This book has already received a great deal of praise: Ronald
Hofrman, MD: "I predict that Honest Medicine will become an instant classic."
Jeffrey Dach, MD: "A revolution is at hand, and Julia's new book, Honest
Medicine, is leading the charge with banner held high." Mary Shomon: "Julia
Schopick is one of those rare people who can go through an agonizingly
difficult experience and go on to transform her pain into a passionate,
clear-headed campaign to help others."
The Making of a Patient Advocate
By Julia Schopick
This
article has been adapted for Shirley’s Wellness Café by the author
from the introduction to her book, HONEST
MEDICINE
For ten years, we were lucky and we knew it. My husband Tim was one
of the fortunate long-term brain tumor survivors. Although he seemed to
suffer all the complications and side effects from his first surgery and
subsequent chemotherapy and radiation treatments in 1990 and 1991, he was
able to maintain the most important thing: his Self. And we maintained
our wonderful marriage in every sense, a full one hundred percent partnership.
One of the best things about Tim’s level of survivorship was that, although
he was able to work less and less, he could still fully enjoy his two great
passions (besides me, of course!): music and reading. In fact, his tumor-forced
semi-retirement gave him the opportunity to indulge these passions with
no guilt and all pleasure. “Someday,” he’d tell me, “I may not be able
to enjoy my passions—so I’ll enjoy them now.”
I happily agreed and became the primary breadwinner, working out of
our large apartment and taking numerous breaks throughout the day to talk,
cuddle with him, and listen to his lengthy and passionate dissertations
about music.
Like all brain tumor families, we knew our time together might be cut
short, so we learned to live in the present. At times, we talked about
what might happen in the future. As the side effects from his course of
whole brain radiation became more and more debilitating, we bargained on
possible tumor recurrence or brain damage.
We did not know that, in the end, it would be Tim’s fragile skin, weakened
by repeated radiation treatments and surgeries, that would be his Waterloo.
When the shoe finally dropped, it nearly toppled us.
What happened to Tim can happen easily to so many brain tumor survivors
who undergo post-surgical radiation treatment.
I am now passing on what I have learned to other brain tumor survivors,
in hopes that long-term survivors will not be toppled by these complications
and side effects, and will instead turn into permanent survivors, with
a great quality of life.
But first, some background:
In October 1990, 41-year-old Tim underwent surgery to remove a huge,
grade 3 astrocytoma from his left frontal lobe. (According to his neurosurgeon,
the tumor was the “size of an orange.”) About a month later, he underwent
whole brain radiation. For the first four years after that, he seemed to
suffer from every possible side effect and complication of both the surgery
and the radiation. These complications caused him to require some eight
or nine additional surgeries over the next four years. In addition, from
1990 to 2001, there were several adjustments in his medications, as well
as a stroke (another “side effect” of the radiation), infrequent seizures,
and numerous trips to the hospital. But finally, we thought we had come
out on the other side.
Then, in January 2000, he started having grand mal seizures that wouldn’t
quit. He was hospitalized for nearly a month in our local community hospital.
Although the MRI at the local hospital turned up “nothing unusual,” we
were understandably tense as we waited for the results of a second MRI
in April 2000. Our neurosurgeon, who had performed the 1990 surgery, said
there was “something” on the scan. That “something” was a tumor.
He advised having surgery as soon as possible. But, having lived through
all the complications and side effects from the first surgery, we weren’t
keen on the prospect of another. We decided to wait.
After fourteen months, the doctor was adamant about surgery. The tumor
was getting dangerously close to Tim’s motor strip. In the weeks that followed,
I talked back and forth with his nurse, who seemed confident that all the
necessary pieces were in place—including having a plastic surgeon to close
Tim up because, years ago, Tim’s skin had had trouble healing.
The surgery was performed on June 26, 2001. The surgeon (our primary
neurosurgeon’s partner) greeted us confidently at 7:30 a.m.—and in Tim
went. He came out hours later in almost perfect shape. A miracle! I applauded
myself for all the organic food and supplements I’d poured into him over
the past five years.
