“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Jane’s hearing is much improved after treatment with decongestants and a pair of minor operations in which tiny drainage tubes were inserted through her eardrums—the procedure is called surery—to relieve internal blockage. Jane’s thyroid gland, Dr. Mandali finally told her, has simply ceased functioning, so the doctor has begun a program of cautiously rejuvenating my wife’s endocrine system, and thus all of her bodily processes, with a synthetic thyroid hormone in pill form (a low 50 micrograms to start). Jane is to take these pills for the rest of her life. At least that’s the current prognosis. Her double vision is not as severe and is supposed to keep improving as the hormone takes effect. Dr. Mandali has prescribed drops to keep Jane’s eyes lubricated, and a liquid salicylate medication (as a substitute for aspirin) to control joint pain and inflammation. Both of these products are taken four times a day. The increased glandular activity is also expected to have some beneficial effects upon Jane’s arthritis, and possibly upon her anemia (a condition that often accompanies arthritis). I asked that she be tested for food allergies, since I’d read that reactions to various foods and additives can trigger arthritis, but Dr. Mandali said that “if Jane is allergic she (Jane) would know it”—a position I came to most thoroughly disagree with. But usually, I thought, the trouble with having something diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis is that not only do you have it when you go into the hospital, but when you leave it. Such is the state of the art of medicine in this case, unfortunately.

I should note, by the way, that her bedsores weren’t infected when she went into the hospital, but were less than a week later. How come? “It’s staph,” several of the nurses told us. A sign warning of infection was put on the door of 3B9, Jane’s room, and stayed there until she went home. “If the infection in that ulcer on your coccyx reaches the bone, it means at least a six-week stay in the hospital,” exclaimed Jane’s principal doctor, Rita Mandali (not her real name). Twice-daily treatments with hydrogen peroxide and a sulfadiazine cream were started. And I began to read up on how many kinds of staphylococcus bacteria alone there are, and indeed how common infections are in hospitals, since by their very nature those institutions are far from being the cleanest in town….

At the request of Dr. Mandali, a few days ago Jane underwent her routine phlebotomy, or bloodletting, here at the house. [...] Dr. Mandali instructed us to put Jane back on aspirin, to keep any arthritic pain and inflammation under control: “You can take up to sixteen tablets a day.”

[...] Jane is still very much against drugs and surgery, though—even while she’s well aware of the contradictions in her beliefs as she continues to take daily the synthetic thyroid hormone and the liquid salicylate medication prescribed by Dr. Mandali. [...]

[...] Yet it’s still the best way to go, Dr. Mandali said, even with the new anti-inflammatory, nonsteroidal drugs that the FDA (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) has released to the marketplace recently, for often they produce more side effects than aspirin. [...]

[...] (Dr. Mandali told us that the hormone dosage has to be increased very slowly, over a period of months, in order to avoid strain upon the heart and the endocrine system.)

[...] “Your joints are destroyed,” Dr. Mandali told Jane, after getting the opinion of the young out-of-town rheumatologist she’d asked to examine my wife. [...]

In the first essay I described how Dr. Mandali had told Jane that her thyroid gland had “simply ceased functioning,” and how the doctor had started to cautiously rejuvenate my wife’s endocrine system with 50 micrograms daily of a synthetic thyroid hormone. [...]

[...] Dr. Mandali agrees that the low thyroid activity is directly related to these episodes. [...]

Six days ago, on May 18, and to our great relief, Dr. Mandali finally stepped up the strength of the thyroid hormone pills she is prescribing for my wife—from 50 to 70 micrograms daily. [...]