Calling of an Angl: Rene Caisse and Essiac Tea--13by Dr. Gary L. Glum
|
|
CHAPTER THIRTEENThe day after my meeting with Elmer and Edra Veitch, Mary took me to visit her friends, Ted and Iona Hale. Ordinarily they don't talk to people they don't know well about their experience with Essiac. I learned later that they haven't even told the oncologist who treated Iona Hale. But with Mary providing the entree, they had agreed to tell me their story. On a crisp autumn afternoon, Mary and I left Bracebridge and drove about 20 minutes into the country, through the beautiful Canadian plain country and past small farms. Just outside a village even smaller than Bracebridge, we turned onto a quiet street and parked in front of Ted and Iona's home, next to their big RV. The Hales came out to greet us. Ted's a muscular man in his 60s, a retired truck driver, with a square jaw and a thinning white head of hair. He s from a clan of pioneer types, one of those guys who's spent his life proudly helping to build the communities of the Canadian northwoods. When we visited, he was recovering from a stroke. Iona had worked hard taking care of him as he'd gradually gotten better and back on his feet again. She's a trim, nice-looking woman in her 60s, but she looks younger than her years. We went into their living room, a large, comfortable room with a spectacular view of the countryside. Ted sat in his lounge chair, Iona sat across the room from him, then she nodded to Ted and asked him to just go ahead and tell the story, his own way, in his own words. Ted had known about Rene Caisse and Essiac ever since he was a young man. He was working with a crew building a highway, for wages of $1.00 a day, and boarding at his sister's. "There was this Mrs. Graham, she used to like you to come in and play cards," Ted said. "She was sick. Dr. Bastedo of Bracebridge said that she had cancer, and if she didn't have an operation right away, she'd die within a couple of months time. She could only be up about an hour a day and she spent most of that hour laying on a couch." Ted and a friend of his named Tom told her that she should go down and try Nurse Caisse. They talked to her for quite a while trying to convince her, "Finally, she said, `Well, I can't drive a car. I can't go down there: "Tom said, `You don't need to drive a car. We'II drive you down, and we'11 help you in and back to the car and bring you home again and help you into the house: And she said, All right, I'll try it: "So we took her down. Her first treatment was around the first of March. We were finishing up the job on the road there about the end of March, and I saw her car go driving down the road. When she went inside again, I ran in and said, `You know we're going to Bracebridge tonight, right after supper.' And she said, `You boys don't have to take me down. I can drive myself down.' So she did. She drove herself down, got her treatments by her self. And that fall, she was out playing ball with the rest of us. She was out running around the bases and everything." Mary smiled in recognition at the story. "I think her name was Elsie Graham," she said. I asked Ted how long Elsie Graham lived. "Oh, for years after," he said. "She lived a long time after that," Mary said. "I don't know how long, but a long time." (A few months after this conversation, I was rummaging through Rene's files and came across a letter written in 1938 by Elsie Graham. "It gives me the greatest of pleasure to write this testimonial in favor of Miss Rene Caisse ", she began. Then she said that four doctors had told her she had cancer of the cervix. "I had to keep lying down most of the time & could not work. I could hardly sit in a car to go and get treatments," she wrote. But after four or five treatments by Rene, "I was able to drive my own car." She added: "I feel just fine. I haven't any pain, and as far as I know, I am cured. I have talked with hundreds of her patients at the clinic in Bracebridge who all claim to be helped by her treatments, many claiming to be cured. I feel sure Miss Caisse has got a cure for cancer. ") Ted knew of others from those days when Rene had her clinic, he said, and he mentioned some names: John McNee, Wilson Hammell, Jack Clinton. But then many years later, in 1977, Iona was diagnosed at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto as having cancer of the bowel. The doctors told Ted that Iona was going to die-and soon. "The specialist at Princess Margaret explained to me how sick my wife was. I told him, `You don't have to explain to me how sick my wife is. I know how sick she is.' He said, `She can't live only a couple of days. You realize she's not eating anything.' And I said, `Yes, I know that: He said, `She's just starving to death. She's got nothing left. She can't eat because she's full of cancer from the bottom of her stomach to the top.' "So I said, `Well, I'd like to know something. I've heard they're trying out this Essiac on a hundred patients here in Toronto, to test and see how well it works. This is the most likely place to have a hundred patients with cancer, so are they testing it in this hospital?' "He said, `What do you mean?' "I said, `Essiac. Nurse Caisse in Bracebridge, she got this treatment from some lady up north. I'd just like to know where they're testing that:" He said, `What do you call that?' "I said, `Essiac. Miss Caisse's treatment for cancer, in Bracebridge: "Oh, his face just went livid red. I never seen anybody turn red so quick. He started down the hall swearing something awful. He said, `That damned Essiac, that damned laetrile in Mexico, it's nothing but a fraud, there's nothing to it. It's nothing but quack medicine. She's just another one of those quacks: "I said, `What do you do for cancer patients here in this place?' "He said, `If you're so damned smart, you tell me.' "I said, All you're doing here is keeping cancer in suspension: And he left and I never saw him again. They gave Iona five radiation treatments and sent her home to die. They said that was all they could do for her. They couldn't do anything for her."
