Donna Corbo’s Final Years

Within months after her surgery, Donna developed a skin rash on her chest. The rash became incredibly itchy and over the course of months spread to cover her entire body. She also began to develop boil-like welts on her upper thighs and buttocks. She visited over 30 different dermatologists, none of whom could agree on a diagnosis, cause or treatment. They only thing that they agreed on was that removing her thyroid did not cause the rash. Each time she visited a new doctor she answered all the same questions about changing laundry detergent or body wash. They took a quick look, prescribed a cream that she had not tried before and told her call in two weeks. When she called in two weeks to tell them their cream did not work they told her they could not help her.

Finally one dermatologist convinced her to try a very strong and dangerous psoriasis drug (Soriataine) along with PUVA light treatments for several months. The drug made her skin condition much worse. What was a rash became spiny growths with little keratotic "horns" sticking out of her skin all over her body. Some of these horns were a quarter inch in diameter and sticking out of her skin a half inch. Her hair began to fall out, her boils grew out of control and she developed joint pain.

Throughout this ordeal, she also visited many different alternative healing practitioners, including a natural pharmacist, Reiki and Quantum Touch practitioners, chiropractors, medical intuitives, and several others. Each could only agree on one thing. They had no idea what this condition was, what was causing it or how to fix it.

Donna applied and was accepted into the National Institute of Health's (NIH) recently developed "Undiagnosed Disease Program" in Bethesda MD. She, in fact, has the dubious honor of being the only patient to ever be asked back for a second round through the program. While in the week long NIH program, she was given a wide variety of tests, from PET scans to MRIs to blood work and cell cultures, DNA analysis, electron microscopy, and cutting edge technologies that are still in an experimental stage. NIH could not find a clue as to the cause of the mysterious disease that was becoming more and more painful to live with each day.

Donna's problems progressed to the point were she had completely lost her once beautiful hair and was walking with a cane due to necrosis of her hip (both known side effects of Soriataine). She could barely sit due to the boils and abscesses. To avoid putting pressure on the boils, she used her arms to prop herself up when sitting or lying down which caused her severe pain in her arms and shoulders. It became virtually impossible for her to keep from scratching and picking at herself, and the horns growing from her skin would painfully catch on her clothing. She also grew strange wart like growths from her fingers which made picking things up and simple tasks that we take for granted like squeezing a tube of toothpaste a challenge. About the only thing that Donna could do to tolerate her own existence was to take pain medicine. She was losing interest in continuing on in her life.

By the time she had completed her second trip through the NIH program, she had been studied by over 100 dermatologists, some of the best in the world, and none of them could agree on what she had, what mechanism was causing the problems, or how to get any relief. She was also forced to take a disability retirement, receiving a third of the income she had been earning when she was able to pursue her career.

By early 2010, Donna lived in constant agony and was able to do little more than lie on her couch, managing occasionally to get up to do something such as the laundry. At this point she had been on pain medication for three years and had lost 60 pounds in the past two years. She needed a cane to walk. Donna became a mere shadow of the lively and successful person that she used to be.

Donna had casually looked at Eden Energy Medicine but assumed it would be no more effective than any of the other treatments that she had tried. She sought out a local practitioner and had some success in reducing the pain in her hip but no real luck in any skin related issues. She imagined if she could only meet Donna Eden that she would be able to help her. Unfortunately all of the live seminars were always on the West Coast and money was too tight to take the chance to fly across the country to attend a seminar. Finally, it was announced that Donna Eden would be coming to the East Coast to do a seminar. Donna Eden and David Feinstein came to New Jersey in March 2010, just an hour from Donna's home.

Donna attended the seminar and was blessed to actually get a few minutes of time to speak directly with Donna Eden. Donna Eden had agreed to meet with her to see what she could discover in her energy field that might be a key to her problems and had also invited five of her most advanced practitioners in the area to watch, with the hopes that one would be able to take Donna on as a client locally.

Donna Eden listened with a depth of compassion that instantly brought healing and hope. Then she went into action. It was a stunning "grand rounds"-like teaching experience. Donna Eden began by showing how Lung meridian was overwhelmed, with parts of it over-energized and parts under-energized. She explained that the Lung and Kidney meridians relate to hair, skin, and bones (the three sites of Donna's symptoms) and described how hard both meridians were working to get toxins out of her body. She also focused on how Triple Warmer, not surprisingly, was overcharged and how its energies had become frozen. Spleen meridian, in turn, was seriously compromised. Then Donna Eden turned her attention to the way that Donna's chakras were in turmoil, with their energies holding on desperately to patterns that were no longer working. Donna Eden said the chakra energies were in such disarray that it was almost like the chakras in Donna's body weren't hers.

