Voodoo Doctor

Those of you who know Tom, know that he has always suffered from allergies.  Sneezing, nose blowing, and throat clearing is a way of life for him, in addition to waking up in the middle of the night with an earache due to plugged up sinuses.  He had been tested for allergies in our early years of marriage and found to be allergic mainly to molds, so he went through a regimen of allergy shots (which I administered, much to my chagrin).  His allergist pronounced him "cured", but I didn't see any change in the nose-blowing category.  Then he had surgery for a "deviated septum" in his nose.  The doctor claimed that he'd be able to breath much easier after that.  Still,  no change as far as I could detect.

So, we have these friends, sisters, that are into holistic medicine.  They have a doctor that they've gone to for years, but their husbands are skeptics.   Both husbands have allergy problems, so, out of desperation, one of the husbands decided to go to this doctor.  She did her thing, whatever that was, then stuck what he described as a bundle of dirt into his sock against his leg.  He was to wear it for at least three hours, then he could take it out.  And he did that.  And he says he is cured.

It was cheap, so Tom decided that if it worked for our friend, it was worth a try.  So he went yesterday.

The doctor put some sort of hood over his head so that he could breath something in to try to dry out his sinuses.  She touched some sort of electrodes to his skin and pronounced him to be allergic to molds and some grasses.  She said that he was much more inflamed than our friend, so it would take longer for him to get better.

Then she put the "dirt pack" in his sock...on both legs, told him to wear it for at least three hours, and gave him a bottle of slippery elm herbal supplement to be put into his water and drank.

I was expecting at least a tidy little surgical looking pack of dirt strapped or taped to Tom's legs, but this is what it looked like when he took his sock off...a wadded up Kleenex.

And this is what was inside that wadded up tissue.  You might have to click on the picture to see it better, but there were bits and pieces of various plants and what appeared to be some mold.  Hilarious.

So, in a couple of weeks, we'll see if voodoo medicine really works.