I was 11 years old and at the top of my world. I was very small for my age and throughout life to this point it was a real plus for me as my peers in which I had gone to school with since beginning kindergarten, treated me as if I were a novelty. I was then in sixth grade an had just lost a bid for a run for School President. That didn’t phase me as everything else seemed to be on track as I was looking forward to and determined to find my way to the field of medicine. I had a great affinity for animals and I could see my future in veterinary medicine. Aside from my Father procrastinating and leaving all of us children waiting for long periods of time my home environment appeared quite normal to me. My Father worked as a commercial artist. My Mother was basically a stay at home Mom with four children to care for and occasionally she would help my Father with his business. As a young child I didn’t observe any major conflicts between my parents, however, I also observed very little affection between them. But I was young and involved with all the various everyday facets of my 1950s’ childhood, such as long extended hiking and exploration, game playing with friends ,i.e. roller skating, hopscotch, jump rope, jacks, marbles, etc. I learned early on that the piano I aspired to learn or the horse or lamb I would have loved to have were out of the question as one thing that was very clear was that we didn’t have money for extras like that. I knew that such luxuries as those would need to come from my own doing later in life. I generally felt happy with my life and expressed that. I was known as Little Miss Sunshine to some of the neighbors. Up until that point in time I had a vague memory of my Mother leaving home for a short period of time, when I was about 3 years old, but I never knew why.

In the midst of riding high in sixth grade and looking forward, my older brother , younger sister and I, (my older sister had already proceeded to get married and was on her own) were told by my Father that our Mother was needing to go away to be in a hospital for a short period of time. I sure didn’t understand the need for my Mother to go away as in my young mind I wasn’t aware of anything wrong with her. She always seemed to be there for us and o-k to me. What was this all about? Upon the day of her leaving I had no idea that my remaining childhood would be void of a Mother’s love and support and that my whole world was falling apart.

Five years had gone by before my Mother was finally released from the hospital in which I came to realize was a mental institution. I still didn’t realize the magnitude of her problems only that she was allowed to take and attempt to rear one of her children, which turned out to be my youngest sister who was about 13 at the time. As a teenager I was exposed to extensive paternal abuse and neglect and by the time I was a young adult I knew that my promising career in medicine needed to give way to other more demanding responsibilities. After my Mother was out of the mental institution, she was able to re-train and amp up her office skills and after her required year of probation from the institution she landed a job as a Dictaphone typist for the Los Angeles court system. She and my Father divorced shortly after her discharge. Due to my own poor health and leanings toward depression, with the gentle encouragement of my Brother, I started to explore preventative healthcare and natural healing. As a result of the benefits, I became very interested in the field of Herbology and Nutrition and studied everything I could find on those topics. I never lived with my Mother after age 11, however, I sensed that irrespective of her job and caring for my Sister I had felt that she still had underlying problems.

When I was 27, my Mother was about to turn 60 and ready to retire. She became concerned about her finances. Before long she was seeing a psychiatrist who prescribed medication which she was taking, without benefit. By this time I had studied and experienced the positive effects of Natural Medicine with myself and others and with the support of my Brother, I made a real effort to convince my Mother to take a different approach, as her history had proven to us that multiple courses of EST (Electro shock therapy) and drug therapy had given her little hope in the past. After various attempts to open new therapeutic avenues, her mind set was too rigid to break through and she proceeded to follow the advice of her psychiatrist. By this she was loosing her grip on reality, full of fear and hopelessness. Her psychiatrist realized that his treatment protocol was ineffective. We pleaded for him to not give her EST, as it never helped in the past so he proceeded to hospitalize her and treat her with a 3 week protocol of Prolixin, Valium and Thorazine in concentrates via injection. Before the end of the protocol she became the worst patient in the long term facility to which she was transferred to midstream, due to finances. I knew that in her state of craziness and extreme dehydration that she wouldn’t last much longer. During the next several hours that followed I decided to take my Mother out of the facility one way or another even if it landed me in jail. Otherwise I was certain she would quickly die in there. Shortly before I proceeded to do this I received a phone call stating that my Mother had been rushed back to the original hospital via ambulance, severely dehydrated and left in a catatonic state, in ICU for the next couple weeks. It was unsure whether she would survive. In the midst of all this it was clear that it was up to me to take responsibility for her life and I was compelled and determined to find the means and way to help her. In the process of my search, in a very roundabout way I was able to contact an Orthomolecular Psychiatrist in San Diego, where we lived. They were even more sparse in the 70s. Now I felt we were on the right track but would she survive to try a different approach. Now she could not eat, or speak, and how was I going to make these adjustments for her. If she made it through this I sure didn’t feel comfortable for her to be under the care of the same psychiatrist who almost killed her. She did make it through and I was trying everything possible to transfer her case to the new psychiatrist, however, I found out I was powerless. I felt time was of the essence, as she was so depleted and needed so much support that she wasn’t receiving. I found in order to have any say over her healthcare that I needed to go to court, state my case and become her conservator, which I did. Like a Mother Hen with a Baby Chick under wing we began the initial steps to her healing. It was a 3 year journey. She became my full-time job. We reached deep into her psyche to find out all the components needed for her to regain her health. It was a complete lifestyle change with the inclusion of proper nutrition, mega vitamin therapy, botanical therapy, colonic therapy, spiritual psychology, are some of the therapies we worked with. In spite of her fixed belief that she was beyond hope, she over came the label of Paranoid Schizophrenic she had lived with for 35 years and lived her remaining 16 years free of mental/emotional entrapments. She became very functional, enjoyed the rest of her life and became the Grandmother that my Daughter and her other grandchildren never knew they had.

This is a very brief description of one individual’s process of healing. I will follow this up when time permits with a very detailed compilation of the entire process. This is something I felt the need to do for the last 29 years. My Mothers mental/emotional problems have had such a profound effect on my life I feel inclined to tell this story and perhaps in doing so it may reduce and/or resolve the mental anguish of others.

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How IVC and Other Vitamins Conquered My Problems