I think behind anybody’s life’s journey is a story, that special something that makes you get out of bed and do what you do time and time again with a level of enthusiasm others may think odd. Where does the drive and single track ambition come from? What life experiences form your belief systems? Where do they begin? what influences them? When inundated with attitudes and influences from friends, family and media, they all contribute to the rich mixture of the complex being you become and continue to evolve as new experiences and challenges roll in.
My story began from a very young age when I started to understand I almost lost my mother to a medical blunder that never should have happened. I’m sure there are plenty of these stories out there, but this one is mine. My mother at the time was 31 years old, happily married working full time as a cleaner and raising two children under the age of 6. She at the time had immigrated to Australia 6 years prior and understood more English she could speak. One particular day she wasn’t feeling well so attended an appointment with her local GP. She had what looked like the beginnings of a common cold and thought antibiotics could possibly lessen the time she would be unwell as sickness was a huge financial burden for someone in her circumstances. At the time of her appointment very little was explained to her and her GP indicated he would give her an injection. Seconds after her injection she collapsed to the floor and her only thought was who was going to pick up her children (as she was on her way to collect us). She was convinced she was about to die. She tried to relay this information to the GP as she began to lose consciousness and recalls the GP asking the nurse to call an ambulance. Through some miracle most likely due to her strong constitution (being raised on a farm with organic food, clean mountain water and air) she began to regain consciousness. At this point, her GP cancels the ambulance and instead orders a taxi to take her home.
Still, to this day when I think about this GP, I can’t help but feel I just want to wring this guy’s neck. I don’t have a violent bone in my body but this injustice boils my blood.
mThis dangerous cocktail of mystery toxins injected into my mother changed her life forever. In minutes she went from absolute health to almost death. Instead of providing the care she needed in hospital, he diverted her home in a taxi. At this point my mother wanted to put as much distance between herself and this GP, so she took the taxi. The GP was a fortunate man because my mother came from a war torn country where authorities were not trusted hence she went home quietly without fuss.
So this GP continued to practice his life unaffected, but for my mother she had to adjust to a life with permanent neurological damage losing smell and taste and acquiring chronic fatigue and brain fog. Her fatigue was so severe she later told me she had to gather all the strength to get herself up to butter our toast before school. Her new GP prescribed valium, a highly addictive drug to help her cope with day to day life. Her dosages kept going up and up as her body began to tolerate it, in the end, at the age of 9 my father decided to pack us off to Greece so my mother could detox off these drugs as she was getting worse. All my family couldn’t afford to go so my father stayed behind to work and support us for the year we were away. In addition to my mother’s poor health, my older sister suffered from asthma and was prescribed various types of drugs that didn’t seem to work which cemented my fathers decision. I remembered him saying the doctors didn’t know what they were doing and we needed to doctor ourselves as these medications were not going to improve our health.
The year in northern Greece was a formidable life changing experience for me. It taught me what real poverty looked like. It terrified me at first, as I couldn’t comprehend how people could live without running tap water, a toilet with a cistern or the prospect of higher education as I was always raised with the notion I would go to university once I finished school. This path was set in stone for as long as I could remember. The surprising realisation for me in Greece was, you didn’t need material goods to be happy but you certainly needed your health.
My mother managed to completely detox off valium and my sister’s asthma practically disappeared. When my mother returned to Australia she was in much better health and most importantly drug-free. Her neurological specialist couldn’t believe her recovery so much so he organised for her to be interviewed by his peers because no one on her drug dosage had ever completely kicked the habit. They hailed it a miracle and wanted to know how she did it.
The answer was really simple, her body healed itself. All my mother did was give it the right environment to do so, to allow the innate intelligence that formed life (remember we all start from 2 cells meeting) to heal life.
I’de love to say at this point all my mother’s neurological damage had fully recovered but it didn’t. She is still alive today at the age of 81 but has lived a life not being able to enjoy the full smell and taste of food, one of life’s simple pleasures. She can’t tolerate music (making my teenage years painfully quiet) and often says she never regained the vitality she had before the injection.
My mother was robbed of so much and discarded to the side. All the specialist she had consulted post incident, not one wanted to know what my mother was injected with, who was responsible, they would simply shake their heads in disbelief and do nothing.
As you can imagine my confidence in the medical profession was very low, realising they can’t provide good health, at best, they can only relieve certain symptoms. No drug can make you healthy but is sure can make you sick or even worse kill you. I’m not foolish to think we don’t need them. If I am in a car accident with a severed limb it’s a surgeon I’de like to see but the likelihood of me needing that kind of attention is very low. Most chronic diseases (with the exception of genetic ones) are most likely lifestyle related so why not start there. What is the sense of just giving blood pressure medication to a person who has developed high blood pressure because they are overweight? Think about it for just a second, an overweight person has larger fat cells, these cells need higher levels of nourishment and oxygen otherwise these cells die. In response, the body ranks up the blood pressure because there is a greater need, so in this case, high blood pressure is a RESPONSE not a DISEASE.
So why are we treating the response? why aren’t we treating the reason why the body has this response? after all it is a reasonable thing the body does automatically wouldn’t you agree? This is so absurd it can only exist through misrepresentation. When people start to ask questions they are often told it’s genetic, end of story, end of questions!
The truth is, the majority of chronic illness are NOT genetic but rather lifestyle related. You see if you are toit’sits genetic, you just give up thinking it’s out of your control. But if you are told it’s lifestyle related suddenly you are empowered and in the drivers seat. You now have a choice, you can choose to do nothing and take medications to deal with symptoms or you can start to change your lifestyle and make healthier decisions. There is no judgement here, the simple point I want to make is, you get to choose what path you what to take. After all, it’s your life, right?
So why isn’t there more health programs to assist people to make the changes they really need? why are we spending billions of tax payers dollars subsiding pharmaceuticals when we can prevent a large percentage of chronic non-genetic disease? It must be political because it’s not logical.
My decision to become a health practitioner, a Chiropractor, was the best decision I could have made for myself. I could never sit across a desk and prescribe drugs to a person I knew would most likely not require them if they had a careful monitored program of assistance to bring them back to health. I could never inject someone for a common cold when I can say to them, go home and rest, increase your fluids because world class medical research has long stated antibiotics do not accelerate the process of recovery from a common cold (assuming you’re in good health). Your body…your choice…choose wisely!