"They just gave me the radium treatments," Iona said, "hoping it would
take the pain out of this cancerous stone I had." "Well, I came home. You tell him," Iona said to Ted. Ted said that the ambulance brought Iona home and two or three days later his sister called with the phone number of a doctor in Bracebridge who could help them get in touch with Rene Caisse. So Ted made an appointment to see the doctor. "I told him what she was like and how she'd had an operation and had a tumor taken out of her stomach, that they'd found she had a type of cancer that would scatter fast, that she wouldn't live long at all. "After sitting there nearly an hour talking, why he pushed himself back in the chair and said, `There s no use of you getting Essiac for your wife. It won't help her.' He said, `I know a girl in north Bracebridge who just died of cancer. Essiac didn't help her one bit: "I said, `Listen, I don't want your advice. I just want to know where I can find Miss Caisse. You kept me sitting here for nearly an hour telling you all about my wife, and then you tell me it won't work. I didn't ask you if it would work. I asked you where Miss Caisse is living. I want to see her: "He said, `Well, I don't believe in it, but I'll take you to another doctor here who does believe. Come on with me:" So they went down the hall and Ted was introduced to another doctor. He told Ted that he couldn't put Iona on Essiac until after hed given her a thorough examination. Those were Miss Caisse's orders. And she had to have a written description of Iona s illness-type of cancer, what the surgery was, everything that had been done. Ted got their doctor to write up the description, had Iona taken by ambulance for the examination, and the doctor called Rene Caisse and told her that Ted was coming over with a prescription for Essiac. "I took this prescription up to her front door and gave it to Miss Caisse. She read everything over and said, `What did you have your wife operated on for?' I said, `They said she had a tumor of the stomach. They operated and took it out. My wife couldn't eat. She hadn't eaten for a month.' She said, `Oh, well.' And she just went and got the bottle of Essiac. She said, `Now hide this under your clothes. I don't want people to see you taking it out of here. Everybody around's watching me. I'm under threat of spending the last day of my life in jail if I'm caught giving this to anybody: "She told me how to give it to Iona: One ounce of the Essiac , measured out in an ounce shot glass, then pour it into another cup, then boil either distilled water or pure spring water-bring it right up to boil-then pour the boiling water in with the Essiac. She said that would cool it down pretty near to where Iona could drink it, and have her drink that the last thing before she's going to sleep at night. Don't have her eat anything for two hours before she takes it. Don't give her even a cup of coffee for two hours after she takes it." "I couldn't eat anything, anyway," Iona said. "So on the seventh day about 11:00, I said, `Iona, you haven't had any pain pills. Should I get you some?' She said, `No, I don't want the pain pills. I don't need them anymore. I have no pain: And I said, Are you sure?' And she said, `Yes. I have no pain. I don't want any more pain pills. Just throw them away: She'd been taking so many of them that the doctor refused to increase her amount." "The next morning," Iona said, "I woke you up about four o'clock in the morning and said, `I'm so hungry:" They both laughed, enjoying their memory of that wonderful moment. "In the evening," Ted said, "you asked for a small bowl of cornflakes. Then I got her a cup of coffee and she kept it down. Before that, everything she'd eat, it'd just fly right back on her. And then she went to the bathroom all by herself. Then her bowels kept moving freely after that." "I was down to 75 pounds when I got to where I could get on the scales," Iona said. I asked her what she had weighed initially. "A hundred and fifty." "So about a month after they operated on her," Ted said, "her incision broke open and this cancer stone started to go soft and it drained out. It just kept draining out and draining out." "All that day," Iona said, "I didn't want to do anything but walk. I just kept walking. I felt as though I wanted to keep going. Then I went to bed and I thought, humm, my stomach feels awful funny tonight, all soft, and I woke up about midnight soaking wet, and there was this awful smell. I thought, what's going on here? Finally, that thing moved and it was