“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Jane has been home from the hospital since last Sunday, March 28. She spent 31 days there, being treated for a severely underactive thyroid gland (hypothyroidism), protruding eyes and double vision, an almost total hearing loss, a slight anemia, and budding bedsores, or decubitus ulcers. Several of the ulcers had been incipient for a number of months, although neither of us had realized what those circles of reddening flesh meant as they slowly blossomed on the “pressure points” of her buttocks, coccyx, and right shoulder blade. Decubitus ulcers: one of the first terms we’d added to our rapidly growing medical vocabulary—and one of the more stubborn afflictions for a human being to get rid of once they’ve become established. Even now not all of Jane’s decubiti have fully healed, although several of them have closed up nicely.

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.