Overcoming The Odds

Professor Jayne Goddard is President of the Complementary Medical Association and a member of the Parliamentary Group for Alternative and Complementary medicine, but behind all this establishment sounding stuff lies a death defying battle to overcome rheumatoid arthritis.

There is no simple cure. Everyone must adopt different methods, but I can provide the basics.

It is a story that started happily enough in Henley on Thames, where she studied ballet and as a young girl, appeared in a round of West End musicals, including the inevitable Cats, but the first twist in her life was to come.

She had been taught as a dancer to go for every job, because in the end she would need a full Equity ticket to work when she was older so she answered an ad for dancers with David Smart’s circus, who were appearing in Battersea Park. She got the job which was straightforward enough, but impressed by her dancer’s suppleness they turned her into an acrobat and from there she joined the circus full-time working on the high wire and flying trapeze.

This led to an interest in alternative medicine because the circus visited areas of South America and Asia, where there was no conventional medical treatment. If you got sprains, or other things went wrong you had to consult the purveyors of alternative medicine, and their treatment worked.

Back in Britain she had no sooner got the coveted Equity card and started work as an actress, when she was involved in a car crash that caused her whiplash.

She explains," I got some stiffness in my ankles at first, as well as my Achilles. It began to spread and spread so I was offered steroids, but fortunately turned them down, remembering the good effects that alternative medical treatment had had upon me in my circus career. But now I had rheumatoid arthritis, and I had to use a wheelchair. I was in agony, in the end even the duvet on the bed had to be turned for me, and whenever I was turned by my partner it caused me agony, and I used to cry with the pain."

“It was worse for me in many ways because I had been ridiculously fit, and now I was losing all my muscles and my weight dropped to five stone. Mentally and emotionally it was devastating, because we were using homeopathic methods, which would give me only two days of relief, and then everything returned.”

Then came a near miracle, just as people were facing up to her possible death she was introduced to dark field microscopy, in which a drop of blood is studied through a darkened microscope. It was discovered she had an internal form of fungus, caused by living in damp conditions in the past. A friend plus her partner said they had heard the doctor in charge of these tests, David Schweitzer, also had healing powers, and she asked him to try them on her.

She says, ”He did this spiritual healing on me and then did another blood test. It was quite extraordinary. The red blood cells that had been congealed had moved apart.”

So partly cured at least mentally, she amazingly set off with her partner for the World Cup in Japan, wheelchair and all.

“I really enjoyed the England-Argentina game,” she says.

Afterwards they stayed on, visiting the island of Koh Samui, where she soon entered a clinic for an intensive nine day course, lasting 14 hours a day including everything from the highly painful but successful Thai massage, detox, fasting from solid food, but drinking energy giving supplement drinks, changing alkaline levels in the body, as well as colonic irrigation and plenty of other alternative treatments.

Miraculously when she arrived back at London airport, she was pushing her wheelchair and walking.

She explains, “I haven’t cured it, but I control it brilliantly with things like a special eating regime which involves avoiding wheat products, cows milk and other dairy products and drinking goats milk instead. I use different Omega oils, but it’s not a boring routine. I have plenty of fun, even drinking alcohol every now and again.”.

She wants to share her knowledge with other sufferers. She spoke at the recent Natural Products Europe show at London’s Olympia.

Now she would like to hear from any 50connect sufferers so that she can decide whether to hold a series of one-day workshops.

To reply to Jayne email her at jayney@the-cma.org.

By Michael Wale

2002

Web Links

For alternative medicine official info go to www.the-cma.org.uk.

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