Tim was released from the hospital after four days—highly unusual for
someone with his history. For one month, everything was perfect. No changes
at all, neurological or physical. We took long walks, went to the movies
and out to dinner. Friends came over and Tim would hold court, playing
his beloved classical music for them and interpreting it for his various
“audiences.” I was astounded and grateful. We were surely blessed.
Then, it happened. The first shoe dropped. We had been trying not to
notice a small “spot” on the suture line that seemed slow to heal. But
suddenly, Tim became confused and incontinent—and very soon, I knew we
were in deep trouble. A trip to the emergency room where he’d had surgery
a month earlier revealed that air had flooded Tim’s brain. After ten hours
in the ER, they finally sewed up the tiny holes they found in the suture
line where the original incision had been made months earlier. Then they
put him on several IV antibiotics at once. When there’s air in the brain,
we were told, infection can be assumed. We all hoped the wound would heal,
and that we’d be lucky. We weren’t.
Again, about three weeks later, air flooded his brain. They operated
again, this time removing his plastic plate and shunt, and putting him
on yet more antibiotics. After three months, he came home.
Tim did extremely well for two months and began to walk again with a
walker. We even went out for our sixteenth wedding anniversary, with Tim’s
caregiver sitting a few feet away. Again we thought we were blessed.
Then, the other shoe dropped. Tim again became disoriented, and this
time he had a fever. Since we had been so dissatisfied with the treatment
he received in the first hospital, we had found another hospital—and another
neurosurgeon.
I took Tim to this hospital for another three-plus months of surgeries
to try to fix the suture line, where he had been opened up for the operation.
By now, they were putting in external drains on a regular basis, but nothing
worked.
Tim’s new neurosurgeon was puzzled and “distraught” about Tim’s situation.
Now the dura (the covering of the brain) was leaking.
Meanwhile, I was spending hours and hours online, looking for out-of-the-box
treatments that the doctors might not have thought of. I prepared a 200-page
report on my findings for the doctors to read. I was to find out later
that his doctors hadn’t read it, although they had promised that they would.
I tried to get Tim approved for hyperbaric oxygen, which has been known
to do wonders for both radiation necrosis and non-healing wounds. But the
doctor who ran the chamber at this hospital refused. He was afraid Tim
was too fragile. I, too, was afraid, because I just knew Tim was dying.
And I think he would have died, if I hadn’t been blessed to be interviewing
an Oak Park (Illinois) internist, Dr. Carlos Reynes, on behalf of one of
my public relations clients. We chatted about personal matters and when
he asked, “How’s your husband?” I told him.
He asked me if I had ever heard of Silverlon.
“Silver what?” I inquired.
He explained that Silverlon was a healing system comprised of pieces
of material made with silver ions which, when wet, caused many of the worst
non-healing wounds to heal. He had used it successfully on several patients
with non-healing diabetic wounds. And it was FDA-approved, which meant
it had passed all tests for safety.
Dr. Reynes gave me the contact information for the company’s sales representatives.
I contacted them, and they came to the house, showed me the product, and
explained how it worked. I had more questions, so they gave me the name
and phone number of the physician who invented the product, Bart Flick,
MD.
I called him immediately.
Dr. Flick asked me to fax him Tim’s medical history, which I did. Once
he was convinced that Silverlon would work to heal Tim’s wound, he agreed
to talk with Tim’s doctor.
I called Tim’s neurosurgeon, only to find out that Tim’s head was leaking
yet again. “I don’t really want to do any more surgery,” he said, sounding
almost sick. “Tim’s been through much too much already.”
“Would you consider trying something a bit different?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
So while I had him hold, I dialed Dr. Flick’s number, hoping to place
an instant three-way call. Thank goodness, Dr. Flick was there—and available.
Hands shaking, I patched the conference call together and the two doctors
spoke, with me quietly crossing all fingers and toes. I heard Dr. Flick
offer to supply all the Silverlon dressings for Tim free of charge.
That night Silverlon was placed on Tim’s head. To my knowledge, Tim
was the first person to have Silverlon used on a non-healing post-surgical
head wound.
That was the last day his head leaked.
To my surprise (shock, really), Tim’s doctors did not seem to be at
all impressed—or frankly, even interested—in our success with Silverlon.
In fact, they all warned me that it might have been a fluke. In any case,
they were quite sure it was “anecdotal.”
