Hope DeMey
A little over three years ago, I started having severe pain in my chest.
The onset was sudden, and fairly dramatic.
The first time I experienced it I was sweeping the floor, when out of the blue sharp pains began shooting through my chest.
The pain was so severe it made me dizzy and faint. My left arm felt numb and tingly. My husband called 911 immediately, and the paramedics came. Their EKG machine did not detect a cardiac event, so we went to the emergency room for more testing. They did blood work and chest x-rays, and nothing indicated a cardiac event.
I was 37 years old at the time, and by all standards otherwise as healthy as could be: a lifelong vegan/vegetarian, non-smoker, former dancer, who practiced yoga, meditation, and Ayurveda for many years. They decided I probably had some kind of anxiety attack and sent me home, even though I knew that the pain I felt had NOT been anxiety. And then, the pain kept returning. I went to the ER three times that summer before a doctor there finally sent me to a cardiologist.
The cardiologist ordered a treadmill stress test and an Echocardiogram, and for me to wear a portable EKG machine for a couple of weeks. Everything came back normal. But while I was running on the treadmill I started having chest pain and numbness and they picked up nothing unusual..it was the strangest experience!
After a few more months, my left arm and chest were in constant pain, and my left arm was very weak. My GP had no idea what was causing it, but decided that we should try physical therapy. I got a referral to a place that I heard had excellent therapists, and they could tell immediately after their diagnostic testing that I was experiencing nerve pain, consistent with a problem in my cervical spine. They ordered an MRI.
The MRI did show that I had a slight bulging disc in C7, a small herniation in C6, and mild stenosis. The strange thing was, the bulging disc and herniation were showing that I should have been feeling all of this pain and weakness on my right side, not my left.
My physical therapist got to work anyway, using very gentle techniques to help calm the muscles around the aggravated nerves. After 3 months I was worse instead of better. My left leg was also now weak and it was hard for me to stand.
I decided to go see a Sports and Functional Medicine doctor, and after going through his initial diagnostic testing and my imaging, he said that I needed to see a neurosurgeon as soon as possible, and referred me to one.
The neurosurgeon ordered MRI’s and x-rays of my entire back and neck. He saw the herniation and bulging disc, but he said those and the stenosis present were so minor, that he didn’t see how I could be having so many symptoms, and that they would expect that the symptoms would be on the opposite side of my body. He did not understand how it might be responsible for everything I was experiencing. He called my spine “pristine” a number of times, even with those issues showing up. He said he didn’t see a single thing to operate on that would improve my symptoms, and that surgery in such a case was far more risky than beneficial. He asked if I had ever been screened for Multiple Sclerosis. I had not. And my heart stopped at the words… could that be what was causing all these symptoms?
The neurosurgeon then said he thought the next step in that case was to see a neurologist as soon as possible, and referred me to one.
The neurologist looked over my images, and did some additional testing to assess nerve damage in my arms and legs. They found none. This all seemed like good news, but because the results were so inconclusive they said that they definitely wanted to screen me for Multiple Sclerosis.
So I went for another MRI, this time of my brain.
In the meantime, I was feeling extremely frightened and stressed to say the least. I have a husband and two children, one of whom has a rare autoimmune condition that affects her neurological system and requires quite a lot of care. I hadn’t been sleeping well because of the pain I was in, and also because my daughter often needed care in the middle of the night. There were other family struggles and stresses going on as well. I was feeling completely run down by this time.
By some miracle during this, I was connected with the medicine man and intuitive healer John Corsa. He thought he could help me, and we met to do my first healing session outdoors by a river.
He spoke with me about my symptoms. He spoke with me about the stress I was experiencing. His presence was a deep well of calm, and as I related my history to him, I felt the emotional pain I was carrying begin to separate itself from my heart. It began to lift. He said to take all the pain and give it to the river to be carried away. He then told me he thought my symptoms were largely being caused by this emotional burden I was struggling under, and we were going to focus on relieving that stress.
He performed some Qi Gong on me, and instructed me on a daily practice that I could do at home. He also instructed me in the use of certain crystals during my daily practice that would help rebalance my nervous system.
It all seemed simple, and I wondered at the time if this really could help at all. But I was now at the point where I was willing to try just about anything to lessen the daily pain I was in.
And then, in the hours following our session I experienced a flare up of pain and muscle weakness greater than any I had experienced other than at the onset. I was devastated. It lasted about 24 hours.
And this is when the miracle occurred.
I woke up the next morning, and I was pain free for the first time in 2 years.
I couldn’t believe it. I waited and waited for the pain to return that day, and the next and the next. It didn’t.
I gingerly tried some of the gentle exercises that I had been attempting in Physical Therapy and I could do them without pain. I put on some music and danced around with my kids. I could do it, and it didn’t hurt! What was going on? The only thing I had done differently was that healing session with John.
A few weeks later I met with the Neurologist to go over the brain MRI. At this point I was pretty frightened about being diagnosed with MS, but was also still feeling so much better. The pain had returned a bit, but not to the degree that I had been experiencing. And I did notice that it returned when my stress levels were high… but from everything I was learning about MS, stress could definitely cause it to flare up, and I was still feeling worried about my test results.
The neurologist came into the room, and pulled up the images on his computer to go through with me. He saw absolutely nothing that could indicate MS. He went over my symptoms again, and decided to test my strength on my left side one more time. After performing the strength test, he said that there was hardly any difference in strength between my left side and my right side, and nothing that they would consider clinically significant.
He seemed frustrated, and started to imply that maybe this was somehow all in my head. I started to cry a little, because I knew I was not imagining things, and I was so tired of doctors telling me that I must be. He then asked if we could go back through the history of everything that happened.
I explained to him how everything had begun so suddenly, and he went back and looked through all of my test results. Then something seemed to occur to him, and he asked if I had been sick with a cold around the time this started.
I remembered my kids had both been sick with some kind of cold or flu virus, and my daughter was having a bad autoimmune flare from it at the time, so I remembered it well. And yes, I had come down with it after them, although it was a much milder case for me.
He asked if we had tested for Covid during it. I said no, because it was January of 2019, a full year before the pandemic started. (Yes, this whole experience lasted for several years!)
He said the reason he asked is that Covid can cause neurological symptoms consistent with what I was experiencing, but there are other viruses that can do that as well. He said that they have discovered that sometimes viruses will cause an inflammatory feedback loop in the body that can affect the nerves. He said he strongly believes that this could be the cause of all of my symptoms over the years.
He also said that while there are medications that might help, they don’t yet have a specific treatment for this condition.
Because I had experienced so much relief from seeing John, I decided that instead of trying medication, I would continue my sessions with him.
We did three more, and after each session I experienced more healing.
I do still have flare-ups on occasion, and it’s usually during times of high stress. But each time this happens, I start doing the medicine movement practices John taught me, and if those don’t give me relief, I schedule a session with John.
So far, every time I do a session with him I get complete relief again.
I am so thankful and grateful to him for the work he does, and the healing he has brought me.
I have been able to live my life as normally as possible again, and being pain-free has helped rebuild my stress resilience so that I can once again care for my family the way I want to.
I even have had the energy to further my own education, with the goal of creating a new career path for myself once my children are older!
My life has regained balance and peace.
My body feels friendly again. I am able to exercise and rest.
Every necessity put back into place, through the work of this incredibly gifted healer, John Wing Flower.
I highly recommend him to anyone seeking healing for themselves. His work is like nothing I have ever seen before.
