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In Reply to: Re: Incredible posted by exfamchild on June 18, 2002 at 10:57:44:
I am very glad for you that you found a way to treat the psoriasis.
To be honest, one of the things that always appalled me and bothered me no end in the F was the incredible IGNORANCE and 'belief' in worshipping religious ignorance. I got in trouble many times because I would just speak up and was put in my place for being 'unspiritual.'After all, I did not even come from a born again background," I came from a "heathen secular background, so everything was stacked against me. :)
I mean, just because you get saved and become a Christian does not mean you cannot use your brain and research medical conditions. It did not matter if I got blue in the face - most F members could not get that.
I was the one who wrote Berg when we went to India and asked about malaria prevention medication. I was given an answer published in A's to your Q's like, "well, we always lived in the tropics when I was young in Fla and we always trusted the Lord, blah blah." I gasped then.
HOW STUPID of me to write HIM for such a thing, but then I was hoping to establish some sort of precedent for the medication policy. Well, guess what, I DID get malaria because the area we were in was so infested 50% of ALL medical cases were cases of malaria. I almost died of malaria in India and I was ONLY 21 then. It was scary and it was incredibly traumatic.
In the home I was in when I had a recurrence a year later (malaria keeps recurring) it was like the Inquisition. They were 'against' medication, in fact they were 'against malaria' (guess they figured if you were "spiritual" an infected mosquito would not bite YOU) and threatened to put me and my family then (2 little kids and me 7 months pregnant) in the STREET, IF it turned out I had malaria.
Well, I never understood why the doctor's test (ordered by the shepherds of the home) came back negative, since I knew it was malaria - the symptoms are unmistakable - My then husband came back from the Doctor's office with a negative test and gave me chloroquine shots privately in our bedroom. (I had fever past 104 and was 7 months pregnant)
LATER, years later, he told me he had bribed the Indian doctor and told him he just could not receive a 'positive' test. He did not even tell me because he realized it was an absolutely do or die situation.
I want to add that this home I was in at the time was the home Indian Teresa (Joy) was in. She had recurrent malaria and ultimately died at only 18 years of age because she refused to take medication after joining the Family. Poor girl. She even made it in the LWG hall of fame. I thought it was so disgusting.
Also, years later I got a letter from an Australian member who had been with me in the home when I had malaria. Months after we had left the area her young son got very ill with what she detected was malaria because she remembered my case. She remembered what happened to me and 'smuggled' some malaria medication that she was giving to him SECRETLY, in FEAR, because she knew it was a life threatening condition and she also knew she could not tell the people in the home. She wrote me she put the pills in a vitamin bottle to be able to 'get away with it.' She was thankful at least she was able to know how to help her son because of my story.
I have no words, when all of this comes to mind now. I am utterly at a loss when I think of the abuse all the ignorance fostered. Maybe we could open up a thread on MEDICAL abuse to add to the sexual abuse. Some people DIED. And just like with some battered women, I still think it took me way too long to get out. If I had only had some parents or a place to go back to I would have done so many times.
