Lessons of Illness

By Stephanie Marohn

Like many people, I came to natural or holistic medicine* through a serious illness. In 1991, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I was one of the fortunate ones. I got to receive the lessons of a life-threatening condition without really having it.

I was also fortunate to be diagnosed with a disease for which conventional medicine had no treatment, which meant I did not have t o make the choice between toxic or invasive therapies and a natural approach. When the neurologist delivered his devastating diagnosis, I asked him what I should do to try to prevent the progression of this disease. He said there was nothing I could do (aside from perhaps a low-fat diet, which as a vegetarian I was already observing) and I left his office without so much as a pamphlet.

That was the good news. The bad news was that I accepted the diagnosis for that whole summer and continued to fade as I had been since the spring. Tremendous fatigue, a strange electric sensation that shot down my back each time I lowered my head (known as Lhermitte’s sign), and a band of numbness around my middle were my symptoms, all classic symptoms of MS. I had also been diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis in both wrists from the repetitive motion of computer work. So there I was, facing the loss of the two things I loved most in the world: dancing and writing. If the MS progressed, I would lose the use of my legs. The carpal tunnel had already taken my hands.

I submitted to this black cloud until one day in September when I said, “That’s it, I’m not going to have this illness.” During the summer, I had undergone three MRIs, all of which had come up negative for signs of MS, so the diagnosis was really only the opinion of two neurologists. As long as I didn’t have proof, I suddenly saw no reason why I should accept this grim sentence.

But I had to do something about my physical state. A friend of mine had been healed from severe chronic fatigue syndrome by an acupuncturist from Taiwan. I went to her and I too was healed. I’m not saying that it was a simple matter to leave behind the black cloud of the MS diagnosis. For a time, I kept trying to get my acupuncturist to give her opinion as to whether I had MS or not. She would never say, and I understood later that traditional Chinese medicine has a whole other way of looking at health that makes such diagnoses irrelevant.

Years later, another acupuncturist showed me on the meridian charts how a weakness on the Kidney meridian, which is what I had, could produce the numbness around my middle. The fatigue stemmed from this too. As for the Lhermitte’s sign and the carpal tunnel/tendonitis, they arose from a misalignment in my neck. I had raised the issue of my neck pain to my primary physician and the neurologists—didn’t they think it was a little coincidental that all this was happening at once? But they dismissed the notion that the symptoms could be related.

All of my symptoms disappeared with acupuncture and I am quite sure that the MS was a mistaken diagnosis. My heart goes out to those who truly have this disease. That summer when I thought I had it gave me a glimpse into what it would be like to live with it. (And just a note to refute my neurologist’s position: I have since learned that there are things aside from a low-fat diet that can be helpful in MS.)

Recovering my health took a lot more than getting some acupuncture and taking Chinese herbs, however. Those therapies gave me the physical strength to undertake the greater healing I needed to do. I set off on a journey of healing on all levels—physical, psychological, and spiritual. I was sent this major illness because there was some psychological and spiritual business I needed to attend to. The physical aspect was only the final breakdown. As happens with many people, the crisis was my wake-up call, and it had to be a big crisis to get my attention.

It has been said that illness is a blessing, and that is what it was for me. I needed to become a whole person and illness was the catalyst for me doing the work to bring about the union. The stripping of my identity as a writer and dancer forced me to find the self that is not defined by activity, profession, or any other external circumstance. I was plunged into the dark night of the soul, which is hell when you are going through it, but now I look back on it in awe and gratitude. For in this dark night, I reconnected with spirit, the soul within, and when I emerged, my life was changed in wondrous ways. And I was doubly, or triply, blessed in that I was able to return to writing and dancing.

When I look back at my life, I see that the knowledge of body, mind, and spirit as one was in me all along. That union is the source of my profound lifelong connection with nature and animals. It is the voice of my poetry, which I began writing as a child. It is what drew me to dance as a balance to my cerebral tendencies. It is what prompted me to get a degree in dance therapy. It is how I knew during a college internship on a lockdown ward of a state mental hospital that there was a better way to treat mental illness. It is what brought me to holistic medicine and the journey back to my life’s purpose.

Part of that purpose is to write and provide information about healing to help others on their journeys. My books on natural medicine approaches to so-called mental disorders brought me full circle from the lockdown ward in the mental hospital. Yes, there is another way and I am one of the ones here to tell about it.

Stephanie Marohn is the author of seven books, including The Natural Medicine Guide to Autism, The Natural Medicine Guide to Schizophrenia, and The Natural Medicine Guide to Depression. Visit her website at www.stephaniemarohn.com