My husband developed some of his own health issues that were not getting improvement with the conventional medicine approach. The worst of these was a severe case of cutaneous leishmaniasis that he contracted from the bites of sand flies in Central America. We made numerous trips to 3 different hospitals in Central America, all with different diagnoses and multiple prescriptions for antibiotics. This was followed by a trip to our family care doctor and the emergency room in the U.S and more misdiagnoses. Fortunately, I had already begun taking some prerequisite courses for entry into the health field. One of which was microbiology. I sent pictures of my husband’s lesions to the microbiologist at my community college and he took one look and was able to tell me that it was leishmaniasis. By this time my husband’s weight had dropped to a mere 125 lbs and he was very ill.
My microbiologist referred us to a tropical disease doctor at the medical university in Tucson, Arizona. He examined Mark and confirmed that it was indeed cutaneous leishmaniasis but that it had pretty much run its course and treatment would be pointless at this stage. The good news he explained was that Mark would now be immune to reinfection. That winter we again traveled to our jungle getaway in Belize. Within 2 weeks, Mark had bites on his finger that progressed to another horrible infestation of leishmaniasis. We were afraid we were going to have to return to the states and get his finger amputated. Disgusted with conventional medicine at this point, we began talking to the local bushmen and medicine men. They called these bites “Bay Sores” and said there are several herbs that will heal it but the most effective one is called “jack ass bitters” or “tres puntas” and grows like a weed in cleared areas of the jungle. They advised us to toast the leaves and wrap them around the sores for 3 days and to make a strong tea out of the herb and drink it 3 times a day. We did as they advised and when we removed the bandage and leaves on day 3, we were amazed!
