The tip of the spear

There’s a saying in certain elite military units, and for some, it is their whole motto:  The tip of the spear.   

It means that they are leading the charge, and it is a point of pride that that they are the First.   They break into uncharted territory.  They cross the boundaries.   They break into the unknown. 

Everyone else follows them.  And for the following units, as with almost all breakthroughs, the path sometimes seems self-evident afterwards.   

Of course, they succeeded because of x, y, and z.    

Once the logic has been established, once the path has been cleared, it is easy for the rest of the spear to follow.  

But when the path is not premade, the way is anything but self-evident.   It might be logical according to theory, history, common sense, or other traditions or philosophy, but since it has never been done before, there is a huge amount of inertia blocking even the conception of it.  No one thinks to do it.  The truth is, we become easily entrenched into our cultural, societal, familial, or other ways of doing things.   

It is not easy to be the tip of the spear.  It requires courage, creativity, and fierce determination.   It is dangerous.  It is vulnerable.  It is always a risk to be first.

There are so many sayings:  

Necessity is the Mother of Invention.

The Simple Genius.

Like with those 90s digital 3-D images:  It is obvious now, but I could not see it until I saw it, and now I can’t stop seeing it.  

Sometimes, gaining a new understanding can be very chicken-and-eggy.

Do I sound a bit off?  Truth is, I am a bit of a wreck right now.  But probably not for the reasons you suspect.

Two weeks ago, I would have told you, I wanted to shout from the rooftops, that I had FINALLY figured it out.    I had found a cure for my child, my obsession of the last 5 years.  There were signs that her body was shifting.  I saw it and noted it, and I felt it in my bones.

Then I learned that while she was not “burning through” her donated blood, and could go another week before transfusion (making it 5 weeks instead of 4), her blood lab results were not showing healthy baby red blood cells.  

So she was not cured.  It was a tough blow, but I realized, somehow, that I still felt the same sense of confidence and love that I had felt when I was convinced she was cured.  

You see, I had had a strange realization one night, when I was pre-celebrating in my mind how this was finally IT.  (I couldn’t help it; I just felt it to be true and was so very, very excited.)  Out of nowhere, I began to feel sad, thinking of how much joy was lost when she was in infant.  I don’t think I could have done it differently; my feelings were entirely natural.   And, to be fair, I actually did a pretty good job of remaining as much “in the present moment” as I could.  But it’s hard, truly hard, when you see your child slowly decline before your eyes every two weeks, and also, I was very physically ill myself.  That night, I realized that I sincerely wished I could go back in time, and lift my sorrow.  To tell myself: “just celebrate, and love her, and be happy, because it will all be okay.  She will be fine.  You will navigate these waters well; No permanent damage will be done.”    

Something clicked that night, something shifted.   I stopped worrying.  I felt… happy.  Peaceful.  Grateful.  

I felt, for the first time since my 3rd trimester, when I went into kidney failure and her little baby pulse dropped out from within mine (we can feel the baby in the mother’s pulse in Chinese medicine), that she was safe.

Somehow, even though the lab results came back negative, those feelings remained unchanged within me.    At her friends’ birthday parties that weekend, I was able to talk abut her condition without my eyes tearing up, even as my friends’ eyes welled with compassion.  I rejoiced with my pale little pixie; and I played with her without the familiar weight and tug of grief.  Something had been lifted.  

Then, some more test results were released a few days later.  These results said she was making red blood cells, but they were not ideal; they were ovalocytes and microcytes.  They were not healthy baby red cells.  

It was not great news, but I took it as good news:  To me, it meant that her body was trying.

The next week, on the day of her most recent transfusion, October 30th, the lab report said that she was now making healthy baby red blood cells, as well as a few ovalocytes.  There were not enough healthy baby RBCs (reticulocytes) for the doctors and I to feel comfortable skipping the transfusion.  But they were there.

And I can say this:

This is the first time I can positively say that her blood production is DEFNITELY related to what I am doing for her.

In the past, it seemed that there was no discernible cause or effect.  Or that there might be correlation, but I was not sure.

This is no accident.

I see now.  I understand the therapeutic order that has brought us to this place.  I see how it fits together, and I see how it makes sense.  

I see how obvious this blood disorder is, and how equally obvious it is that it can be cured.

I see how different medical perspectives are arriving at the same conslucions, or even using different approaches, but talking and walking in circles about the same darn thing.  

It is RIGHT THERE.  

Now, what I’m doing is not steroids.   Natural medicine can take awhile for the body to register.  But, we’ve made it past the biggest hurdle.  We’ve passed the inertia of NO baby RBCs.  My hope is that now she will begin make a TON of them.  That they will grow exponentially.  And they might.  Now that her body is coming “online” it might decide to “gear up” quickly.  Children do that.  They get ill fast, and they recover fast.  My hope is that our Thanksgiving and Christmas present will be her being able to skip the next blood transfusion.  A high hemoglobin with a high reticulocyte count.

But I am also prepared for a much slower road.  Her counts may grow slowly, over months.  There may be some dips before we finally find ourselves in “The Happy Land of Freedom from Life-saving Medical Intervention.”  

The best part?  By getting her body to do this on its own, to make its choice to repair its DNA and correct its cellular processes, we wont be applying a band-aid.  It will be a true cure.  She will finally have a truly healthy, functioning, independent body.  

