Out of the Woods: Healing Lyme disease–Body, Mind & Spirit
A personal memoir of recovering from Lyme disease.
In the summer of 2000, Katina Makris was a homeopathic healer with a thriving New Hampshire practice, the author of a popular healthcare newspaper column, a loving wife and mother. Then, out of the blue, her health went south, fast.
Overnight, she became incapacitated by weakness, fatigue, brain fog and dizziness. Abruptly, she was incapable of earning a living or caring for her young family. Neither her own tried and true natural remedies nor a backup course of antibiotics did anything to stem her overwhelming symptoms. And nobody she consulted could figure out the cause.
Eventually, she was diagnosed with high levels of Epstein Barr Virus (EBV), and treatment for that offered some relief. But then her old symptoms—along with new ones—came crashing back even bigger than before.
Though doctors found nothing amiss except the EBV, she knew something was gravely wrong. Finally, in 2005, she found a savvy practitioner who recognized untreated chronic Lyme disease. He started her on the course to wellness.
“Out of the Woods: Healing Lyme Disease—Body, Mind, & Spirit” is her very personal memoir of those difficult years. At one point, she writes, “I (felt) stranded, literally and figuratively, deep in the woods, deep in the illness, deep in my loneliness.”
Makris and her doctor used alternative treatments like cat’s claw, homeopathics and a Rife machine to beat back the Lyme infection. She did not use antibiotics. Alas, she gives few specifics of her actual treatment protocol, which some readers will find disappointing.
As her health improves, she explores spiritual, intuitive healing, and the therapeutic benefits of artistic expression. “Lyme takes the physical, mental and emotional stuffing out of so many people and their caregivers,” she asserts. “Tending to the broken spirit is just as critical as mending the broken body.”
At the end of the book, she offers a “Nuts and Bolts” reference section, offering information about Lyme symptoms, testing, and a variety of treatment options.
Since this disease has turned my world upside down, I cannot easily refute what sounds ridiculous, but I do know that touting Rife machines isn't going to help us gain traction with the masses.
Hopefully someday Chronic Lyme will be recognized by the government to be the brutal disease that we in the community know it is. Then maybe proper funding will be given for comprehensive testing.
That is too bad, that the author didn't include specifics of her protocol. Although I have become increasingly convinced of the importance of tackling the emotional and spiritual aspects of healing, it would be very helpful to know all the details of what the author did to get her "out of the woods" with this intrepid disease.
Dear all.
I would like to clarify that as the author of OUT OF THE WOODS, I purposely wrote this book to offer hope that full recovery from chronic Lyme is possible even when bedridden for years as I was. I do share many details of the herbs, supplements, homeopathy and more that helped me heal. In fact lengthy chapters are devoted to specifically educating the reader on these established healing discilpines. As a natural health care practitoner of 27 yrs I have much to elucidate on such topics.
I feel that mending the emotional and spiritual ravages of Lyme are just as essential as mending the body. For this very reason I devote 7 in depth chapters in the book on the intimacies of the profound spiritual healing work I benefited so greatly from at The Stillpoint School. Plus a full chapeter to Metaphysical healing.
Out of the woods is not a cookbook manual of a get well recipe. It is a profound and touching journey to the soul center of Lyme- a place too many of us have ventured to. But, like Persephone, I emerged back to the light of living, with a skillset of encouragement for readers.
I do believe you will be touched by its message.
Blessings to all.
Katina Makris, CCH,CIH