Jane Pikett meets a young woman whose health was restored by healing
Should you want an example of the power of belief - in its most destructive and constructive forms - talk to Ailsa Marsh. She will tell you her disturbing story of how, as a talented, fit and healthy student at Durham University, she was struck down by an illness which baffled scores of doctors and specialists and condemned her to spend six years housebound, in searing pain throughout her body and, basically, unable to function. It was so bad, she wished more than once she were dead.
Most of us have heard of ME, sometimes known as chronic fatigue syndrome, but it is rare for people to suffer it so severely, or so painfully, as Ailsa did until just a few months ago. She is now well after a course of spiritual healing which made her face up to what may have been the cause of her illness - the conviction that she wasn't as good, as bright or clever, as those around her. It seems that self-imposed pressure and stress made her body shut down on her.
Today, Ailsa is a healthy 27-year-old. She has bought a flat and is looking forward to at last moving out of her parents' home, where she first retreated six years ago in the grip of a mystifying condition which was later diagnosed as ME. "I can go out to lunch, I can go shopping and soon I will move into my flat. I can even go out into the garden and enjoy it," she says. "Yet I had got to the stage that I thought I would never be normal again."
Rewind to last Christmas and Ailsa was in pain all over her body, to the extent that she couldn't bear to be touched, to lie or sit down, to do anything, basically. She was, quite literally, climbing the walls. "I was screaming - literally screaming - with pain for 47 and a half hours out of every 48, over and over, continually from September last year until January this year," she says. "I was desperate to escape from it all." ME is widely described as a chronic and debilitating fatigue syndrome. However, Ailsa had an extremely rare form which also caused extreme pain. Over the years she went to endless doctors and specialists - most of whom knew less about the condition than she did. She was at times treated as a malingerer, yet this was a girl who had worked extremely hard throughout school and had great ambitions.
However, the healing which has brought Ailsa relief has also shown her that her relentless drive to succeed may have been at the root of her health problems."I was obsessed with doing well at school," she says. "It was a school where we were pushed to be excellent and my friends were extremely clever. I never, ever thought I measured up to them. I was clever enough, yes, but I had to work extremely hard for that. I never thought I was as clever as everyone else."
After six months of treatment from spiritual healer David L. Cunningham, Ailsa now understands that her then-desperate battle to be as 'good' as the geniuses she was surrounded by may have caused a kind of 'shut down' within her. This state of "dis-ease" or disharmony caused a disease which left her unable to function. What better way for her body to deal with the stress she was putting herself under than give itself something else - apart from studying and exams - to tackle?
It all began when Ailsa was 20 and suffered a bad bout of glandular fever. As so often happens, the symptoms hung around and kept recurring, but more severely than is usual. Things just got worse from there. "I remember the university doctor telling me I needed to buck up and buckle down," she says, crying at the memory. "He just thought I was malingering. I couldn't believe it. I was in so much pain, I felt so ill, and he thought I was a skiver. If I hadn't been so ill I'd have attacked him. As it was, I just collapsed in a heap."
Her degree course in philosophy and politics was deferred for a year, and then for another, by which stage Ailsa was so deeply in the grip of the ME that going back to university was about as likely as going to the Moon. She couldn't stand strong light and would have to lie down - when it wasn't too painful to lie down, that is - in a dark room all the time. She was in constant pain all over her body, most excruciatingly in her head, neck and shoulders. It was hard to make the slightest movement, she was in constant distress and in a constant state of painfully heightened senses - hence her extreme sensitivity to light and to the slightest touch. She saw doctor after doctor, stayed in hospitals nationwide, and took many different drugs. Nothing helped."
It was like having my head in a vice," she says. "I was spending most days in bed in the dark. A brain scan came back clear and I was given the impression by doctors that I was a time waster. I didn't know where to turn. For the first half of 2000 I couldn't get out of bed at all. If anyone spoke to me quietly it felt as if they were screaming at me. Light and sound were torture."
In mid-2000 she was in the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle for two months, where still nothing worked. From then until the start of September 2003, she stayed at home. She simply went nowhere. "The pinnacle of my ambition then was getting through the day and through the pain," she says. "All my friends were moving and getting jobs and I was just stuck. Any restful activity - watching TV, having a bath, reading, aggravated it. I was in agony and I didn't know why."
Then, in early 2003, the family heard of a hospital in Hemel Hempstead which specialised in ME and Ailsa had three two-week stays there. Her treatment there brought a slight relief - but in September she crashed dramatically, beginning her most agonising five months. Ailsa felt like she was being tortured. She never had a good day, she never had any respite. The pain was worse than it had ever been and she reached her lowest point. Even lying on her bed in a darkened room was torture. "I felt suicidal one day and the only reason I didn't do anything about it was that I didn't have the strength to go into the kitchen and get a knife," says Ailsa, for whom the memory is still raw and highly emotional. Then, in mid-January this year, at the end of her tether, Ailsa went to see spiritual healer David L Cunningham. It was to prove to be the beginning of the end of her illness - an illness which had beaten all the drugs the specialists had thrown at it.
"After the first session the pain in my shoulders just went, just like that," she says. "I still had other pain, but that particular area eased completely. As the weeks went by, the improvement continued and, in addition, my way of looking at things totally changed.
"Before the ME, I just worked so very, very hard, but at the same time I would always put obstacles in my way. I got fantastic grades, but was always looking to the next thing I had to achieve. In my first year at university I was already thinking about how hard I was going to have to work to go on to do an MA, a Phd. My boyfriend was verging on genius, my friends were hugely bright. I put all this stress on myself to be like them. It was ridiculous. I have learned through healing to stop thinking like that.
"I was putting myself under so much stress that my body broke down. Now I have re-evaluated everything. I had spent years beating myself up, because I always wanted to be better, cleverer. It just seemed that all my friends were so fantastically able and I was killing myself to be half as good as them. I got great grades, but thought I wasn't really that bright because I had to work so hard. Now I know that being horrible to yourself and being pessimistic is not the way to live." Now free of ME and self-imposed stress, Ailsa is amazed by what she can get out of life. "I can walk from one end of Newcastle to the other. I can go out to lunch. I can telephone my friends for hours," she says, amazed that these everyday activities are open to her. "I'm able to be independent and I'm looking for a part-time job. I've even signed up for classes in Tai Chi and stained glass windows for beginners, just for fun. I can go outside and appreciate the colours of the world. None of this would have been possible before."
What is also interesting is that these everyday things weren't important to Ailsa before her illness, because her priorities were so skewed. "I can now go to the beach and watch the waves, I can go and wander round the MetroCentre with my mum, I can sit in the garden. But before my illness I didn't do those things as much as I should, because I was always worrying about things, about my work, about trying to be as fantastically bright as everyone else. Now I would never, ever go back to university. I was your average pessimist and imposed all that stress and negative feelings on me. I looked on the black side of everything.
"Now, all I see is joy and colour in everything. I don't want to sound wacky, but there has been a miracle here."
Source: North East Exclusive Magazine (November 2004)