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| Hpathy Ezine - May, 2008 | |||||
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Beth RotondoInterviewed by Alan Schmukler |
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AS: What was it like growing up in a homeopathy household? BR: To me it seemed like the most natural thing in the world
because that’s the only thing we experienced. We had a homeopathic
MD and we went to him, good old Dr Andy, for every problem we had,
whether it was a cold, flu, earache or bronchitis. He always gave
us the wonderful little white sugar pills that we loved and we got
better. So I never even questioned it until I went away and rebelled
and went to nursing school, and then I found I was actually living
a very different life from most people in the US. I was impressed
with looking back in the past, how well homeopathy had helped us,
because I didn’t realize that was a given in my mind. AS: When they were giving you remedies as a child, did they explain the whole thing? BR: Well, when we were little we didn’t have much explanation. It was like, you have a sore throat, take this, so we got to know the names of the remedies. But when I turned 13, I had my first constitutional remedy and that’s when I went through the whole process of evaluating who I was and what was going on in my life. That was fascinating and I think I first decided I’d really love to go into homeopathy. That remedy definitely made a shift in my life. Pulsatilla was my Godsend at 13.
AS: That’s a big leap for a 13 year old. BR: At thirteen the hormones change and so many changes, socially and it was really valuable to get my self esteem up with the Pulsatilla. I lost a lot of weight... I was two hundred and twenty some pounds at that point, and was living off of ice cream, a major Pulsatilla craving. When I took the remedy I lost a hundred pounds and built up a lot more self esteem. I had a speech impediment since I was born and that disappeared with Pulsatilla.
AS: You went to nursing school and that was an allopathic environment, so what was that like? BR: At that point in my life I had just gotten out of high
school and moved out, so I was happy to do something different.
I figured homeopathy was old fashioned and modern medicine is here
and antibiotics kill everything. It sounded so miraculous so I actually
got into it and worked eight years on the medical surgical floor.
But I found out people weren’t getting better….just
getting sicker with more medicine and side effects, and I had never
experienced that before. It opened my mind and showed me that homeopathy
was really the way I wanted to go and I flipped back and owned it
for myself. AS: To learn homeopathy you travelled the world and studied with many homeopaths. Were there certain ones that had more influence on you? BR: I really enjoyed Paul Herscu, two years of training
with him, and Ananda Zaren. We were fortunate to bring him into
Philadelphia when my kids were little. A lot of my studying was
while nursing babies and reading homeopathic books. Herscu came
in on weekends to do conferences. I just found a way to learn, and
when the kids got older I travelled. There was Ghegas and Banerjee.
I was able to integrate the pieces of each of them that worked for
me. So many people try to mimic the masters and be like them…but
I had to find myself. I found that I needed an intuitive approach.
Once I got the book learning down, I was able to expand to a deeper
level using my intuition, and that’s when I really blossomed
as a homeopath and started to enjoy it. I was in my element and
started to sense the person. AS: You are better at that intuitive approach than any homeopath I’ve ever known. I want to relate an anecdote. I took my mother to see you and you were taking her case. At some point she started weeping and then she looked up and realized she was weeping and felt embarrassed. You told her “That’s okay, I’ll weep with you" and I looked over and you were weeping too. Is it difficult when you operate at that really empathic level? It seems that forming that kind of bond would take a lot out of you. BR: It does take more out of me, so I’ve been trying
to take one a step back… compassionate detachment…and
still have the empathy but not completely feeling everything. I’m
probably pretty much of an empath, and in the beginning years a
person would come in and I would feel their physical symptoms and
emotions and tears would well up.…and I still do to a certain
extent, but I‘ve been able to calm that down a bit…a
healthier perspective. l do care deeply about the people who come
to me and I want to do everything in my power to help them. There
s such a joy in learning, since the more I know, the more I can
