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Alternative Medicine
Which Way To Siloam?
I turned my head to look at the woman on the bed to my left, and felt a jolt of shock. Carlos was bent over her and, with two hands, stretching apart the skin over her stomach. A tumor the size of a cantaloupe was slowly extruding through the opening, and the woman had raised her head to stare at the thing in amazement.
July 1997Miracle Cure
I saw the whole thing in my rearview mirror. In the final seconds before fate in the form of a silver Volvo station wagon collided with me, I was fascinated by the slow unraveling of the inevitable. I was stopped in traffic, a car in front of me, cars to either side of me.
May 1997Last Day At Lemon Acres
At 4:30 that afternoon Jack was sitting up in a chair, his polished, old man’s legs crossed, eyes staring intently at the floor. My heart turned a little pirouette: it was the first time he’d been out of bed on his own in six weeks.
December 1996Saying Its Name
When Illness Is A Secret
I swore to hate the woman who told me to undress, who sat me on the examining table, and who took my father away to talk with him outside my presence. I hated her for her chilly brusqueness, for having seen me in my underpants, and for having mentioned within earshot the words cystic fibrosis.
November 1995Interview With The Witch Doctor
Nestled among a thousand acres of banana trees in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, the Lutheran compound is a haven of modern conveniences. But in the surrounding village the people remain steeped in tradition and still rely on witch doctors to solve problems.
March 1995The Reach Of The Mind
An Interview With Larry Dossey
What really knocked my socks off was a study that I first found out about in 1987. It showed that people in coronary-care units who were prayed for did a lot better than people who weren’t.
December 1994Pine Boards & Strawberries
Finding Courage At A Cancer Workshop
As the end of my chemotherapy treatments approached, they became more and more difficult to endure. Freedom was so near, I could hardly bear to wait for it another second.
October 1994An Unbelievable Illness
There’s a lot wrong with me. Researchers in Maryland have cultivated several viruses from my blood and spinal fluid, revealing that those viruses are rampant in my body. My body’s immune system flails away at them without success.
September 1992Altered States
An Interview On Shamanism With Leslie Gray
I teach shamanic techniques which enable clients to have access to parts of their consciousness that they ordinarily can’t reach, and that’s what does the healing. I show them how to journey, and how to find a power animal or guardian spirit so that they can develop a relationship with these entities to empower themselves. Then they can do whatever they want to do: lose weight, work on a stuck relationship, heal their dispiritedness or negativity.
March 1988