softening, and the next day, I'd be back to not being able to move – one step forward and two steps back. Looking back over the months, there was some healing, and I was definitely going to hang in there for a while. Over the course of 6 to 8 months, my hard purple skin began to turn pink, and I could walk better."
Moreover, she began meditation to help heal her spirit as her body was mending, defying the odds and the research that told her she could never be cured. You'd never believe that if you saw her today. She works in real estate and still takes part time shifts as a nurse, her first career.
"You would never think for one minute that anything happened to my body," she said. "I can do a two-mile walk within 30 minutes. My face is perfectly normal, so are my hands. I'm older now, but I welcome every wrinkle, like a badge of courage, a sign that I no longer have that shiny hard face."
Taylor's lessons aren't just about healthcare, but also about spiritual care.
"It's so important to ask questions and not just to take your body to a doctor like he's a mechanic," she said. "This is your body, it's you, and you need to find a doctor who listens, who will sit and talk to you. Most of all, we all have to realize the power that lies within ourselves to heal and restore, and every day we wake up is a new day. The illness was a gift in many ways. I looked at it as a horrendous problem at the time, but it was a gift because it changed my life. It brought me in touch with my spiritual self and who I am."
Article Source: HealthSnare.com
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Maureen Taylor
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Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 Time: 4:09 AM
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