Here’s the thing:

From any medical tradition’s perspective, it is a miracle that Adahlia is still alive.   By all rights, by any medical explanation for the body and vitality and life, East or West, her life is in dire jeopardy and she should soon be dead.  Humans do not live without blood.  Not making one’s own blood cells is about as severe as it can get.   Her body is about as sick, and about as close to “shutting down” or termination as one can get.

(Even the “undead” need blood to survive).

The only reason she is not dead, is that we continually bring her back from the brink.

The only problem with bringing her back is that the only ways we can do this are toxic and incredibly destructive to other parts of the body.  Blood transfusion, steroids, and even bone marrow transplants are not sustainable solutions.

What we need is to turn the body back “on.”  We need to get our kids’ bodies to “choose life” on a subconscious, cellular level.

And gosh darn it, but I think I may have figured out how.   Naturally.  Without the drugs and interventions that cause growth problems, adrenal failure, precocious puberty, diabetes, osteoporosis, sterility, and a host of other problems.

And if that wasn’t BIG enough:

If I can do this for her…. for someone whose body is not even functioning on the fundamental level of generating its own blood… someone this close to death… and whose body was formed this way, such that we are fighting against the programming and patterning established by embryonic cells in the womb….

Then we can do it for anyone.  

Everyone.  

There should be NOTHING we cannot reverse, no life we cannot restore.  

If I can cure Adahlia, it is no “fluke,” or happenchance.   It means we need to WAKE UP to the reality that we are limiting ourselves  by limiting our understanding of the human body and its capabilities, its ability to heal and self-regulate. 

I owe my daughter’s life to the modern medical interventions of sterile procedures and safe blood transfusion.  

But I owe her HEALTH — and indeed, she is amazingly healthy and robust, and has dodged every “bullet” of side effects and complications that come with this blood disorder —  and I owe her future quality of life, and the fact that she still has the unlimited potential of every “normal, healthy” child to experience all the good things that a mother hopes for her healthy child to experience, and I will owe her CURE to natural, integrative, East Asian, and energetic therapies.

And this is why I am a nervous wreck.

I feel like Cassandra of Greek mythology, who can predict the future but is doomed to never have anyone believe her.

What is my prediction?

The future of medicine — the true Golden Age of medicine and mankind —  will be one of Integrative Medicine.

Western pharmacological and surgical medicines will continue to save lives, especially in emergency situations.  But lives will be RESTORED and side effects and complications that ruin Quality of Life will be avoided because we will be using herbal medicines, energetic medicines, acupuncture, and homeopathy, and diet, and home therapies, and supplements, too.  

So many children will be saved.  So many parents will be relieved of the burdens of guilt and sorrow over having to choose between “the lesser of three evils” for their beloved baby.  So many, many, people will be so much, much more happier, and productive, and creative, and powerful contributors to the world.  

If I could blast us all into 100 years from now, I would do it, I truly would.

But alas, we are here, and it is up to us to do the work of making that Golden Age a reality.

Please help me.   Please, for yourself and your loved, ones, know that we need to change up our thinking.  We are going about medicine all wrong.  We need to work together.  

No one has ever combined Japanese mosibustion with pharmaceutical iron chelation therapy to remove iron overload from a child’s heart.  I was the first.  And I was wildly successful.  

No one has done what I am doing to restore her ability to make her own red blood cells, and I do believe I will soon be sharing news that she is in full remission, and I shalln’t be afraid to say that she is cured.

I live on the tip of the spear.  I invite you to join me.  I BEG you to join me.

We can do this.  

Yes, God creates and provides miraculous healings every day.  

But I believe that God did not miraculously heal my daughter on purpose.  I believe he withheld a miracle because he wanted to provide a miracle of a different sort.   With my western, scientific, eastern, energetic, spiritual, and West Point background, I was in a unique position to do this work, to lead a charge into the medical unknown. It is almost too coincidental that I became the mother of a child with a blood disorder so rare. I had the perfect tool-kit.  

I am a trained scientific researcher and I understand Wesetern biology, chemistry, physiology, etc.   I have also been educated and am experienced in natural, East Asian, and energy medicines.  If I had not learned what I learned, and had not had the life experiences I have had, I would not have been able to even know where to begin to cure my daughter.  I would have not known any better than what her doctors could tell me, which, to be honest, wasn’t very encouraging.  Ever.  But because of who I am, I knew a cure had to be possible.   I knew there were missing pieces.  I knew it could be done.   

God didn’t provide a traditional miracle for my family because, as they say in the military, that would have been “too easy.”   We, as a people, wouldn’t have learned anything new, and there is a massive take-away from this story:   

(And I am a nervous wreck because if Adahlia is indeed cured, then my work is just beginning.  I am exhausted, and I often feel overcome. And yet, I must proclaim it):

The miraculous cures we all seek and pray for are all around us.   Look at our plants.  Learn about them.  See how these different East vs West medical philosophies ultimately all come around to the same truths.   Become curious about how they fit together, how they confirm each other, how one picks up where the other left off, like a wonderful, old couple that finishes each others’ sentences.  See how our minds, our inventions and tools, are powerful, and complement each other, too.   

It’s all here.  It’s all RIGHT here. 

All we have to do is bring it together.   It’s a big, beautiful puzzle.  All it wants is for us to apply ourselves to solving it, to come together in a spirit of mutual curiosity, creativity, respect, and courage.   

The miracle we seek, it’s been given to us.  

It is within and all around us.  

It’s RIGHT here.

***

Yeah, it’s tough out here, on the tip of the spear.  I could really use a vacation.  But it is a great honor and I wouldn’t have it any other way.   Join me.  Follow me.  We can do this.  It is such a privilege to serve.