At 87, illness left her weak and fearful, until a vitamin D deficiency was revealed. Supplementing restored her health and vitality.
I had an amazing experience a couple of years ago. I was 87 years old, perfectly healthy and not on any medication. One Saturday afternoon, as I stood in the kitchen making a pot of tea, I began to feel so ill that all I could do was walk down the passage and fall onto my bed. I remained there for the next couple of hours, wondering what had gone wrong since I wasn’t in pain or even nauseous. I just felt very, very ill.
Eventually, I summoned enough energy to phone a friend and ask her to take me to the emergency department at the nearest hospital. All I could tell the doctor was that I “felt dreadful”. He gave me a thorough examination and asked lots of questions, but I could see he was as nonplussed as I was. The only problem he found was that my blood pressure was slightly high, so after an hour, he told me to go home and rest.
In the next 10 days, I landed in the emergency room twice more. On the second occasion, I had managed to drive myself to an appointment with my eye doctor. When I collapsed in her office, she put me in a wheelchair and told her receptionist to take me to the Emergency section in the hospital next door! This was the only time I found anything remotely funny about my situation.
Again, the doctor on duty could find nothing wrong, but this time he had me admitted to the hospital immediately and ordered a brain scan. That evening, my blood pressure measured 224/110 (very high) but the nurse who took it didn’t seem alarmed, so I decided I would not be, either. After a sleepless night, I had the scan, which declared me to be perfectly healthy.
My own doctor was equally puzzled. He arranged for two urine tests that came back negative. Then, after a couple of telephone discussions with a specialist, he decided it would be helpful if I had exploratory surgery for a suspected four-syllable condition in the region of my liver (I declined). All this time, I continued to have peaks of very high blood pressure and he would sometimes phone me in the evening to ask how I was.
By now, six weeks had passed and I thought I might be dying. I would wake in the mornings feeling normal but within hours my heart would start racing with my ears singing, face flushed and body hot. I had no appetite and sometimes just walking to the kitchen to make a cup of tea seemed impossible. I felt weak and very ill most of the time.
A friend suggested I get a second opinion from Dr B, who combined conventional and alternative medicine in his practice. He, too, could find nothing wrong with