The journey begins

First, a brief report - 38 and overcast. Midges could be out, but if not, a rubberlegs with a tungsten bead head pheasant tail trailer always works for me. I'll fish dries first, but it never breaks my heart to nymph.

OK, back to it.

I thought I'd describe our experience at an alternative health clinic in Tijuana. I expect this to take multiple posts, so if you don't see what you want, check back.

I decided to describe our experience because I had some problems finding decent information on the web about this type of medicine. Perhaps describing our experience might help others if they want to pursue this approach.

Our young adult son has been feeling very ill for some years now. He's put on weight, has circles under his eyes that make him look like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family, has skin so dry it cracks, frequently throws up, has severe stomach pains and has "intestinal problems". We've seen it firsthand. It's tough to see someone this young hurt this bad. We felt he wasn't going to get better unless we could figure out a treatment regime.

He's been hospitalized for pancreatitis and has had his gall bladder removed. His physicians have told him he as a fatty liver. Sort of like remarking on the weather - "you have a fatty liver". One would normally expect that type of remark to be followed with some remedial recommendation, but one would be wrong in this case.

So, after a series of these experiences, we heard about a naturopath in Rexburg, ID, Destin Thayne. My wife knows someone whose grade school age daughter had stomach problems, severe enough that she had to stay home from school an entire year.

After going to doctors all over the region, including Children's Primary in Salt Lake, they decided to take her to Destin Thayne. Quick relief, back in school, problem mostly solved at this time.

Since all we care about is results, and mostly since we couldn't figure out where else to go, we decided to take our son so see this guy.

We went to his office and Destin had our son sit down in front of a computer screen with what looked like a mouse with metal strips where you'd put your fingers. After some small talk that had nothing to do with our son's health history, we told us he would run some tests.

The theory behind the tests is that small electrical impulses go through the electrodes and run through nerve endings that correspond to Chinese medicine. Oh the thoughts that ran through my mind. Wouldn't a slightly different placement of the hand on the electrodes skew the test? What about his whole Chinese thing anyway? If the Chinese had it figured out so well, how come Western medicine made such an impact on reducing disease in the 19th century? I'll just stop there.

Ignoring these and other inconveniently skeptical questions, Destin proceeded to ask questions and offer diagnoses. "Has anyone told you you have problems with your liver?" "Do you have joint pains?" "You don't sleep well at night, and when you do sleep, you don't sleep deeply, do you." "You have a toothache, on the bottom". Not a question, a statement. Our son, let's call him Bob, had just lost a filling and his tooth was indeed hurting. That particular diagnosis seemed to impress Bob the most, since his skepticism exceeded my own and nothing had been said about his teeth.

Skipping to the end. I asked Thayne how he got into this line of work. He said that he'd intended to go to medical school after graduating from BYU. He had lupus and claimed that a Dr Calzada in Tijuana had "cured" him of lupus. He further suggested we take Bob there, saying that Dr Calzada could do more in 5 days than he could do in 18 months.

Hmmm. So did that mean he had no answers for Bob and wanted to shuffle responsibility off to someone else who also couldn't help him? Did this "Dr Calzada" really have any answers? Did Thayne get some sort of referral fee for sending him to Tijuana? Tijuana? C'mon.

Thayne seemed like a nice, sincere young man. He claimed to receive no benefit for this referral, but said he said he really thought Dr Calzada could help.

We tried to research Dr Calzada on the web and frankly couldn't find much. At this point we decided to take a leap of faith and go see this guy. From our perspective, Bob hadn't received much help from traditional Western medicine. We couldn't see Bob living a long life, let alone a healthy life without some drastic improvement. So we decided to go.

In the next post, I'll address some of the logistics.