Donna felt overwhelmed with the number of systems that were in trouble, yet hopeful that someone was finally naming possible causes for her ailments, and that they were causes that could be addressed. Donna Eden explained to the watching practitioners the needed corrections, from basics like clearing the chakras and neurolymphatics, sedating and then strengthening Lung and Kidney meridians, and strengthening a totally depleted Spleen meridian, to more complex operations such as working with the freeze in Triple Warmer, testing for various herbs, and recommendations for Grid sessions further down the line. Donna was relieved that something could be done to help her. Finally, Donna Eden took steps to connect Donna with and two local practitioners who agreed to work as a team in treating this new client with an understanding that Donna Eden would be available to the practitioners to consult with them as needed.

Geoffrey White, LCSW, and Diana Warren, CMT, both Certified EEM practitioners, began providing sessions approximately once each week. An immediate challenge involved the boils and sores on Donna's skin and buttocks, the pain in her muscles, and the lack of mobility in her arms. As a result of these problems, she couldn't sit comfortably, lie down on the massage table, be touched, or be energy tested. She did her best to do her energy homework.

Everything the Geoffrey and Diana did on her body had to be done very, very gently because her skin was very painful and full of sores. Each time they cleared a chakra or corrected a meridian, her body released tremendous amounts of toxic energy into her auric field. Still, they did lots and lots of clearing, more clearing, and then more clearing. They also used crystals so they could move the energies without having to touch her. By the end of the first session, her chakra energy was strong. She felt enlivened and hungry for the first time in seven months. She and her partner went out to dinner following the session, something they'd not done in a long time. Donna not only had a return of appetite, she also said, 'I feel like I want to jump on a trampoline!' Her session was on a Sunday night and she felt hopeful and reprieved.

On Monday, however, she crashed. There were just too many changes energetically. But as the week went on, diligently doing the energy techniques that she was assigned as homework each day, she began to feel more energetic and, by the weekend, she was able to do things she'd not done in a very long time. She went to dinner at a friend's home on Saturday and she shopped all day on Sunday.

At her second session, she arrived complaining that her hot flashes had returned. Her practitioners told her that it indicated a shift in her energies and an opening. By week three, all of her pre-checks were clear and her chakras were strong. In her fourth session, she had a crisis with severe pain in Latissimus Dorsi, and she was gasping for breath. Her meridians were freaking. Spleen was way over on the Yin side and Triple Warmer, Small Intestine, Gall Bladder, Liver and Lung were on another planet. Her feet were still too tender to touch, but she was responsive to the work and left the session feeling good. She also reported that the sores on her buttocks were getting better, and she was able to sit during the fourth session. Another milestone occurred in the fifth session. Geoffrey and Diana were able to energy test without using a surrogate! Pain in her feet (after five surgeries), which were too sore to be touched at the beginning, was another challenge where the progress had been marked. Donna was no longer staying homolateral and her depressed mood began to lift.

After months of working with Donna and listening carefully to her story the working model for what caused Donna's plight began to emerge. Although they seemed unrelated at the time, several things happened within approximately a one year span when Donna first developed her initial rash. In addition to the thyroid removal Donna also had her front teeth capped which proved very painful. Donna was also experiencing enormous amounts of stress at work. Her department was being converted to a shared services model and she was being asked to literally perform the work of two people with no increase in time or pay. To make it worse, the work she was performing was designed to put her out of job. If those substantial stressors were not enough to completely overwhelm and lock Triple Warmer on she also had surgery on two of her toes and her father began having trouble with his prostate.

Donna never missed a scheduled session because she could really feel the difference that even a subtle energy shift made in her body. Her sessions with Geoffrey and Diana always began with the standard pre-checks and then checks of her chakras, meridians, radiant circuits, Five Elements, Tibetan Rings, and 'suckability.' They then did the Quickie Energy Balancer before deciding where to focus the remainder of the session. It had largely been a matter of following the energies. They used the Tracker model as a guide. As you can imagine from her extreme physical symptoms, so many physiological systems were involved that her various energy systems were in chaos. Whatever energy system needed attention and seemed to make progress one week would often be followed by setbacks another week. For instance, one week she would leave the session with her chakras strong and her meridians balanced but by the next session her chakras would be weak and it would be as if the meridians needing attention had been playing musical chairs. It has also been an emotional roller coaster, between hope and new vitality and periods of happiness vs. fears and tears as the energies opened and moved through her after her five-year ordeal.