But I really was, and still am, absolutely positive it wasn’t a fluke.
In fact, Silverlon certainly is a wonderful example of what I now call
patient-evidence-based treatments.
Naïvely, I hoped that Tim’s success with Silverlon would be repeated
many times over for other brain tumor patients with non-healing wounds
in the years to come. It didn’t happen.
Today, I am still hoping that, at some point in the future, one neurosurgeon
who hears our story will become excited about Silverlon, and will agree
to use this effective, inexpensive, non-toxic product on brain tumor patients’
heads. Maybe one will even conduct a trial. Unfortunately, so far, this
hasn’t happened.
I am hoping my book, HONEST
MEDICINE, and my articles (like this one) may provide the necessary
impetus.
After many talks with Dr. Flick, I understood why Silverlon works—as
well as why some doctors are so skeptical. You see, the principle of Silverlon
is very different from what doctors learn in medical school about how skin
heals.
As Dr. Burt Berkson (MD, MS, PhD), the pioneer of intravenous alpha
lipoic acid, one of the other treatments I feature in my book, points out,
doctors are trained not to think outside the box, or to be at all curious.
We certainly experienced this lack of both curiosity and outside-the-box
thinking.
Dr. Flick told me he thinks Silverlon helped to heal Tim’s head by changing
the electrical environment, or electrostatic field, on the surface of the
body (i.e., on the skin). He hypothesized that this, in turn, affected
the electrical characteristics of the dura mater—the layer surrounding
the brain—allowing it to heal. He also told me that silver foils were routinely
used as surgical dressings at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University
Hospital before antibiotics were invented. So, as it turns out, a variation
of Silverlon was in use many years ago.
Dr. Flick told me that he has found, from twenty-plus years of research,
that skin has a definite electrical potential. When there is a wound, the
electrical potential of the affected area becomes abnormal. He pointed
out that if you can pull electrical potential from the surrounding healthier
skin, you can reestablish the normal electrical potential at the wound’s
site. This causes the affected skin to heal more quickly. This is the power
of conductive fabrics made from silver.
Silverlon cannot just be placed over the affected area of the skin.
In order to harness the electrical potential of healthy skin, the material
must be placed wet over the affected area—and it must also touch two centimeters
beyond the affected area on all sides. (You can learn more about Silverlon
at http://www.silverlon.com.)
I am convinced that if we had known about Silverlon just ten months
earlier, it would have given Tim a much better chance of healing from the
June 2001 surgery. If we had found Silverlon earlier, I will even go so
far as to say that I believe Tim might be alive today.
While I can’t be sure that is true, I definitely believe that, if we
had found Silverlon earlier, Tim would not have been left with the cognitive
deficits he had for the last three-and-a-half years of his life. When he
finally came home with me, he was bedbound, incontinent, and nearly paralyzed.
To get the word out to the larger public, I wrote an article about our
success with Silverlon in SEARCH, the newsletter of the National Brain
Tumor Foundation. Many people contacted me as a result, telling me that
their loved ones were going through situations similar to Tim’s and begging
me to help them get some Silverlon. I convinced Dr. Flick to donate Silverlon
to these patients, all of whom were in the hospital. Not one of their doctors
would agree to use it.
This experience gnawed at me. It made me realize that something was
terribly wrong with our medical system—a system where expensive treatments
and surgeries that often don’t work are used instead of inexpensive, often
more effective treatments that do work.
I set out to expose this dysfunction by finding other treatments to
write about—treatments that have been successfully treating (and in some
cases, even curing) patients for many years of very serious conditions,
but are not universally accepted by the medical profession—most probably
because they lack profitability for any pharmaceutical company.
I didn’t have to look far to find four treatments that fit the bill.
I wrote about them first for my website, http://www.HonestMedicine.com,
and then for my recently published book, also titled HONEST
MEDICINE.
The treatments I chose to write about are: Low Dose Naltrexone for autoimmune
diseases (e.g., multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's
disease, etc.), HIV/AIDS and some cancers; the Ketogenic Diet, for pediatric
epilepsy; intravenous alpha lipoic acid, for terminal liver disease and
some cancers; and—as featured in this article—Silverlon, for non-healing
wounds.
