I am writing to you to tell you how I am doing since I have had my last treatment with you. If you will remember I came to you when I had given up on medicine to help my lower back problem. I told you that I had a pain that started in my lower back that continued down my left leg all the way to my heal. Sitting hurt the most and when I drove my car I would have to pull over frequently to get out and walk around before I could get back in and continue on. The location of the pain was not consistent. Sometimes I would hurt down my right leg, and sometimes only my lower back hurt. Attempts to be treated by other doctors failed because I couldn't pin point the exact place that hurt. It was a general pain from my back to my foot, but it didn't affect my flexibility.

At that time I was 36 years old. I had been in pain for almost two years. I had been a cabinet installer for 5 years before my back started hurting and I had to quit installing. My family was ready for me to get better too. I'm sure you know that when mom hurts too much to take the kids to the park or a movie or anything else including making dinner, it makes life kind of tough. It's hard to be happy when you hurt all the time. Everyone in the house was affected by my pain. I was taking three Advil every four hours for months at a time just to manage through the day.

I tried chiropractic three times a week for 10 months but that didn't help at all. I had seen other doctors that told me to take Advil like I was already doing and to not do anything that was at all physical. I went to three orthopedic physicians who all gave me different instructions, try this try that, and nothing helped.

One suggestion was that my x-rays showed nothing wrong, so there was nothing wrong. He said he wouldn't prescribe an MRI because it was too expensive and he didn't think it would show anything wrong. He did prescribe physical therapy. I didn't think that was the right thing to do yet.

So I went to another doctor who said there might be something wrong that could be treated with surgery, but I wasn't interested in jumping into surgery as my first choice so he told me that If I wasn't going to have surgery there was no reason to have an MRI to see what might be wrong.

There was one doctor who told me he saw nothing in my x-rays so he explained to me that "you know when you get older there are some aches and pains that come with age". I left him with the message that I was just a whinny girl. He didn't want an MRI, because of the expense, if I wasn't going to have surgery. He also prescribed physical therapy. This time I went to physical therapy for three months and I loved the exercise but I felt no better and had racked up a bill totaling $1,383.00 and my insurance only covered the first $500.00. By this time I had spent well over one thousand dollars in doctor bills which were not covered at all or only partially.

In May of 1993 I tried acupuncture, I never thought I would do that. I had been training in karate since 1990- and although all the doctors I had seen told me to quit karate, I would not. I had given up almost everything else fun in my life, I was not going to give that up too. I had worked too hard for too long. I went to the acupuncturist not thinking that he would heal my problem but to just make it stop hurting long enough that I could take my black belt test. It only took three visits before he told me that acupuncture was not going to help.

That is when I met you. After you examined me you predicted that I had something wrong in my L4-5 (lower back). I didn't know what that meant but you said you wanted an MRI taken to make sure. In June 1993 I had an MRI taken that concluded there was "moderate left paracentral L4-5 disc herniation". That still didn't mean anything to me. But it did to you. We had already started my Balneotherapy with the healing botanicals when we received the findings of the MRI so we stayed on course with the treatments.

I remember that you also told me that I should give up karate. And I'm sure you remember that I told you that I wouldn't. That black belt meant too much to me to stop and I knew I could get it with the improvement I was feeling. I'm sure that if I wasn't training for the black belt while I was going through my treatments I would have healed faster than I did. You suggested that if I wouldn't quit, that I get a belt for my back so that I had less chance of adding to the injury. I did and it made me more confident when I trained.

I started my treatments in early June and my test was to be in September. I probably had five treatments when in July I left to drive to a family reunion in Ohio. When I got back I had another five or six before my pre test. I failed my pre test. The next chance to take my test was four months later.

In January 1994 I took my pre-test and this time I passed. I wouldn't say that I was pain free but I passed. So I took my test one week later and I passed that too. That was only the beginning of a year which it takes to be a black belt. After one year we have to test again to confirm our belt and get a certificate that says that you hold the rank of black belt. I trained for another year and took another test in January 1995 and I passed. I now have my certificate.

My lower back has been pain free for over a year now. If I had never met you, I'm not sure I would be able to say that I am a black belt. I was getting nowhere with the several doctors that I had seen or the pills and therapies they prescribed. And If I had quit karate when they told me to I don't know if I would have ever felt ready to go back when and if I ever did get better.

I want to tell you that I believe the balneotherapy treatments with your healing botanicals was the best medical decision I have made.