Chapter Eight  
 Diagnosed

I wasn’t old. Thirty-three. My face and smooth skin made me appear even younger. But I wasn’t well. The years of standing, the fumes from chemicals in closed quarters, the enduring stress caused by bills and personal issues. They all had taken their toll. This is what I thought.

 I had a vague but lingering pain in my abdomen. There were frequent severe migraine headaches. And I was always tired and tense.

Nas knew I was sick. She had heard me talking about it with customers, and she was greatly concerned. She let me know she was aware of my illness while we were discussing how to sew in a weave on a clients head. Such discussions are a special joy for us, especially when together we create a new haircut or style. I respect Nas’s sense of design and style, and I enjoy passing my skills on to her.

I returned to my doctor’s office for test results. “You have cervical cancer.”  My eyes began tearing, I was fearful. I thought back to the discomfort I used to feel when I was still having relations with my husband.

The doctor began discussing a hysterectomy. I didn’t understand what he was talking about, so without any response I got dressed and left the examination room. I told Dr. Corson, who had delivered my son, “I’ll be in touch.”

I made an appointment to see a different specialist, Dr. Salerno, at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. He told me I should have a partial hysterectomy, quite different from the full hysterectomy recommended by Dr. Corson.

While driving home, I thought about my mother cautioning me and complaining often about the fumes from chemical products that were clogging my sinuses. My throat was often irritated, and I suffered from migraine headaches. Over the next few weeks, I read and questioned my clients about hysterectomies. I still wanted another opinion. My friend Janet told me about a place she had heard about, Clymer Healing Center in Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

People visited the Clymer Center for treatment from all over the world. It is a naturopathic health center that treats patients holistically. At that time, it had a living facility, health store, and a restaurant on the premises. At my first appointment, Dr. Mikus told me they could help me by first changing my diet. And I had to believe I could be healed. 

I was examined with a laser light. There was erosion in my cervix area. Next to the breast, this area is the most common site of organ cancer, and it is from this area that samples are taken for the well-known Pap (Papanicolaou) test.

Dr. Poesnecker says that during childbirth, the cervix must dilate from a couple of millimeters in diameter to the size of a newborn’s head, typically a hundred millimeters or more.  Shortly after the passage of the child, the cervix must return to its shape and condition before this dilation. Often in this process, small portions of the inner tissue are left exposed and are subject to the various effects of the environment of the vaginal canal. These tissues, bereft of natural defenses, tend to break down and form a type of lesion known as cervical erosion—cervical dysphasia. A common complication of this difficulty comes from the use of the “pill.”  Oral contraceptives often cause an imbalance, breaking down the normal tissues in the cervix.  This not only causes a certain form of cervical erosion, but also often causes a cystic degeneration of the cervix. 

The doctor rolled up some cotton into the shape of a tampon. He dipped it into a homeopathic solution, a part of which was geranium. He inserted the cotton into my cervical area where it had to remain for twenty-four hours.

After removing the cotton, I sat in the bathtub and douched with lactic acid. In a healthy cervix, bacilli produce lactic acid. That activity maintains the necessary acidity to keep the vaginal tract clean and normal.

When I first douched, black tissue came out of me! This stuff was really working. Curious, I picked up the pieces of tissue and placed them on the side of the tub to examine it. It was my flesh—corroded.

My first treatment cost me twenty-eight dollars. Believe it or not, twenty-eight dollars! Not the five thousand dollars it would have cost for a hysterectomy.

It was about two weeks before I received my next treatment. As the doctors instructed, I began eating healthier, juicing everything, no red meat, no sugar or junk foods, no juice with artificial coloring. I just ate veggies and took homeopathic solutions, herbs and natural supplements. Also, I didn’t use shampoo or conditioners with the artificial dyes. These can be absorbed into the system through the skin pores.

After about three months, I returned to my gynecologist for a follow-up Pap smear test— and the results were negative.

“Where did you go, to the Clymer Healing Center?” my doctor asked.

“Yes, how did you know?”

“Well, it’s a trauma center for women.” It seems his attitude was that a place like the Clymer center was an unconventional last resort for desperate women. My view is that a doctor offering holistic treatment should be a woman’s first stop.

That was the last time I saw that gynecologist. I believe in holistic healing. I have continued going to the Clymer Healing Center. Stephanie and I travel to Quakertown once a month to see Dr. Neville.  Dr. Poesnecker and Dr. Mikus, the doctors who treated me initially, both died a year apart in their late eighties. My guess is that they died of old age—not from disease.

During my treatments I recorded in my journal all of the herbal supplements I was taking. This is when I began thinking about how I wanted to incorporate them into a product line to formulate Aginah’s Herbal Hair Products.

At the time, one of my clients, a regional manager for the Nature’s Sunshine Company, recommended that I should begin taking the brand of herbs and vitamins that she sold; and I did.  I also began selling over seven hundred dollars a month to my customers. She asked if I wanted to become a manager for the company so I could earn a higher monthly percentage.  I tried managing for about six months. Too much paperwork was involved and doing hair long hours didn’t allot me the time.  Actually, all I wanted to do was do hair.

I continued selling herbs as a Nature’s Sunshine distributor.  Everyone began taking HSNW (hair, skin and nails), Garlic with Cayenne, Kelp and Cascara Sagrada—to cleanse the blood and the colon, to enhance blood circulation and, ultimately, to promote the growth of strong and healthy hair.

In 1985 I coined the slogan “working from the inside out”—making the point that hair is fed by your blood stream. The quality of your blood which feeds your hair depends on your nutrition. Natural ingredients from the refrigerator were incorporated into my hair services in 1978, now Gods Herbs. Today I think of myself as a Holistic Hair Health Educator. I do hair not only as a livelihood but also as a service to the community. And I seek opportunities to teach about the holistic approach to healthy hair.

Having made it through the darkness and being grateful for the lessons I’ve learned, I find myself armed with and strengthened by homeopathic solutions, herbs, and natural supplements. They each possess some form of healing. I am the Captain of my “Health Ship.”

Natural Therapy of Gynecologic Problems in Poesnecker, Gerald E. It's Only Natural. Quakertown, PA. (Humanitarian Publishing Company), revised 1996.