A very personal experience set me on my path to becoming a patient advocate.

I am the widow of a brain tumor patient, Tim Fisher, who survived fifteen years post-diagnosis, and twelve years beyond his doctors’ prognoses. Both Tim and I felt that his extra years of life were due to some innovative treatments I found for him. Some of these treatments were nutrition-based; others were not.

The sad thing for us was that none of Tim’s doctors were at all interested in learning about these non-toxic treatments that had extended his life by so many years. It seemed to us that his doctors only wanted to use expensive (often toxic) pharmaceutical treatments. For the first few years of his illness, I thought very little about this. My only interest was in helping Tim.

Then, something happened that made me determined to spread the word about nontoxic, inexpensive treatments like those that were helping my husband, but that doctors weren’t aware of—and were, in fact, often openly hostile to.

In 2001, eleven years after his initial diagnosis, Tim had a recurrence of his brain tumor. After this surgery, his suture line wouldn’t heal. His doctors performed eight additional surgeries in eight months, attempting to make the skin on his head heal. Nothing worked. In fact, the repeated surgeries only made him much worse until, finally, he was bedbound, brain injured and paralyzed from all the surgical assaults on his body. I was frantic, and searched everywhere for answers. Finally, through an integrative doctor friend, I found an FDA-approved treatment—Silverlon— that worked literally overnight. I was delighted, and assumed his doctors would be, too.

But they weren’t. In fact, they weren’t even open to learning about Silverlon. Some of them were openly hostile. One doctor tried to convince me that it wasn’t my treatment that was healing Tim’s skin. When I asked him what he and the other doctors thought was healing his skin, he answered: “Vancomycin.” Incredulous, I reminded him that Tim had been on this intravenous antibiotic for six weeks. His answer: “Vancomycin is like that. It kicks in.” I was stunned. This was the “aha!” moment that changed my life and made me determined to become a patient advocate. I want to help others find effective treatments like Silverlon for life-threatening conditions— treatments their doctors probably won’t know about, and may not even want to learn about.

The reason this interaction was so troubling to me wasn’t only about Tim. Many brain tumor patients have non-healing, post-surgical suture lines, especially if— like Tim—their skin has been previously radiated. By NOT being open to learning about Silverlon, I felt (and still feel) that his doctors were dooming future patients to death, because, if a suture line never heals, the patient will eventually die.

Unsuccessful with Tim’s doctors, I set out to educate other doctors about Silverlon. I contacted the National Brain Tumor Foundation and offered to write a column for their newsletter about our experience with Silverlon. Since non-healing suture lines are common with brain tumor patients, they were eager to publish our story. Silverlon and Surgery: Our Search for Healing appeared as the winter, 2003 cover article. I was careful to include my contact information, hoping doctors would contact me. They didn’t.

But scores of patients’ family members did: “My brother [substitute sister, mother, father] is in the hospital. His/ her suture line won’t heal.” I contacted Argentum, the company that manufactured Silverlon, and convinced Dr. Bart Flick, the President and also the inventor, to provide Silverlon free of charge to any patients who called me. He agreed. However, not one of these patients’ doctors agreed to “let” the family members put the Silverlon on their relatives’ heads.

I was heartbroken. My “aha!” moment intensified. I decided that something really bad was going on in the world of conventional American medicine. I set out to find other treatments to write about that were also inexpensive, life-saving and non-toxic, and that stood the test of time—other treatments that doctors weren’t interested in learning about, in addition to Silverlon:

• Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) – used since the mid-1980s by Bernard Bihari, MD, to treat autoimmune diseases. Today it is used by tens of thousands of patients worldwide—patients with autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, lupus, Parkinson’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, and Crohn’s disease.
  
  
• Intravenous alpha lipoic acid – used since the mid-1970s by Burt Berkson, MD, to treat terminal liver disease, and since the mid-1990s (with oral LDN) to treat some cancers.
  
  
• The Ketogenic Diet – used since the 1920s at institutions like Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic to treat pediatric epilepsy. Today, thanks to one of the contributors to my book—Hollywood writer Jim Abrahams (“Airplane,” “Hot Shots”) – there are hundreds of hospitals worldwide that administer the diet.

I was (still am—and probably always will be) on a mission to educate the public about these treatments, and to discover other treatments like them.

Julia Schopick is the author of the awardwinning HONEST MEDICINE: Effective, Time-Tested, Inexpensive Treatments for Life- Threatening Diseases, and has appeared on over 100 radio shows. Through her writings and her blog, HonestMedicine.com, Julia empowers patients to make the best health choices for themselves and their loved ones by teaching them about little-known but promising treatments their doctors may not know about. Julia’s writings on health and medical topics have been featured in numerous publications, both print and online. She also coaches patients how to convince their doctors to prescribe a treatment they (i.e., the doctors) don’t know about. Julia enjoys making presentations to large and small groups, both in person and remotely, via Skype. Learn about her work at www.HonestMedicine.com. Contact her at: Julia@HonestMedicine.com.