I wrote my book, HONEST MEDICINE, to educate the public about these
treatments, treatments that have such convincing patient-based evidence
to back them up. I also wrote it in hopes that one day soon, all patients
will be able to use effective, time-tested, inexpensive treatments like
the ones I feature in my book without having to look so hard to find them.
Julia Schopick is the creator
of the award-winning blog, HonestMedicine.com,
and has been a published writer and a public relations consultant for more
than twenty years. When her husband Tim Fisher became ill in 1990 with
a cancerous brain tumor, Julia became his medical advocate and began writing
on topics relating to health and medicine published in American Medical
News, ADVANCE, SEARCH and Alternative and Complementary Therapies. Her
work and essays have been featured in the British Medical Journal, Modern
Maturity and the Chicago Sun-Times. Her mission is to use her writing and
public relations skills to inform the world about little-known but promising
treatments via her website, her presentations and this book, and to empower
people in their health choices.
-----
This excerpt has been adapted from Julia Schopick’s Amazon.com best-selling
book, HONEST
MEDICINE: Effective, Time-Tested, Inexpensive Treatments for Life-Threatening
Diseases. She continues to write about treatments like these on her
website. Her book has a Facebook
fan page. And you may order HONEST MEDICINE at amazon.com
What
Every Parent Should Know BEFORE Their Childen Are Vaccinated! Why
are a growing number of parents and health care professionals around the
world questioning vaccination? The controversy stems from the thousands
of deaths and permanent disabilities attributed to vaccination annually,
as well as the many published medical studies, government statistics, 
congressional
testimonies, and other credible sources that directly contradict commonly
held assumptions about vaccine safety and effectiveness.
Bart Classen, a Maryland physician, published data showing that diabetes
rates rose significantly in New Zealand following a massive hepatitis B
vaccine campaign in young children, and that diabetes rates also went up
sharply in Finland after three new childhood vaccines were introduced.
More pictures
of vaccine damage available to view at the
CDC
website
In fall 1997, two influential professional magazines featured articles
asking the question: Has the decrease of infectious diseases in childhood
through the mass use of vaccines been replaced with an increase in chronic
diseases such as diabetes and asthma? The Economist, a prestigious international
magazine read by world leaders in government, business and public policy,
and Science News, a magazine read by both health care 
professionals
and the general public, explored the reported links between vaccines and
chronic diseases in their November 22, 1997 issues.
This
child died as a result of vaccines (CDC website)
Congressman
is calling for criminal penalties for any government agency that knew about
the dangers of thimerosal in vaccines and did nothing to protect American
children. Congressman Dan Burton (R-Indiana) during Congressional
Hearing: "You mean to tell me that since 1929, we've been using Thimerosal,
and the only test that you know of is from 1929, and every one of
those people had mennigitis, and they all died?" For nearly an hour, Burton
repeatedly asked FDA and CDC officials what they knew and when they knew
it. (Thimerosal contains a related mercury compound called ethyl mercury.
Mercury is a toxic metal that can cause immune, sensory, neurological,
motor, and behavioral dysfunctions.)
Vaccines:
deception and tragedy
Shaken
Baby Syndrome (SBS) or Vaccine-Induced Encephalitis?
Vaccines
and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)
AUTISM:
is there a vaccine connection?
Library
- Books and Journals: Vaccine Controversy
Juvenile
diabetes and vaccination: the connection
Can
vaccines cause immune dysfunction resulting in allergies, asthma and anaphylaxis?
Homeopathy
can be used successfully to prevent and treat smallpox, measles,
whooping
cough, chickenpox, and other ailments.
Would you allow big brother to enforce vaccinations on your kids? Government
Enforced Vaccinations Vaccination Tracking Registry - Government programs
that limit your choices -and your rights- in health care when it comes
to mandatory vaccination. These mandates last for 40 or so years
and they're impossible to repeal. Also, learn about Legal Requirements
and Exemptions
Are Vaccines Damaging Our Pets?
Routine Vaccination: Is
it really safe and effective? Most recently, an article
appeared in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association
entitled "Are We Vaccinating Too Much?" Read about the comments of veterinarians
who believe that vaccines are damaging our pets.
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