By the summer of 2010, Donna was in very good shape energetically. From going out to dinner after her initial session in March until August, her life had opened remarkably. She no longer felt hopeless and disabled. After her twelfth session, she and her partner, having learned a lot about energy medicine from her sessions with us and their dutiful back-home practice, enrolled in the EEM Certification program in New Jersey and were excited after having attended their first class. For someone whose case had been reviewed by more than 100 of the country's top dermatologists with no diagnosis or viable treatment plan to show for it, the improvements in her skin condition were more than encouraging. After two years of intense suffering and constant pain it was nice to have the energy of the old Donna back.

In early August, all of Donna's energies were staying strong between sessions. Towards the end of August, something incredible occurred. Donna started to turn red and began to superficially peel as if she had mild sunburn. Donna had not been exposed to any significant sun and had even skipped her yearly visit to the beach. In a few days, the peeling became more aggressive and deeper. It was quickly obvious that all of the junk on her skin (the rash, horns, boils, sores and other anomalies) were miraculously peeling off with her skin. As the old affected skin peeled off, baby soft pink skin waited below. Everyone that has had a sunburn knows how uncomfortable the tight new skin can be until it stretches. Donna was no stranger to pain but having the thick crust on her skin all over her body peeling and the new skin underneath pulling tightly proved to be too much for Donna to bear. The crusty skin was cracking and the delicate new skin underneath would bleed when tear and bleed when she moved. She tried everything she could do to avoid moving because every movement was excruciatingly painful. One way she tried to avoid moving was to limit visits to her bathroom by limiting what she drank. This proved to be counter productive as she was putting herself in danger of dehydration and deprived her body of the desperately needed the fluids to repair her skin. Ultimately she decided that she should go to the hospital to prevent infection and to be put on IV fluids and have a urinary catheter inserted so she wouldn't have to move. She figured this would allow her to remain in bed while her skin healed.

It is important to note that once the peeling started Donna's energy systems remained in perfect balance and her energy levels were off the chart. In March, when Donna first started doing energy work, her energies were extremely low. The more she did energy work the more energy she was able to hold and eventually her levels returned to their normal highs. She would remain like this for several weeks.

The circus started the moment the EMTs saw Donna. They had no idea what they were looking at. They thought that Donna had been chemically burned and were afraid to touch her. She was immediately placed into isolation in the emergency room. Donna's claim that she was shedding away five years of a miserable skin condition were summarily dismissed because that doesn't happen. Donna had been told by several "experts" that the growths on her skin would need to be surgically removed but that nobody wanted to do it because it would disfigure her and there was no guarantee they wouldn't grow back. Obviously, the experts were wrong.

Donna was treated the way that Hollywood imagines the government would treat a captured alien from another planet. She was fascinating but nobody really knew what they should do for her and they approached her as if she was somehow dangerous to them. She was no longer human; she was an experiment or a mathematical equation for them to solve. Donna explained that she really just wanted support in the form of fluids in and fluids out and an antibiotic to prevent hospital acquired infections but the hubris of the holier than thou medical community closed their ears and they could not hear what she was saying.

The Western medicine playbook and flow charts came out. In their playbook peeling skin is fixed by prescribing steroids. Donna refused steroids because she did not do well with them in the past and that was not why she came to the hospital. She refused a blood thinner. She definitely got off on the wrong foot with her attending doctor because Donna asked for an explanation and clarification for every move the doctors tried to make. In her inimitable way, she challenged them. Donna had been successful in life and she knew her body well. She had been suffering for five years and clearly knew what did not work for her. She had a voice and was very capable of advocating for herself. She outright offended doctors when she disagreed or refused the treatment they wanted to prescribe. Day after day her doctor argued with her for not cooperating. It did not matter what Donna felt her body needed or what she wanted. How dare she question a doctor? The doctor and hospital's approach was dispassionate, mechanical, and unwavering.

When the doctors realized they were not going to reason with Donna, they tried another approach. Every doctor and nurse that entered her room began telling Donna how dangerous it was not to take the drugs they were prescribing even though they were told that every medication negatively affected Donna's skin. Donna resisted for over a week before finally giving in, fearing that she would be in more danger if she did not take the steroids and blood thinner.

