The Witch Doctor

This piece first appeared in Zadok Perspectives No. 113 (Summer 2012). The Winter edition is out now, with my reflection on the houses in my dreams.

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What would it have been like to be healed by Jesus? I have largely regarded the healing stories to be about the restoration of people to their community; but more recently I have had such a strange experience of physical healing that I find myself revisiting them.

For many years now, I have been tired, very tired, so that I always feel like I am wading through molasses. I have mentioned this to several GPs, who have all patted me on the head and told me it's grief / I have young children / it'll go away.

For many years, too, I have had mild twinges in my joints whenever I stood up, brushed my teeth, or turned around too sharply. I have put on weight; felt bloated; caught every bug that went around; and experienced many other small niggles, all of which I dismissed as signs of aging. Until recently. Recently, the twinges in the joints became screaming pain, so that for a few days I could barely turn on a tap, pick up a pen, or go up or down a step. This was clearly not right for someone in her middle thirties, so I went to the doctor.

Blood tests established that I didn't have rheumatoid arthritis, or any of a dozen other conditions. The doctor announced it must be viral arthritis, handed me a script for anti-inflammatories, and told me to prepare for the next few months as the virus slowly worked its way through my system.

But the diagnosis didn't fit. I explained that this pain wasn't new; instead, it was an exacerbation of my normal. I had experienced aches and pains in my joints for years, and blaming a virus didn't make sense; however, the doctor was unmoved. So off I went, clutching my script and wondering.

A couple of painful weeks later, someone recommended a natural therapist who had a knack with odd conditions. In desperation, I arranged a visit. The therapist greeted me but asked no questions about my symptoms. Instead, he looked into my eyes with a torch for about thirty seconds, then said that I had a deeply depressed adrenal gland. So, he said matter-of-factly, I expect you've been having severe arthritis; lethargy and fatigue; chronic dermatitis; weight gain; lots of colds, flus and gastro; bloating especially after eating wheat; heavier periods; anxiety; and perhaps depression. You've been suffering most of these symptoms for years now. What was the traumatic event five to ten years ago that triggered it?

Once I had scraped my chin off the floor, I confirmed that I had all the symptoms bar full on depression, although I had certainly lost my spark; and that, among a cluster of major events about a decade ago, my mother had died.

'That would be it,' he said, 'but don't worry, this is easy to treat', and he prescribed a four month program of meditation, stringent dietary restrictions, herbal tablets and exercise; he told me I'd be right as rain in no time, with more energy than I'd had in years.

I went home and ate forbidden bread and butter, then polished off some forbidden chocolate. That evening, I sucked down a pint or two of forbidden beer, and reflected on the course of treatment.

What I began to realise was that I was reluctant even to try it.

Of course I longed to feel energetic, of course I didn't want to feel joint pain, of course I was fed up with being sick, of course I wanted to lose weight. And yet how much of my writing has come out of a slow approach to life that is a physical result of lethargy? How much of my reflective nature is a gift that comes out of pain? How many of my friendships are based on a personality which is shaped, to some extent, by being in this particular body that feels this particular way?

I was scared to follow the regimen because I didn't want it to work. I knew how to be an exhausted, flat, mildly depressive person who feels slightly sick every time she eats a sandwich. I barely remembered the playful, mischievous person I once was; and I didn't know how to integrate her into my relationships with my husband, my children, or anyone else.

I had felt old for such a long time. I didn't know what it would be like to feel young again; long ago I had accepted that I was aging, and modified my life and expectations accordingly.

Too, I'm a cook with a blog about local food. I knew how to use spelt and apples and cream; I didn't know how to cook and write about a gluten free, fruit free, dairy free, sugar free diet necessarily reliant on grains from thousands of miles away.

The concerns were ridiculous, of course – how much more joyful would life be if my energy and playfulness were restored? – but knowing this didn't make them go away.

It made me wonder about the people Jesus healed: was it all plain sailing for them? Or did they, too, struggle to give up some aspects of their self-definition as a cripple, a bleeding woman, a blind man, an outsider? And it caused me to reflect on other aspects of life. How often do we compromise or even refuse healing – physical, emotional or spiritual – because we're too scared of change, even if it's change for good?

I couldn't answer these questions, but I needed to make a choice. Would I opt for the comforting familiarity of pain and fatigue, and the person I had become; or would I take a punt on the mysterious promise of naturopathic healing and all that might unfold?

A day or two later, I grit my teeth and went shopping, stocking up on nuts, corn cakes and vegetables. At the time of writing, I've been on the program for a week and am already feeling a little better: like a crippled man throwing away his crutches, I have hurled the anti-inflammatories into the deep recesses of the medicine cabinet and am running up and down the stairs again.

As a child, I longed for Jesus to cure all my ills. Now I wonder if the Great Healer is to be found in an uncanny iridologist nicknamed the Witch Doctor. He looked into my eyes and perceived my pain, both physical and emotional; he saw me as an integrated whole. It is possible that what was promised has come, once again, to pass: I have encountered Christ in the stranger, and a very strange one at that.

(To those lovely people who first read this in Zadok and wrote to me about coeliac disease – put your minds at rest. I have had a gastroscopy and I do not have coeliac disease, just a nasty gluten intolerance.)