Thoughts on CCSVI and Dr. Paolo Zamboni's Research

I have been reading articles and posts all over the net about Dr. Zamboni's research and Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency. One article by Erika Milvy states, "Dr. Zamboni found that, in over 90 percent of people with Multiple Sclerosis, the veins draining blood from the brain were constricted and this led to a buildup of iron in the brain that, he theorized, causes the neurological symptoms of MS." Dr. Zamboni seems to have been driven to this conclusion by his desire to help his wife Elena Zamboni. Dr. Zamboni performed a surgical procedure on his wife to correct this issue and she was one of his first success stories.

After reading these articles I have tried to stay up on the research being done by different universities across the US and Canada. In February more information is supposed to be released and until then we will wait with anticipation. For the past 14 years I have watched as "miracle" cures have hit the media for Multiple Sclerosis, and I have tried to hold on to what we have learned through our own experiences. One of those "miracle" cures was a drug that my wife was set to take in 1990. Fortunately she chose not to take it because it caused major organ failure in the majority of patients that tried it. We have tried to look at this new finding through the lens of these experiences but feel very excited about the possiblities.

After reading one night I asked my wife how she thought life would change if she didn't have to deal with MS everyday. What would change? We sat and dreamed about no fatigue, no worries about over working her body, no worries about going numb or losing eyesight, no more missing events and activities that we have to miss now, and so many other things that we have made choices about that specifically have to do with her MS. It is the first time in our marriage that I can say that we really wondered what it would be like to have true health together, and actually feel there may be a way for that to happen.

I don't know how successful the trials will be, but I do have hope that it may be the beginning of the end. I know that we have personally tested my wife for iron overload and have been baffled by some of the things that have worked and not worked with the treatments we have chosen. I remember her sitting in a magnetic field chair when she was being treated by our naturopath after going numb from the chest down, and she felt great after the treatment. She tried to use the same treatment a year later and it made her feel ill. We had no idea why it made her feel great one time and made her feel awful the next. We still have no solid answer to why, but iron content was one of the issues we were looking at after the treatment. I will share more thoughts later, but for now I wanted to at least acknowledge that we are watching this play out with anticipation and excitement. Our hope is that this research will truly change the way MS is treated.

Multiple Sclerosis And Emotions Pt 2

After about four hours of crying, my wife finally managed to get her emotions under control. This was day one of a class we were taking to better understand how children handle emotions and what causes them to act out. That first night my wife and I were exhausted from crying, feeling and just processing everything that was going on around us. We had shared very deep feelings with each other that were all from the gut and were causing both of us fear and pain. We didn't really understand it at the time, but I think we may have found a way to better control our fears and anxiety.

Multiple Sclerosis attacks seem to be brought on by stress and other situations in life. We can pinpoint a physical stress or emotional stress for every attack my wife has ever had. We have also been able to prevent attacks by knowing that certain things would only stress her out more and cause more MS issues. The second day of class was one of the first times that I have ever seen my wife at total peace. We had gone through a very rough few hours in day one and I honestly wasn't looking forward to what we would face in day 2 of the training. We walked through the door to find that we had one more time on the mat to dig deep and let out any fears or feelings we had. My wife went first and I had noticed that she hadn't cried all morning. She cried a little when one of the other participants was sharing and it really touched her heart, but she hadn't cried for herself at all.

When you lay down on the mat to share, your partner supports you both physically and emotionally. We had been laying face to face for about 5 minutes when my wife looked at me and said that she didn't have anything she needed to say. She was at total peace with herself and her life. WOW!!!! I don't know that I have ever seen her that way before. There were no tears and no strong emotions and her body was completely relaxed. We laid there for another 10 minutes just talking about the peaceful feeling she had and how that was affecting her. The weird thing is that I have always been able to look at her eyes and tell you how she was feeling. I could tell if she was hiding anything or holding anything back, and there wasn't anything there. She really was at peace.

Now, that really made me think about her Multiple Sclerosis and healing her body. How would her MS do if she was at peace most of the time? How would her body react to feelings of no stress? Could she progress in the healing of her disease and go longer periods without any problems? Could she contain her emotions better? All of these questions were bouncing around in my brain as I watched her calmness and peace. Healing Multiple Sclerosis is not an easy task, and there are a lot of people out there that are treating Multiple Sclerosis daily that don't seem to know a thing about the disease other than what is in a textbook. I think we found a technique that we can use to truly help heal my wife's MS by eliminating most of the emotional stress in her body. We are going to continue to practice the techniques we learned and if nothing else, it will make my wife at peace. There isn't a whole lot of peace in the life of Multiple Sclerosis, but there will be in our home from now on. I would challenge anyone with MS to try to decrease stress in their lives, and if your brave enough, to get on the mat and see how much your body reacts to all of the stuff you're holding inside.