help. AS: You’ve worked with vaccine injured children and have used homeopathic Thimerosal, among other things. Can you talk about your experience with those children? BR: My first experience started 25 yrs ago when my child had a severe reaction to the DPT shot and he got a 107 fever and stopped breathing on me. I must admit to this day that was the most frightening thing for a young first time mom, to see her child dying in her arms. That was within two hours of the DPT shot. Thank God for Belladonna! I gave him that and within moments his eyes opened and I could see the life coming back into his weak listless body and the fever dropped down within minutes. That was definitely confirmation that I was on the right track getting back into homeopathy. I think I would have lost him if it wasn’t for that. That started my quest for more knowledge about vaccines, their safety, effectiveness, trying to find out what we can do to protect our kids. Obviously a parent’s role, our greatest priority, is how to take good care of our children, physically and emotionally. When it comes to homeopathy we can see the whole child. The vaccines seemed to have a detrimental effect on many children. Homeopaths for over 200 years have been talking about vaccine damage and using remedies like Thuja and Silica and had good results with them. But since then, they started putting this neurotoxin Thimerosal in as preservative. It was first safety tested in 1938 and the ironic thing is that every patient it was tested on died! And that was the only safety testing ever done. But they said it was the “expected outcome” because these were sick people and they weren’t concerned that they all died. They started using it as a preservative in the vaccines. It’s ethyl mercury…alcohol and mercury combined. This is very toxic for children's central nervous systems. Any child with allergy is going to be much more sensitive. I’ve also found in my practice that children with a history of cancer are more likely to have an adverse reaction to Thimerosal in vaccines and to vaccines in general. Dr. Peter Prociuk and I were networking at a D.A.N. (Defeat Autism Now) conference and we were talking about Thimerosal and we thought “If Thimerosal is causing these problems, how about making a remedy from it”. So he took Thimerosal to a homeopathic pharmacy and had it prepared as a remedy. We’ve been using it for two years and we’ve seen very dramatic improvements. Severe cases of autism have turned around and become completely normal and the kids then mainstreamed. In one case the mother was a chiropractor and had come to me with her son a couple times, before we had Thimerosal. I tried remedies like Tarantula which had eased him in certain ways, but he was severely autistic and was flapping and turning in circles and screaming, not present emotionally or intellectually and couldn’t even feed himself at three years old They had to spoon feed him with baby food. I told her we had this new remedy Thimerson, and asked if she would be comfortable with her son receiving it… and she said “definitely”. He had never received vaccines and I wasn’t sure how that would play out. But it turned out she had gotten a Rhogam shot during pregnancy, which has Thimerosal in it. So her son was exposed to it in utero. We gave him homeopathic Thimerosal and the next day...well the way it excretes is through the bowel….he had diarrhea everywhere. The whole crib was covered. The mother said that from that point on, he came back. Over the next three to six months we repeated a higher dose. We started with 200 Thimerosal and then a 1M in three months. Within six months he was back. He became aware, started talking again, started feeding himself, was calmer and happier. Now he’s in mainstream school and doing great. In the New Jersey town where I live, we have the highest incidence
of autism in the country. One in 95 children and one in 60 boys,
have some form of autism! It’s truly an epidemic and they’re
refusing to see it. Since we know that like cures like, to me that’s
validation that Thimerosal is directly connected to autism. If it
can cure autism, it tells me that’s what’s causing it…not
in all, but in many cases. I would love more people to be able to
learn about homeopathic Thimerosal and experiment and see what kind
of response they get with it. Ours has been amazing. AS: One of the arguments the drug companies make, is that they stopped putting Thimerosal in the vaccines years ago, but the kids are still getting autism. Is there something they didn’t tell us? BR: One thing is they stockpiled, so all the vaccines with Thimerosal didn’t have to be dumped. They were able to use up the supply. They are no longer allowed to manufacture it, but they had up to twelve years of vaccine stockpiled, so many of the vaccines being given now still have Thimerosal in them. And to top that, now the flu shot has Thimerosal in it. And it wasn’t originally a childhood vaccine, but now, in NJ again, they made the vaccine mandatory for children from 6 months on and they want it given every single year to these children! Here we are with the highest levels of autism in the country and they pass a ruling to push for every single child to receive the flu vaccine. I don’t know what they’re going to see, but it’s not going to get better.
