A Megadose of Holistic Medicine : Patient Seeks Help in Positive Thinking, New-Age Tracts
It began with a purple spot, like a pimple, on Doug Johnson’s arm. He figured it was an ingrown hair. But when he pointed it out to a doctor, it turned out to be a lesion. Johnson was diagnosed this spring as having Kaposi’s Sarcoma, a form of skin cancer and a complication of AIDS.
Johnson, 30, says he was miserable--”for about 2 1/2 hours.” He was young, he didn’t want to die, he was concerned about his family. His 6-month-old nephew had just been crowned the new Johnson & Johnson baby and Johnson worried about not seeing him grow up.
He decided it was not time to check out.
“I always believed you create your own diseases,” the San Diego florist explained. “There’s a saying, ‘You can live your life with ease or dis-ease.’ Disease! It is up to you. The power of the mind. I’ve always been a strong believer in positive thinking.”
Johnson, who uses phrases like “living for life” and “getting in touch with myself,” now believes he will be cured by the end of the year--the result, he says, of an elaborate regimen of experimental therapies, which many doctors would dismiss as quack cures.
The techniques have included a macrobiotic diet, crystal therapy, and analyses of his “aura.” He is also trying colonics, visualizations, acupuncture, hydrogen peroxide and nutritional supplements that alone cost $300 a month.
Unlike others trying alternative therapies, Johnson makes no claim to be forestalling the disease until modern medicine finds a cure. He has little faith in doctors and thinks he has found the answer in holistic medicine newspapers, self-help books and New-Age tracts.
But the treatments are proving prohibitively pricey: His food supplements can cost up to $600 a month. He spends $300 for 10 acupuncture sessions, $250 for the colonics and $500 for his sessions with a holistic doctor.
Cutting His Rent
Only part of those bills are covered by health insurance. So Johnson has had to move in order to cut his rent. He recently got a loan from his parents to hire new employees for his flower stand so he can have time off to focus on his therapies.
“Everything that happens to us, it’s not by accident,” mused Johnson, who talks as though his own habits brought on, and can cure, his disease. “It’s something that we’ve done to create it.
“I had wanted to change my diet, my way of living. . . . I knew I was a little stressed out. And I knew I drank too much coffee and a little too much alcohol on weekends. This was a way of bringing it to my attention. I didn’t have a choice: I had to change.”
In recent weeks, Johnson has been starting each day with a protein drink prescribed by his nutritionist, including lecithin, bee pollen, safflower oil, fruits and protein powder. He also eats oatmeal cooked in distilled water with raisins and apples.
Breakfast alone can take an hour to prepare.
He takes 25 to 30 pills each morning--Chinese herbs, spirulina, megadoses of Vitamin C, and pills purporting to boost the immune system. He said the expense has prevented him from adding another component--colostrum, the protein-rich secretion of mammary glands.
Johnson pays weekly visits to a holistic chiropractor who hooks him to a machine that purports to measure his “aura and energy field.” Johnson said the doctor has concluded “that I did have toxins in my system and that my energy was scrambled.” He prescribed “quiet meditation,” hot baths and avoiding stress.
Johnson has half-hour acupuncture sessions twice weekly, during which the acupuncturist pokes at “the meridians that improve your immune system.” He also pays regular visits to a San Diego colonics center for “irrigation and flushing of the lower intestines.”
He practices a form of meditation called visualization, aimed at healing through visualizing oneself in a state of good health. He says he pictures his red and white blood cells in the proper ratios, circling through his body like cartoon characters, hand in hand.
Shuns Orthodox Medicine
Johnson has no interest in the offerings of established medicine.
He turned down his doctor’s offer of a prescription for AZT, the only drug so far with federal approval for treatment of AIDS, for fear the side-effects would prove more deadly than the disease.
He points out that before modern medicine, people relied on homeopathic cures. His grandmother, an American Indian, relied heavily on garlic and herbs. He has concluded that modern medicine has brought nothing but trouble and he should revert to his ancestors’ ways.
“You know, in the media, all you usually read is the negative: It tells you how many people are dying and how many cases are going to break out,” Johnson said. “Well, that goes to prove that if you keep on drilling somebody, it will make the statistics come true.”
