I get it. It’s early August. Most of us are on summer vacation now. It’s not the time to be bothered by “serious stuff.”

But sometimes, serious stuff won’t wait.

Here, we’re been dealing with escalating medical emergencies. They have dire implications for Lee, for those who care for him, and yes – for the rest of us, too.

Please bear with me. I’ll connect the dots for you.

It started a few months ago with sleepless nights that left him too weary to work during the day. Pain of unknown origin gave Lee no rest.

He lost his appetite. Lost weight.

It seemed like a flare up of rheumatoid arthritis. So the doctors thought. But then came chest pains. Strong enough for an urgent call to 911. Even after an ambulance trip to the hospital in Baraboo and several hours in the emergency room, he continued to experience episodes of severe chest pain no one could explain.

Local doctors consulted together, then contacted Lee’s Madison specialist. It was agreed to transport him via ambulance to the UW-Madison Hospital for a cardiac cath procedure.

To make a long, convoluted story short, two days later, doctors finally agreed on a diagnosis. Lyme’s disease.

I’d heard about it, of course. But didn’t know that much about it. So, while waiting for him to be discharged, I did some research.

I found an excellent article that explains the science and history of Lyme’s. It’s a scary bad plague-like affliction of apparently epidemic proportions, though for some mysterious reason, it’s given little media attention. According to arizonaadvancedmedicine.com:

• The organism responsible for Lyme disease was identified in 1981 by Dr. Willy Burgdorfer, and named Borrelia burgdorferi (B. burgdorferi), after its discoverer. It is similar in shape to the spirochete Treponema pallidum, which causes syphilis, the scourge.
• Mankind’s earlier experience with a disease caused by a spirochete was syphilis, the scourge of Europe for hundreds of years. Syphilis was called “the Great Imitator” because its symptoms mimicked so many other diseases. The same is true with Lyme.
• Lyme disease presents a host of challenges. Once the corkscrew-shaped spirochetes enter the bloodstream, they can cause a wide range of constitutional, musculoskeletal, and neurological symptoms.
• New York pathologist Dr. Alan MacDonald found B. burgdorferi DNA in 1986 in seven out of ten autopsy samples from the brains of people with Alzheimer’s. MacDonald was also the first to document B. burgdorferi in fetal tissue, meaning the infection passes from mother to child in the womb.
• The number of Lyme disease cases in the United States has doubled since 1991. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that there are nearly 325,000 new cases each year – making Lyme disease an epidemic larger than AIDS, West Nile Virus, and Avian Flu combined.

Lyme’s hides itself inside cysts so the immune system can’t find it. It also mutates, making it especially difficult to detect and treat.

In short, it’s one sneaky, sinister bugger.

Reading on Lyme’s resonated with memories of working as an assistant in the UW Hospital’s Department of Pediatric Oncology in the 1990s. Pediatric leukemia was the villain. An international team of research scientists was studying the use of Interleukin II to stimulate the body’s own immune system (T-cells to be exact) to heal this cancer.

Because I asked, one dedicated researcher described what she recognized as the deep, spiritual implications of her work. Her eyes radiated intense conviction as she described the war between good and evil going on at a cellular level. She described the insidious mechanisms of the disease and the doctors’ emotional battle to save afflicted children from pain and sure death.

That experience brought up many of the same questions I have now. Namely, why don’t practitioners of different medical sciences pool their information? Each has a significant piece, but only a partial piece of the larger puzzle. If a boundary spanner could bridge the gaps and put the pieces of the mosaic together, miracles would become possible.

I’m thinking specifically of the benefits attributed to the practice of Tai Chi and Chi Kung (QiGong). Both these approaches to healing-in-motion are based on Traditional Chinese Medicine, which in turn depends on the science encoded in the Book of Change, the I Ching.

Some preliminary work in this direction has already been done. For example, medical research documents that Tai Chi practice stimulates T-cells. In fact, this medical-martial arts discipline achieves what the researchers hoped to achieve with drugs. It stimulates the body’s immune system to protect against and reverse damage done to DNA.