AS: Speaking of health challenges, have there been some personal health challenges that you have faced that gave you a deeper sense of homeopathy? BR: A deeper sense? Yes…called saving my life. When I was thirty three, I had four young children, the youngest 6 months old and I was still breast feeding. During that pregnancy I felt a lump growing and the doctors said “Don’t worry about it, you’re pregnant and the breasts get lumpy and you’re breast feeding”.. and “You’re too young, don’t be concerned.” But after 6 months it had gotten to be the size of an egg. They finally took me seriously and I had all the tests at a cancer center and they told me I had a large malignant tumor that had spread into my lymph nodes. I didn’t want to do the recommended radical mastectomy, chemo and radiation. The ironic thing was that my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer right before that. She was told she would be dead in 3- 6 months if she didn’t do the chemo and mastectomy and radiation. She was opposed to it, that’s not the way we were raised. My parents had been happily married for 50 years. My dad couldn’t imagine living without her. I think out of fear and not wanting to abandon him, she ended up going that route (Chemo etc). She did it all and was still dead in 6 months. That had just happened and that was enough to make me realize that if I was going to live my life, I was going to live it according to my beliefs. I couldn’t give up on my beliefs for anything. I told the doctor “I can’t do this, I have young children and they need me .Give me six weeks and let me see what I can do. Worst case scenario I’ll have you remove the lump.” There’s synchronicity in the universe. I stumbled onto this paper all about Carcinosin. I had never heard of this remedy before. It’s made from breast cancer, and it fit me like a glove. Loves music, dancing, the ocean, chocolate, peacemaker, always trying to make things right for everyone, sacrificing their own needs. It’s very typical of cancer, where they just don’t have healthy boundries. It goes into other tissue and eats it away. In homeopathy, looking at the mind body connection, the breasts are about love and nurturing of yourself. Very often people who get breast cancer are not taking care of themselves because they are so busy taking care of everyone else, which was definitely my situation at that point. The essence fit…although I must admit I was a bit hesitant. Do I truly believe in this? Here’s my challenge. I took a 200c once a week for three weeks. After the 2nd dose I broke out in a horrendous red itchy, puss filled rash that started on my face, worked all the way down through my body and came out through my hands and feet. It lasted about two weeks and I was miserable and I looked horrible, but I knew that was a good sign, because Hering says healing happens from the inside out, top down and in reverse chronological order. I felt that this was clearing something out and I let it ride. Within two weeks when that rash completely cleared, the tumor was gone. There was no evidence of it whatsoever. When I went back to the doctor she couldn’t believe it. I
said “I used homeopathy” and explained it to her. She
said “ I'm sure it wasn’t those little white sugar pills.
It must have been a spontaneous remission. I’m sure that’s
what it was.” AS: They always have that fallback position. BR: Yes they do. Then she said, ”Don’t ever
get pregnant again, because those hormones will re- activate that
cancer and it will kill you”. So at 43, I had a healthy 9
pound baby girl and that was nine years ago and I’m still
alive and kicking. There are no guarantees that anything would ever
happen again, but I’ve got a whole lot of years under myself
that they never thought I could have. I figure as long as I’m
here, I’m here for a reason, to help people and make a difference.
That’s the purpose of our lives, to try to help other people. AS: Did having five children give you a lot of practice treating children?
BR: Most of my practice is treating women and children because that’s what I know best. Children are definitely our greatest teachers, mirrors to us, show us everything and reflect it back so we can learn our lessons. There’s always something going on when you have five kids. We were able to cure kidney stones, double pneumonia, all kinds of different problems.
AS: One of your children had Lyme disease. BR: The same child who had vaccine damage. I’m sure that broke down his immune system…everything he went through. When he was two years old he developed Lyme disease, one of the first cases in the Pennsylvania area. The head of infectious disease at our local hospital had never even heard of Lyme disease and thought maybe it was Juvenile Arthritis …he couldn’t figure it out. Poor Ricky, both of his legs were swollen double the size. This was a hyperactive little two old who wanted to be running around and he couldn’t even put weight on his legs He was in pain all the time and we had to carry him. By that time I had my second child, so I had a new born baby in one arm and him in the other. It turned out the remedy he needed was Mercurius. So we gave him that, and it was the only thing he ever needed. That cured all his symptoms except the weakness. The doctor said he would never be able to walk because of the degenerative damage to his knees. But we gave him a homeopathic remedy called ” knee joint” we got from an Indian doctor and that rejuvenated his knees. By the time he was in second grade in school he got first place in the one mile run for the President’s Physical Fitness. And he’s been an athlete ever since… healthy and fit at 6 feet 4 inches and a great guy. Lyme is something we see so often in homeopathy. Most people believe
you have to use antibiotics for Lyme disease. They just don’t
believe there are any other options. Ricky and many other cases
I’ve had, have proven that wrong. AS: You have a protocol you’ve developed for people who have just been bitten by a Lyme tick.
