In search of a cure

Upon my first visit to the neurologist in 2005 I was told that the disease I caught was an  incurable one. Not only that it is incurable, it will be deteriorating progressively from its onset even though the patient is put on medication.

While I have lived with this disease for nearly 11 years, I noticed that my ability of doing various kind of things has been taken away one by one, and is in an even faster pace during the last two years. The nuisance it generated for me were tremor, stiffness, sleeping disturbance, walking gait, poor balance, frequent fall and et cetera. It makes me frustrated and annoyed when any of these symptoms hits, therefore even though I was told of its incurable nature I spend time in searching for a cure through various possible channels.

The ideas that I have found from my search for a cure are: reflexology, dietary supplement, Qi Gong, Original Point Medicine and the spiritual practice doing Vipassana meditation. To some extent, these techniques have done some of their works but they are still far away from the level of my expectation.

Currently I am doing original point therapy. I would like to talk more about this therapy which I have been undertaking since the late part of September 2016. This therapy is carried out by my good friends David and his wife Mary. They had a strong belief that the Original Point medicine will certainly do good to my Parkinson's disease and so they arranged a free two sessions a week of Original Point massage for me. Not only that they offered to travel all the way from Papakura, where they live, to come to North Shore to do the massage for me, they cooked thick ginger tea, they provided the electric blanket and hot water bottle all for free.

The Original Point medicine originates from Taiwan is a systematic treatment developed by the Original Point Medicine Foundation. This system believes that the symptoms of any disease emerge due to certain amount of damage found on the corresponding tendons or from a sharp drop of the biological energy of the physical body. If the two issues of energy drop and the tendon damage are eliminated then the disease will be eradicated.

The treatment was started in the later part of September 2016. I was suffering from an annoying sleeping disturbance since late 2015 and I wished this problem could be solved first of all.

No significant improvement was found until the mid-November when my sleeping quality suddenly began to maintain its stabilised pattern. I gradually trust in this therapy.

Besides the twice a week massage sessions, I am supposed to drink 600 mL of thick ginger tea and at least two hours of heat therapy on a daily basis. I have been skeptical about the heat therapy which they believe is the way of topping up the biological energy from outside, and so for this reason I have never really done this properly as requested until recently.

A few days ago I had a severe tremor on my left leg and stiffness on the right and I thought perhaps I should take their advice of doing the proper heat therapy for this time, so I did and I found it really helped eradicating the tremor and rigidity.

I would like to share four of my selfies shot in 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2017 respectively.

These four pictures of me clearly tell you the results of the major treatment I had in that year. As you can see from the first two pictures, my body weight plummeted to 47 kg from 61 kg in 2005. During the seven years since I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, I had been a cooperative patient in the sense of taking the prescription medicine as I was told to. Although the modern medicine help me to put the major symptoms of tremor and the stiffness under control, the side effects that come out of the medicine is destroy all of the merit it is meant to provide. That is why I look so weak and skinny in these two pictures.

Gradually a side effect in the form of gastric acid reflux was emerging in 2014, I felt I must cut one of the four sessions of my medication to deal with this problem that had been troubling me in 2015. I felt an instant relief physically after the cut of medication and my body weight was brought up to 54 kg then gradually slide down to 52 kg and settled at this figure. The picture shot in this stage sure is a more energetic me.

Having realised the negative side of the medication, I decided to cut off for yet another session in mid 2016 without having consulted my doctor. This action was too radical because not only that I could not experience of further relief physically I was suffering from excessive tremor and the stiffness together with the sleeping disturbances.

The fourth picture was shot in January 2017. I had had nearly 4 months of the Original Point massage. Although the major symptoms have not been improved, some of the side effects such as sleeping difficulty, constipation together with the general issues of my physical body have been improved. Everyone whom I shared this picture with commented that I seemed to have completely got rid of my disease.

Along the journey of my search for a cure of my Parkinson's disease I am grateful to David and Mary. Their compassion has made a difference of my life.