just the worst stuff you ever saw It drained out." "A cup full came out that night," Ted said. "The doctor came down the next morning," Iona said, "and called it a miracle. They took me back to the hospital and wondered whether they had to open me up again to see if there was any more to drain out of me. But it was all out, I guess." I asked Iona if she immediately felt better afterward. "Uh-huh." And that was ten years ago? "Uh-huh." I asked Iona how her personal experience left her feeling about Essiac. "Great!" she said emphatically. "I'd recommend it to anybody." I told Iona that I wanted to make certain that I correctly understood the story I'd just heard: When she came home from the hospital, they told her that she still had cancer inside her and that she was, in fact, going to die from it. Correct? "Yeah." I asked her if they'd made that fact absolutely clear to her. "The nurse came in one day and said, `You know you're going to die, don't you?' I said, `No, I never even thought about it. I was so burned on anyway, I guess it didn't matter to me, but she often told me I was going to die." I asked her if she'd had a pathe report when she was diagnosed that came back saying malignancy.
"Yeah," Iona said in barely a whisper. "It was a tumor on the bowel." I asked specifically how long they gave her to live when she left the hospital. "They said about two days," Ted responded. I asked if they thought there was any hope at all. "No," Ted said, trying to control his emotions. He was on the verge of tears. "We didn't think there was any hope." "Nobody else around did either," Iona said. "I went in to see my doctor afterwards and he stood there and looked at me and said, `Well, here's my miracle woman: He couldn't believe it. This was in March. It was the first of January when I came home. So I wasn't supposed to be living. The doctor I'd had quite a bit, I spoke to him when I went in and he kept looking at me and looking at me and looking at me all the way to his office. When I went in, I said, `You didn't speak: He said, `I thought I was seeing a ghost. I didn't think I'd ever see you back here again." Not even realizing it might be a sensitive question, I asked Iona if the doctor had asked her if she'd taken any medicine he wasn't aware of that might have helped her to recover. "No!" she said loudly, rising up slightly out of her chair. It was-far and away-her most emotional reaction of the whole conversation. "And I never told him!" I was surprised. Surprised that the doctor hadn't been curious enough to ask and surprised that Iona wasn't beaming with pride as she explained to him that she had taken Essiac and passed the cancer out of her system. Why didn't she tell him? Iona took a moment to ease herself. She thought it over before she answered. "Because I was scared," she said. Then she tensed again: "I thought if I told him I was on Essiac, they might give me a needle, or do something to me that would bring it all back again." There was real fear in her voice. She'd made up her mind that she wasn't going to tamper with success-and she wasn't going to let anybody else tamper with it, either. "Oh, I wasn't going to tell them," she said. "I got a letter a couple of weeks ago wanting me to go down there for a checkup. I just wrote on the bottom: `I'm fine."' She laughed and Ted laughed. "And I sent it back to them " , she said. "No way. I didn't go down for all my checkups." I asked Iona when she had her last checkup. "I guess I went down, what? Three times, eh?" she said, looking over at Ted. "Three times," Ted said. "Last time we went down there I parked the car and ten minutes later, we were getting in and driving away My wife said, `No way I'm coming down here:" They both laughed again. "The doctor last time," Iona said, "he just looked at my stomach and said, humm, if you keep on in the sun, you're going to be as black as I am: Because I tan quick. That's all he said to me and I got dressed." "They kept sending her appointments, though," Ted said. "Oh, yes, oh, yes," Iona laughed. I asked Iona if she'd had any prior experience with Essiac. "Just what I'd heard Ted talking about. Even myself, I couldn't believe in it." Was there a shadow of doubt in her mind, I asked, that it was Essiac that caused the cancer to pass from her system? "I wasn't on anything, only the pain pills," she said. "That's all they were giving me. So it had to be the Essiac that brought me back, eh?" I asked her if she felt as good as she looked. "Certainly," she said. No hesitation. Did she ever talk to Rene Caisse? "I