Ellen Schweikart - Before and After EFT
Ellen Marie Schweikart, was diagnosed in 2002 at age 45 with the most critical type of this disease, called Systemic Diffuse Scleroderma, This not only involves the hardening and thickening of the skin due to an overproduction of collagen (fibrous tissue) but also involves the hardening of the major internal organs, such as the esophagus, lungs, kidneys, liver and heart, which eventually leads to death.
It took 1 ½ years before she was correctly diagnosed, which is quite common for this disease because the early symptoms are non-specific. By that time the early swelling in her extremities had gone down but her skin was rock hard. Her hands were frozen in a claw-like position because of her skin.
"This thickening progressed quite rapidly, moving from my hands up my forearms, and from my feet to my calves in just a few months. It then spread across my chest and into my stomach. Within a year’s time, it moved all the way up my legs and arms, my entire chest, and the most frightening of all for me, into my face.
This Scleroderma had spread from head to toe and I was completely disabled by 2003. I was unable to walk alone more than ten feet due to all the pain of stretching skin that did not want to bend because it had become rigid. Another part of the pain was caused by this generalized sclerosing (hardening) of tissues, which constricted and narrowed my veins and blood vessels... With limited circulation, I felt I was freezing all of the time and my hands and feet were usually white or even blue. I had to wear gloves all the time even though I was living in sunny Florida… I was so cold but at the same time, to have anything touch my body was excruciating…
Not long after… the sclerosis also had spread into my esophagus, which restricted me from eating solid or dense food. The lining of this vital tube between my mouth and my stomach that most of us take for granted became thick and hard and could not propel the food into my stomach properly. If I happened to eat something that would not go down, it was very painful. The only recourse I had was to throw it up..."
Ellen was told by the doctor at the time of her Social Security disability evaluation in 2003 that she had between 2 months and 2 years to live because her disease was progressive and medically untreatable. Undeterred by this medical death sentence, she pursued every possible unconventional approach that felt right to her, including removing silicone breast implants, self-treating her Lyme Disease, taking varieties of nutritional and supplement treatments, and using affirmations, meditations, visualizations and prayer. While some of these produced modest results, it was only after she started using Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) in 2005 that she was able to clear her symptoms of Scleroderma.
EFT is one of a new variety of Energy Psychology methods that involve tapping on a series of acupressure points while reciting personalized affirmations. EFT relieves stress and distress of all sorts. For Ellen, the affirmations involved clearing deep-seated personal beliefs around perfectionism;
Ellen is now an EFT practitioner herself, and has helped another woman with advanced Scleroderma to recover from her disease.
Read more details in the Web journal article written by Ellen Marie Schweikart, Scleroderma:
More about EFT at http://emofree.com
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
