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Authors: Michael Palmer
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insatiable ego, and an inflexibility that frightened me—had begun to surface more and more in our life.”
“Go on, please,” Alma said.
“He had a patient, a sculptor, whom he had quite literally cured of a case of rheumatoid arthritis that the man’s doctors had labeled incurable.”
“How did he do it?”
“Oh, dietary changes and herbs, plus some of the same sort of techniques I used yesterday with Lisa. The man went from being a cripple to playing racquetball every day.”
“Amazing.”
“Not to us it wasn’t. Alternative healing cures many, many patients that western physicians have given up on. We M.D.s still don’t have much of a handle on the mechanism of disease, you know. Our microscopes get bigger and bigger, and the things we can look at get smaller and smaller. We prescribe penicillin without giving it much thought. But we still don’t know why Person A got the strep throat we’re treating, or why Person B didn’t.
“Anyhow, my friend went away for a month and left me in charge of his patients. He was treating the sculptor for headaches with herbs, acupuncture, and chiropractic adjustments. I saw the man several times and felt more concerned about him each time. He said his headaches were better, or at least no worse, but he seemed to me to be walking funny. And believe it or not, his smile seemed off center as well.”
“That sounds like trouble.”
“That’s what I thought. I called White Memorial and spoke to a neurologist who wanted to see him at eleventhe next morning. My friend was due home from Nepal that night, but I decided his patient needed to be seen no matter what. So I made the arrangements. That may sound like an easy decision, Alma, but it wasn’t. There was still the matter of explaining why I would go against everything my friend believed in—”
Sarah could not remember the last time she had shared with anyone that final, horrid day with Peter. But Alma Young was such a wonderful listener that the story came with surprising ease. And although Sarah told it rather quickly, the pieces she actually voiced were only snippets of what she was remembering.…
The night that resulted in so much torment had actually felt magical. Peter listened quietly and attentively to her account of the referral of the sculptor, Henry McAllister. Peter’s response—the response she had so dreaded—was, in essence:
Hey, listen. I left you responsible for the institute because you are a responsible person. You saw what you saw, made a decision, and went with it. What could possibly be wrong with doing that?
Later that evening they made love—consuming, passionate love, the way it had been in the beginning.
Peter had come through—for her and their sputtering relationship. She knew it wasn’t easy for him. He honestly believed that, on balance, traditional western medicine had become so lost in science, competitive pharmacology, and dehumanizing technology that it now did more harm than good. In fact, above his desk was a placard engraved:
IATROGENIC: I LLNESS OR I NJURY C AUSED BY THE
W ORDS OR A CTIONS OF A P HYSICIAN
Now the chance was right there for him to belittle her judgment—to once again force his famous views on M.D.s and their methods down her throat. But he hadn’t taken it.
Like Peter, she understood the miraculous potential inthe relationship between healer and patient. She had great faith in the power of holistic methods to diagnose and treat. But unlike him, she had never viewed traditional medicine as a court of last—or no—resort. After all, she had once survived a nearly fatal ruptured appendix by getting airlifted to a U.S. military hospital and having emergency surgery.
Peter was forty—a dozen years older than she. That age difference, along with his imposing size—he was six feet four—his immense drive and material successes made holding her own in their relationship a challenge and asserting herself in it almost a pipe dream. But at last
“Go on, please,” Alma said.
“He had a patient, a sculptor, whom he had quite literally cured of a case of rheumatoid arthritis that the man’s doctors had labeled incurable.”
“How did he do it?”
“Oh, dietary changes and herbs, plus some of the same sort of techniques I used yesterday with Lisa. The man went from being a cripple to playing racquetball every day.”
“Amazing.”
“Not to us it wasn’t. Alternative healing cures many, many patients that western physicians have given up on. We M.D.s still don’t have much of a handle on the mechanism of disease, you know. Our microscopes get bigger and bigger, and the things we can look at get smaller and smaller. We prescribe penicillin without giving it much thought. But we still don’t know why Person A got the strep throat we’re treating, or why Person B didn’t.
“Anyhow, my friend went away for a month and left me in charge of his patients. He was treating the sculptor for headaches with herbs, acupuncture, and chiropractic adjustments. I saw the man several times and felt more concerned about him each time. He said his headaches were better, or at least no worse, but he seemed to me to be walking funny. And believe it or not, his smile seemed off center as well.”
“That sounds like trouble.”
“That’s what I thought. I called White Memorial and spoke to a neurologist who wanted to see him at eleventhe next morning. My friend was due home from Nepal that night, but I decided his patient needed to be seen no matter what. So I made the arrangements. That may sound like an easy decision, Alma, but it wasn’t. There was still the matter of explaining why I would go against everything my friend believed in—”
Sarah could not remember the last time she had shared with anyone that final, horrid day with Peter. But Alma Young was such a wonderful listener that the story came with surprising ease. And although Sarah told it rather quickly, the pieces she actually voiced were only snippets of what she was remembering.…
The night that resulted in so much torment had actually felt magical. Peter listened quietly and attentively to her account of the referral of the sculptor, Henry McAllister. Peter’s response—the response she had so dreaded—was, in essence:
Hey, listen. I left you responsible for the institute because you are a responsible person. You saw what you saw, made a decision, and went with it. What could possibly be wrong with doing that?
Later that evening they made love—consuming, passionate love, the way it had been in the beginning.
Peter had come through—for her and their sputtering relationship. She knew it wasn’t easy for him. He honestly believed that, on balance, traditional western medicine had become so lost in science, competitive pharmacology, and dehumanizing technology that it now did more harm than good. In fact, above his desk was a placard engraved:
IATROGENIC: I LLNESS OR I NJURY C AUSED BY THE
W ORDS OR A CTIONS OF A P HYSICIAN
Now the chance was right there for him to belittle her judgment—to once again force his famous views on M.D.s and their methods down her throat. But he hadn’t taken it.
Like Peter, she understood the miraculous potential inthe relationship between healer and patient. She had great faith in the power of holistic methods to diagnose and treat. But unlike him, she had never viewed traditional medicine as a court of last—or no—resort. After all, she had once survived a nearly fatal ruptured appendix by getting airlifted to a U.S. military hospital and having emergency surgery.
Peter was forty—a dozen years older than she. That age difference, along with his imposing size—he was six feet four—his immense drive and material successes made holding her own in their relationship a challenge and asserting herself in it almost a pipe dream. But at last
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