A Patient and A Poet
I had met him on my previous visit to Northern Mexico. My dear friend and colleague, Dra Estela Rosales Garza from Muzquiz had become interested in helping patients with Diabetes using complementary Medicine, especially using them to prevent complications.
This is Antero Alvarado Trevino. He is in his sixties and lives in a small town, Allende, forty five minutes drive south from Piedras Negras, the border town of Northern Mexico.
An engineer by trade, he is a man of all trades and a virulent seeker of knowledge. As Hippocrates had stated, he reminded me once: Eat naturally and give the body help to heal itself. I visited him at his home with Dra Estela. The house is built in the typical northern Mexican tradition, had a very nice welcoming feel to it.
Ozone is after all an isotope of Oxygen, this self educated man said, and it is not inflammable. Every time there is a spark of light or when the lightning travels through the air, it creates ozone. I had known about it for a long time but did not know that one day it will prolong my life.
Like all northern Mexicans, where grazing cattle in big ranches is a common sight, he was a dedicated carnivore: red meat, sausages, chorizos, menudos, and he ate it with gusto when he could lay his hands upon it. Diabetes crept in slowly and before he knew it, he was sitting in front of a Nephrologist in San Antonio and listened carefully as the doctor pronounced, your kidneys have stopped functioning, almost, and I can do nothing more for you, Dialysis is the only recourse.
This was in September of 2006, almost two years ago. His Serum Creatinine at that time was a very high 5.9, with blood analysis all revealing evidence of chronic end stage kidney disease: high potassium, high phosphorus, high blood urea, low calcium.
He was not willing to accept the advice. It is that or death, the concerned doctor said to him. But what the doctor did not realize was that Antero is a voracious reader and very inquisitive one at that. He began a research on his own, and he realized that there are other therapies available which can delay Dialysis.
He contacted Dra Estela and requested that he receive Ozone Therapy. Dra Estela had just come back from Cuba after learning about Ozone Therapy and applications and had brought back with her all the equipments necessary.
He began receiving once a month ozone therapy at the offices of Dra Estela.
His investigative reading did not stop there. This lover of poems, who recited poems of Mexican and Colombian poets, found out what is the best diet for him. First of all, eat no Meat. He was determined in his quest, to prove that Nephrologist wrong, that only death was an alternative. He found the vegetables and fruits which did the most benefit and least harm to the kidney. I don’t eat Banana or Tomato, he said, because of their potassium content, and however much I love our ancient Avocado, I had to give it up, when I realized that it might not be good for my kidneys.
So this man has learned to listen to his body and adjust to his new life. The serum creatinine has been coming down, he knows not to get dehydrated or do anything that would make his kidneys work harder than necessary.
Being an ingenious engineer, he has found a way to produce ozone in his workshop and then he pipes it to his house through the air conditioning system. No wonder why I felt a nice sensation of well being when I entered his house..
All throughout the weekend, I was thinking, why is that the richest country is the world is unable to provide a wholistic care for its people, why don’t the Indians deserve good wholistic care, instead of just their symptoms being attended to? Somethings are beyond us, but if each one of us did our bit, we will make more Indians comfortable.
The Diabetes Clinic in Siem Reap in Cambodia will be influenced by the philosophy of Wholistic Healing, not just numbers but the physical and emotional weffare of the patients. Then we can show the people form rich countries that being poor is not an obstacle to obtaining wholistic care… we just need more committed people, who believe that there is more to practicing Medicine than a western view point alone..
