The Homeopath

I was 31; married to a devoted husband, mother to an adorable toddler, we had recently moved from New York City where I had spent 7 years training as an opera singer, to my husband's home town of Vancouver.  We were building a house in West Vancouver and living with my in-laws during the construction.  Outwardly everything had the appearance of a charmed life when I began to experience episodes of excruciating pains shooting through the right side of my face.  This was the beginning of a 16 year ordeal of despair, discovery and healing from a torturous condition called Trigeminal Neuralgia.

Meet James Pannozzi, 62, of Sarasota, Florida.  During his 32 year career as a software developer in open source projects, data communications and annuities, one family member after another began to succumb to a strange, undiagnosed and eventually fatal illness.  This mysterious malaise, which began to affect him as well, led to an investigation of all manner of conventional and alternative medicine.  Driven to find a solution to the chronic and debilitating symptoms, he studied medical books and other health references in his quest for answers.  Using Google Book Search to investigate older homeopathy books, he fully expected to agree on it being the irrational, unscientific hogwash the continual stream of medical journal and newspaper articles claimed it was.  In fact it was the very proliferation of articles against it that brought it to his attention in the first place.  He says “I originally was skeptical, but what alerted me that there might be more to homeopathy was the strident and quite unreasonable level of innuendo and misrepresentation against it.  Why would something nonsensical require literally hundreds of magazine, newspaper and

If there is a motto I’m hoping to follow this month, it’s “Presence for the Holidays.”  Note that this is “presence” rather than “presents” as the latter often reduces my experience of loved ones to a list of gifts I need to purchase rather than really seeing and being with them. And while I love the excitement of anticipation in early December, often the actual holiday experience has been more of a frantic dash to the post-New Year’s finish line, followed with a huge sigh of relief.   Potential moments of love, joy and sharing back there were plowed through like discarded wrapping paper.

 While feeling calm and present isn’t too hard to do right now, that familiar whirlwind is all too easy to get caught up in.  So now is the time to get all the helping strategies in place to stay present and experience family, friends and traditions in a fresh and inspirational way.  This year when New Year’s has come and gone, instead of giving thanks that I survived, I want to be thankful for true gifts of the season – heart-felt sharing in celebration and love.

Lately, homeopathy has been getting a beating from various “quack-busters” and “independent” researchers, many of whom have hidden financial ties to pharmaceutical companies.  Those who scoff at homeopathy as being nothing more than sugar pills or placebo assert that homeopathy cannot be “proven” on the basis of randomized, controlled trials (RCT’s), the current “gold standard” of pharmaceutical drug testing. While this is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, nevertheless some current, documented scientific research does exist to back up the positive results thousands of people have experienced from homeopathy during its 200+ year history.

We are lucky to live in a time where clicking just a few keys allows access to many websites, including scientific journals and scholarly publications.  And despite the slippery slope of assessing the quality and bias that exist even within RCT’s, enough positive results show that even here, homeopathy emerges as more than mere placebo.