BR: The first thing I recommend is Hypericum 200c the first day, one time, and then Ledum 200 c the next day, and then the homeopathic Lyme nosode which I do in 30c once a day, starting on the third day for two weeks. I’ve done that to probably over 200 patients. Bryn Athyn, where I grew up, was a very high area for Lyme. Out of all those cases no one ever developed further symptoms after the bulls eye rash and beginning stages of Lyme. I found there are other remedies like Aurum arsenicosum, or Mercurius that are effective and sometimes they need this protocol after.
AS: One of the questions that comes up often is whether patients on aroma therapy or acupuncture or Reiki will antidote their remedy.
BR: I believe that any of the energy ones like acupuncture and Reiki increase the homeopathic remedies ability to work. I know some people say “Don't use two energy modalities.” But I found they work better together. The one concern I would have would be essential oils, like Camphor or Eucalyptus. I am not a big believer in antidotes. I believe when you find the right remedy for the person it resonates at your frequency. It goes in and it’s almost impossible to antidote that. Now if the remedy isn’t really close, it may be easier to antidote. I don’t talk about antidotes to my patients. I know others give a long list, but I don’t even focus on that. Of all my patients I can only think of one or two cases in 30 years that have antidoted a remedy. The whole mint controversy … mint constricts the nerves on
top of the tongue, so if you’re eating mint at the time you
take the remedy…but once the remedy is in there, eating mint
doesn’t antidote anything. We were born and raised with mint
gum and toothpaste. I just tell my patients, just don’t have
mint when taking the remedy. AS: One of the things that is different about your practice, is that you take people who are very ill, cases that some homeopaths might turn down. I just wonder how you deal with that. Are there certain beliefs that sustain you? BR: Well, definitely having gone through it myself, it’s part of my healing process to be able to help other people with aids, cancer and other serious conditions, because I know homeopathy can help them. So that inspires me. The wounded healer….every time I can heal someone else, it helps heal me. And I also have a very strong belief in life after death. I was raised Swendenborgian, and if you’re aware of your homeopathic history you know that many famous homeopaths, including Hering, Gramm, Kent, Boericke and Tafel were all Swedenborgian. So there’s a very strong connection with homeopathy and that religion, because the mind- body connection is very strong and there’s a strong belief in life after death. So having that basis, it really helped me understand that we as homeopaths are not God. Our goal is to give people the quality of life. We may not be able to extend someone’s life indefinitely like we would like to, but there’s a certain amount of knowledge that we’re here to learn, certain lessons we all need. And when we get that, we move onto a much better place. My goal is not to keep someone alive permanently, but to help the quality of their life, let them enjoy it, and when the time comes, to support them in their transition. I’ll tell you an interesting story. My aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer, as many in my family have been. She had been fighting it for ten years. They told her she’d be dead in six months, but ten years later she was still fighting it. But it was getting the best of her. She went on hospice and her blood pressure was down to 80/40 and she was fearful and restless and we were just waiting for her to pass on. We felt this was the end, she was in her 80’s and had lived a good long life. My mom called and said “Is there anything you can do for her to make her more comfortable?”. I went over there and talked with her and she was very afraid of being alone and of dying. I said “What is it that you’re holding back on?” She said “I’m just not ready to die yet.” Her physical symptoms were telling her she was ready, but emotionally she wasn’t. She ended up needing the remedy Arsenicum album. I gave her one dose of 200c. I was just trying to make her more comfortable so she could move on. As it turned out, it made her so comfortable that she decided to stay here! She pulled out her catheters and the IV and she got up and told her hospice nurse that she was not going to stay there in bed any longer, that she was going to get better. And in fact, she did live for another two years after that. She was right, it wasn’t her time and Arsenicum brought her
back to life. I think the reason it worked so strongly is that she
was constitutionally Arsenicum, an old maid, isolated and perfectionist,
and it fit her at many levels and restored her life force for another
couple years. AS: You never know what’s possible with homeopathy.
BR: That’s the beauty of it. Once you find the right
remedy for the person, they are capable of healing the most devastating
conditions and turning around and coming back to life. How exciting
to be in a career like that. AS: I think that’s a good point to end on. Many people will read this and hopefully it will expand their possibilities. Thank you Beth. BR: Thank you Alan. ----------------------------------------- Beth Rotondo can be contacted at natrlhealer@yahoo.com and phone number 732-899-5954 # # # |
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