Monday, June 08, 2009

Bee Venom Therapy Gives Hope to MS Patient

Lundquist Finds Hope Battling MS
By Tammy Compton, Wayne Independent, 6/5/2009

As she battles multiple sclerosis (MS), Peggy Lundquist, 54, of Texas Township, tells people to enjoy every moment. “Do whatever you can on your own ...because staying strong is your only defense,” she says.

A resident at Ellen Memorial Health Care Center, Peggy says she has “progressive MS. Where relapsing and remitting MS, you can have an attack that can totally put you out —you get better, you recover. I have progressive MS, which is no remission. Right from the beginning, you start getting worse, and you never get better,” she said. “But I surprised everybody, I did get better.”

“I’m still numb from the rib cage down,” she says. But where once she couldn’t move her right leg at all, she can now wiggle her toes.

And where her speech was once slurred, it’s now clear.

As she talks of MS, Peggy says she went “from first symptom to a wheelchair” in a year. “It was very fast,” she says. “I could stand for a while, but I couldn’t walk.”…

Honey bees

Years ago, Peggy underwent honey bee therapy. “My mother gave me a call and she saw it on TV where people with MS were being stung by honeybees ...And this woman she saw on TV, her eyesight got better and her hearing got better from being stung with honeybees,” she said.

“So, it took me a while, but I found a beekeeper,” she says. “So, I was being stung with bees every day,” she said, four to five bee stings at a time. As the venom pumped into her body from the stinger, Peggy says she started feeling better. “In less than a week, I could write again,” she said. “You know what it did? It gave me hope, where I had lost hope.” Prior to that, she’d been getting worse, she said.

Peggy did honey bee therapy for five months, she says. Only, they were difficult to get in winter. “You don’t know how bad you feel until you start feeling better,” she said…

No comments: