My problem started back in the middle seventies. I was working for a computer firm, and when I went for my annual physical checkup the doctor told me that the blood test had revealed traces of rheumatoid arthritis. I hadn’t noticed any symptoms that would have made me suspect there was anything seriously wrong; in fact, the only unusual thing I could recall was minor—a slight tingling or numbness occasionally at the ends of my fingers—but no pain and no stiffness. The doctor took the blood test seriously, however, and sent me over to George Washington University Hospital.
The tests were repeated at the hospital, the new doctor confirmed the signs of arthritis, and I was given some pills and sent home. The pills were Naprosyn, an anti-inflammatory analgesic, which I was to take just a couple of times a week. I followed the hospital’s directions for the next couple of years, and everything seemed to be fine.
One night I was sitting at my desk at home, studying for my work; I had to concentrate hard on learning about changes in my field of employment, which seemed to occur almost daily. Moreover, I was under a lot of family stress at the time. As I idly scratched my head during the study session that particular evening, I felt something sticky and, when I withdrew my hand, discovered blood on my fingers. In looking at the mirror a moment later, I saw that I had scratched a small hole in my scalp. I was annoyed with myself, but not at all alarmed. I interpreted the event as an indicator of the stress I was under, and nothing more.
After a few days, the hair around the lesion still had not started to grow back and I became concerned. I made an appointment with a dermatologist at Howard University Hospital and was given some salve, Lindex ointment, to help restore the hair. The doctor didn’t exaggerate the problem of a small, self-inflicted scratch on my head, but he was more concerned with why it had happened so easily and why the hair had not come back on its own. He asked me about my medical history, and I told him about the rheumatoid arthritis. As soon as he heard that, he sent me over to see their rheumatologist.
The rheumatologist did some more tests, and the next day he called me and said, “Williams, you have lupus.” He had me come back in, prescribed some medication, and the next day I was extremely sick. I decided it was time for me to head back to George Washington Hospital to talk with the doctor who had diagnosed my arthritis two years earlier.
Back at GW, my original doctor ran the standard tests again and told me I did not have lupus, but that my skin problem was related to the arthritis and it was time to change my treatment. He increased the amount of Naprosyn to twice the dosage, now taken three times every day. The condition quickly began to get worse. I saw swelling in my ankles and wrists, nodules came up on my elbow and wrist, and I started to become very stiff. He saw that the original medicine wasn’t doing the job, so he decided to put me on gold.
The gold treatment consisted of fifty milligrams injected in my muscles every week. Each time I went over for the shot, they gave me blood and urine tests beforehand to make sure I wasn’t having a reaction. The treatment was very costly—something in the neighborhood of $140 every week, plus the time away from my job. The plan was that I would take the shots weekly for about three months, then it would be every other week for a while, and then eventually every month. But after about the tenth week I had deteriorated so badly that when I went in for my weekly shot they gave me a cane.
Things continued to go downhill. Over the next few years, my ankles became so badly swollen the doctor began talking to me about a wheelchair. I had nodules on both elbows, and was in a lot of pain. I stayed on the gold but moved from one anti-inflammatory medication to another, staying with each one until I developed the inevitable reaction, then moving on to something else in the same family.
Friends told me about different things they had heard of that were supposed to help arthritis, and in particular I began to be careful about what I ate. I eliminated chocolate, processed meats that contained a lot of animal fats and gristle like hot dogs and bologna, sugar—I kept hearing about new things to avoid, and I’d cut them out of my life. None of this seemed to have any impact whatsoever, and I kept looking for something new, something that might help me.
And that’s how I happened to be looking through the paper one day when I saw a story about a gorilla. The gorilla had serious arthritis, and a doctor at the National Hospital had cured him. I thought to myself, “If this Dr. Brown can do that for a gorilla, I should think he could do something for me.” So I picked up the telephone.
The lady who answered at the Arthritis Clinic told me there was a waiting list of somewhere around six months. I thanked her, and hung up. I’m a salesman, and I know how to get past the receptionist in just about any organization I’ve ever seen, so I called again at a few minutes past five, and Dr. Brown himself answered the telephone. When I finished talking with him, he told me to come in the next day.
I think the thing that decided him was hearing that I was on gold. He told me he was very much opposed to gold, and that he could help me with the arthritis. He outlined in very exact detail what he planned to do for me, and then afterward he gave me a written copy of everything he had said. I told him I wanted to think it over, but that I’d let him know in a few days.
My next stop was George Washington Hospital, where I showed Dr. Brown’s paper to the rheumatologist who had been treating me from the onset of the disease. He looked at Dr. Brown’s plan for a moment or two, and a little smile came to his face. He told me he knew Dr. Brown, and that he liked him a lot and respected him. He also said he knew of Dr. Brown’s theory. He made it clear to me that he did not personally oppose the theory, but he said the problem was that it had not been proven. Finally, he said, “Something tells me you’re going to try Dr. Brown’s treatment anyway, Mr. Williams, regardless of whatever I might tell you.”
I tried to analyze what it all meant. There was nothing mean or disparaging in anything the doctor said; in fact, the tone was positive and friendly, and I felt a little bit as though I had discovered a secret which the doctor already knew but still couldn’t acknowledge. I decided that was my answer, so I said, “I’m going to give Dr. Brown’s treatment a trial of six months. But if it gets me into trouble and I have a lot of pain, I want you to promise that you’ll take me back as a patient. And by the same token, if it seems that after six months I’m getting better, I want you to do a full series of tests and take X rays so you can tell me if the improvement is real or imaginary.”
The doctor agreed, and we parted on good terms.
I went over to the Arthritis Clinic and started Dr. Brown’s treatment. There were no injections; everything was oral. I expected the results to take a long time to show, but within no more than three weeks the improvement was astonishing. The swelling started to go down, I was able to move around without hobbling, I got rid of the cane, and I felt better than I had felt in years.
What also happened was that my medical expenses dropped from $140 a week, which is what I had been paying for the dangerous drugs that didn’t work, to about $35 a month for safe medicine that did. I’ve had a long time to think about why the medical establishment refuses to accept Dr. Brown’s proof, and I have to admit that those numbers keep coming to mind as an important part of the answer. Rheumatoid arthritis is a big, big business.
I’ve been in treatment with Dr. Brown for the past four years. The pain has disappeared, my spirits have risen, and the swelling that threatened to put me in a wheelchair is now so minor and infrequent that I have no sign of it for as long as a year at a time. I have started my own company in the computer business, something I could never have done in my previous condition.
I wasn’t the only one to make a career change. Before the agreed-upon six months were up, I got a letter from my original doctor. It said an opportunity had come along and he was moving to another city. I have since learned that he is no longer practicing as a rheumatologist, and is now a pediatrician.