RUMFORD — Lori McPherson of Rumford says she’s been sick for more than half her 51 years, “just crazy things, eyesight floaters, my joints, my memory, the pain like barbed wire in my blood and all-over body pain that’s crippling.”

Eventually, her doctors ruled out multiple sclerosis and fibromyalgia. Around 2008 she was diagnosed with Lyme disease. She took antibiotics and herbal medications for years.

“You start out with the antibiotics and it makes you so sick, then you have to take medicine to offset that,” McPherson said. “I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried acupuncture, physical therapy, massage and a line of herbal medications.”

Finally, about four years ago a relative’s wife told her about her father’s use of medicinal marijuana that helped him feel better. She she started taking it in a tincture and candy form.

“When I started taking the medicinal marijuana I could exercise again without being in so much pain. I actually felt like a million bucks,” McPherson said.

Then in March, her sister-in-law told her that her brother had been healed of cancer by Julie Goulette of Albion, a spirit-guided healer. After years of antibiotics, vitamins, red salt and silver treatments and never getting better, McPherson decided she had nothing to lose by trying Goulette’s treatment.

“Julie makes things better through her Reiki,” McPherson said. “She just puts her hands over you and sometimes she’ll put her hands on you. She’s pulling the toxins out of you without touching you. It’s amazing.”

Following about 15 healing sessions with Goulette, McPherson said she got her life back. She feels well is normally pain-free and has energy to go biking or hiking with her family.

“I get directed,” Goulette said, describing her treatments she says are from God.

“I believe in God, so God gets (my patients) to me and I know that they’re going to be healed only if they follow what God tells me to tell them. And if they don’t follow it, I tell them what is told to me,” Goulette said.

Before each healing treatment with her clients, Goulette says the Lord’s Prayer and believes that the spirit of Mother Mary is with her for every session. She also prepares a Native American smudge of sage and washes her hands each time she changes a client’s position to wash the toxins off.

Dr. Beatrice Szantyr, an internist from Lincoln, said people need to find out what works for them on their pathway to health and well-being.

She said Reiki, even though there aren’t a lot of studies around it, is one of some complementary and alternative kinds of methods of healing and restoring health shown in some studies to be quite beneficial.

One of the most important features of someone’s medical diagnosis is that person’s story of how they became ill, she said.

“If someone was in an environment where they might have had a tick exposure and if they never saw a tick and never saw a rash,” that information is important, she said.

“Certainly this year it’s a very high-risk season so people presenting with flu-like symptoms or an expanding rash would be highly suspicious that it might be Lyme,” she said.

Once Lyme disease is diagnosed the treatment is antibiotics.

“We know that if we treat early and aggressively that people do well.”

Szantyr recommends Richard Horowitz’s book “How Can I Get Better: An Action Plan for Treating Resistant Lyme & Chronic Disease.” 

She is medical adviser for the mainelyme.org website, another resource for learning about Lyme disease and where to get help.

mhutchinson@sunmediagroup.net

Lori McPherson of Rumford says she was healed from the debilitating effects of chronic Lyme disease by spiritual healer Julie Goulette of Albion. Goulette says she uses prayer, Reiki therapy and photography to heal her clients. (Marianne Hutchinson/Rumford Falls Times)

Spiritual healer Julie Goulette of Albion says she’s healed many people of disease and illness through her techniques which involve prayer, Reiki therapy and photography. (Marianne Hutchinson/Rumford Falls Times)