never met her." If Rene were alive today and Iona could talk to her, what would she say? "I'd be down on my knees, that's for sure," Iona responded instantly. "I didn't get to meet her because they didn't want too many people going into her house." Rene's friend Mary agreed. "Rene was pretty scared at that time," Mary said. "Everybody kept threatening her and phoning her. Imagine the pain she must have went through. She had one phone call where they said if she wouldn't tell them the formula, they'd beat it out of her. She said, `If you do that, you'll never find a thing. Just remember, it's not written down: Sometimes she'd call me and say, `What are you doing?" I'd say, `Nothing that matters, what do you want?' `Well, I wish you could come up here. I've had a call and there s somebody coming. I don't know who they are: I'd drop whatever I was doing and go. "I'd stay in her kitchen, rattling the pans like there might be four or five people out there." Mary laughed, remembering their little trick. "And she'd talk to whoever was there. Afterwards , she'd say, `I'm ashamed to call you, but I'm scared to death. If it's a person in need and wants to talk to me, I can't turn them away: She was that kind to people." The conversation wandered for a few minutes through reminiscences of the treacheries Rene faced from various doctors and researchers-and the ever-present threat of jail. Ted was fighting back tears again, as we talked of how fearful Rene must have been. He mentioned that on his third visit to her, she was so frightened that she initially refused to give him any Essiac. "She said, `I'm afraid to give you any. The police are watching my house: So I said, `Why be afraid to let me have a bottle to take home?' She said, `Because if they find that bottle on you, they'll take it off you and that'll be their proof to put me away:" But Ted was a desperate man at that point. He promised to hide the bottle in his clothes. Then he promised hed never tell anybody. Then he finally pulled his German Lugar out of his belt and said he'd use it if necessary. "She said, `You wouldn't use that: I said, `I would so: She got pretty scared then." She gave him the bottle and he hid it under his jacket, but nobody stopped him on the way home. As we joked with Ted about his excessive enthusiasm for protecting Rene, he mentioned that he got himself into hot water with her once. She was mad as hell at him. It was over money. "She wouldn't take any money for a bottle," Ted said. "She wouldrit take anybody's money. She wouldn't let you pay for it. So once when she went into the kitchen to get a bottle, I got out my purse and all I had in it was a $ 10 bill. I stuck it under a book on the desk and she brought the bottle out and gave it to me. "When I went for the second bottle, she sat in her chair talking to me for about ten minutes, wanting to know how Iona was and everything, and then she went into the kitchen for the bottle. I got my purse out again and took a $50 bill and slipped it under the book and put the book over it. "When I went for the third bottle, oh, boy, was she ever mad. Oh! I knocked on the door and she opened it and reached out and grabbed me by the front of the coat and yanked me right into the house. Slammed the door right after me. She said, `I've got a bone to pick with you.' I said, `What'd I do wrong? I haven't been talking to anybody.' She said, `No, you haven't done that. But you left a $50 bill here the last time you were in my house. That`s an insult. I don't take money for my Essiac: She said, `You've got to take it back: So she reached down alongside her big chair and got her purse. "I said, `Put it away. I won't take it: She said, `You've got to take it: I said, `No, I don't have to take it. You keep that. The next fellow who comes to the door, maybe he can't afford to pay for a bottle, so take some of that $50 and pay for his: She tucked it in her purse and put it on the floor and said, `Well, you put it that way, you can leave anything you like after this."' We all laughed.
Mary said: "Rene used to say that she'd have been rich if she'd ever got
what shed been promised, cars, money, anything she wanted. But you know
something? She got more from the poor people than the rich." Introduction I 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I 11 I 12 I 13 I 14 All of the events and characters depicted in this book are non-fictional
Disclaimer - The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
|
|
New information
on accessible
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