Now here’s a secret hiding in plain sight. I Ching science has been correlated with DNA science. The ancients experienced through meditation what scientists much later discovered through painstaking empirical research. There is no conflict between conclusions, only many roads leading to the same knowledge.

One important difference between the medical and Tai Chi approach to healing, however, is its availability. Tai Chi has long been a family tradition passed on through the generations. It’s slowly becoming available in the West as well. But it requires an attitude of self-responsibility and diligence to practice these methods.

In contrast, drugs can be passively ingested with no intelligent participation on the part of those afflicted. Many drugs, however, have unforeseen and unwelcome side effects. In addition, some are prohibitively expensive, and for many, inaccessible.

I like to call Tai Chi the “poor man’s genome therapy.” The beauty of it is, that it hardly matters how you have become off balance or what symptoms you’re experiencing. Diligent practice restores health. It would seem that especially in a case like Lyme’s, where the symptoms are hard to detect, tend to mutate, and to take multiple forms, this universal solution is uniquely appropriate.

As it happens, I recently found a treasure in books by Jou, Tsung Hwa. The Tao of Tai-Chi Chuan is exactly what I would love to share with Lee. The introduction begins:

I was a math teacher who had published about thirty books on mathematics in Chinese. In 1964 at the age of forty-seven, I became very ill with an enlarged heart and a gastroptosis, because of years of hard work and vigorous schedules. My doctor told me that my condition was incurable using available medication.

At the same time, however, one of his friends told him about Tai Chi Chuan and introduced Dr. Jou to a teacher. He continues:

At first, I had only enough strength to practice a half hour at a time. In only two weeks, my appetite improved and the frequency and severity of my stomach pain lessened. In three years my stomach was completely healed. In five years, my heart returned to normal, and I regained total good health without the use of drugs.

This good experience led to an interest in the Book of Change. In the introduction to his version,  The Tao of I Ching, Dr. Jou writes:

Since the I Ching was first translated into German and other languages, it has awakened great interest and fascinated countless people. Yet, I believe this interest is only a fraction of the attention it deserves when it is used in the way created to be used.

His next words made me jump for joy. I could not agree more:

Remember, this is not a book on Chinese culture or philosophy. This is a book about things no more exclusively Chinese than a lake, a person or the sky.

On a hunch just now, I googled “Tai Chi & Lyme’s Disease” and found this: Nothing is Incurable! In this case, the author is describing his experience with QiGong, the precursor and close relative of Tai Chi.

But why, then, am I conflicted about offering this extraordinarily hopeful approach to healing Lee’s Lyme’s disease?

Because he thinks it’s rubbish. Has an intense aversion against it, probably the result being educated in Catholic schools compounded with an aversion to what he dismisses as “New Age bullshit.”

Well, fortunately for me, I haven’t allowed centuries of historical atrocities committed in the name of the New Testament to alienate me from the teachings of Christ. Now, I can only hope that likewise, he will see fit to give this treasure the benefit of the doubt.

I pray for Lee. I pray that he be restored to health. Not only because as a repository of training, information and experience, he is irreplaceable. (He owes it to the rest of us to get well!!!) But also because this disease can be changed into a teacher and opportunity, if he can accept it as such.

My dearest hope is that, like Dr. Jou, when faced with dire medical circumstances, Lee’s eyes and heart will open to this healing alternative to drugs. May he be like the greatest doubter changed in a flash to become greatest advocate, a Saul become Paul, if you will.

I know he has the integrity, intelligence and will power to take responsibility for his healing and make this science in all its aspects his own. In turn, his example serve to might open Lyme’s researchers minds to alternative ways of erradicating B. burgdorferi DNA. This, in turn, might open doors of help for others suffering from this dreadful plague.

I pray for Lee for many reasons. Please pray for him as well. Your prayers will certainly speed his healing. When healed, he will most definitely become a helper and healer to you and yours in ways too many to count.

Blessings and thanks to all who read this.