The steroids accelerated the peeling of her skin but also irritated the new skin causing that to peel again and again. The steroids also masked an allergic reaction she had to the blood thinner. Sometimes blood thinners actually clot the blood and cause the platelet count to drop. Once the steroids were stopped, Donna's platelet count dropped dramatically. Donna was awakened at 1:30 AM one night and informed that she needed an immediate transfusion of platelets or she would begin to bleed internally and die. Her count was 9 on a scale of 150 to 400. Donna was extremely frightened but took the transfusion and stopped the blood thinner. She was told that the platelet count had dropped because she experienced clotting in her hands and feet. Her hematologist told us that they had monitored the decline in the platelet count but could not explain why they waited for the count to get to a critical point before they took action. Donna had been undergoing physical therapy and was doing very well prior to and during the platelet count drop. The weight of her body on her feet and her dangerously thin blood caused her heels to bleed internally. Her heels turned black and were very painful to walk on, effectively ending her physical therapy for almost two weeks. Her hematologist cautioned that she would experience future problems with her hands and feet due to the clotting.

After this incident, the hospital quickly transferred Donna to a Long Term Acute Care (LTAC) facility. Unfortunately the facility that Donna was moved to was completely unprepared to care for her. Two weeks later, after receiving only the most basic care and none of the physical therapy that she desperately needed, Donna was transferred to another facility for physical therapy.

When Donna arrived at the new facility she received, at best, mediocre treatment. Staffing was short with one nurse for every 26 patients. Donna said several times that dogs were treated better than she was. Most days she waited far too long for help with her bedpan, her meals were rarely what she ordered and usually not edible. Skin cream and other prescriptions routinely took several days to arrive. Her muscles, especially her calves, had become very tight from lack of use. Her physical therapists were overly aggressive and mean spirited. Donna complained that they would pinch her, kick her feet, and yell at her. Donna did not respond well to the LTAC environment.

Her energy systems were no longer fully engaged and in balance. In fact, her systems began to resemble the pattern that Donna Eden had seen before the months of energy work had been done. Lung was out more often than not, Triple Warmer was always out and Spleen was either under or over but almost never balanced. Donna was in so much pain and her muscles were so weak that she was barely able to do any of her exercises herself and relied on Geoffrey to try to keep her systems in balance.

Donna's once overwhelmingly vibrant spirit was becoming more and more muted each day. Months of physical pain, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, pain medicine and substandard care were taking a serious toll on her mental health. In spite of these obstacles, Donna was determined and was making progress in physical therapy. The skin peeling cycle was getting better with more time between the peeling.

After almost 50 days in the LTAC, Donna's insurance company began to voice concerns about her progress. They would not acknowledge any of the setbacks caused by either the hospital or the LTAC. Their magic dollar amount had been reached and Donna was out of time. The physical therapists told Donna that if she worked really hard and pushed her limits that they could talk the insurance company into giving Donna more time in the LTAC. Faced with the prospect of either being sent home without being able to care for herself or pushing her limits, Donna made the only choice she could.

Donna got out of bed early and walked as far as she could each day. She was having trouble putting her left foot flat on the ground because her left calf muscle would not stretch easily. To walk on that foot, Donna basically put her weight on her left toes instead of the sole of her foot. It wasn't long before her toes became sore and red. She complained each day but she was reminded that she needed to push hard to get the extra time in the LTAC. She asked to see her doctor and he showed up a few days later. He looked at her now bruised toes and suggested that she apply some antibiotic cream. Her intense therapy continued and her toes, already damaged from the platelet incident, became worse.

On Wednesday, December 15, 2010, the insurance company informed Donna that they were no longer going to pay for her stay and that she would be going home. They offered to send a visiting nurse 3 times a week to help her. They did not seem to care that she could not get out of bed herself, wash herself, feed herself or use the bathroom without assistance. Not to mention that Donna lived in a second floor apartment in a building without an elevator. The insurance company was not able to explain how someone stopping by to help a few hours a day, three times a week was going to provide the care that Donna needed. They did explain that her physical therapists had indicated that Donna had met the required milestones in her therapy and that she no longer needed to be in the LTAC. Apparently the therapists had no intention of making a case for more time; they were only interested in closing out their case log with a success story and getting Donna out their facility.

Donna continued asking for her doctor to take another look at her toes as they grew deep purple and almost black. Finally on Thursday, December 16, two days before she was supposed to go home, her doctor called and gave an order for her to go to the emergency room at the hospital to have her toes checked. The next day, Donna went by ambulance to the ER where she had an x-ray taken. It was decided that she would be admitted and the wait for a room began. Things in the hospital move very slowly on the weekends.

Twenty nine hours later, Donna was finally moved to an isolated room. She was told that it was now the weekend and that no tests are done on weekends. She would have to wait until Monday at the earliest for her tests. Neither the doctors nor the nurses seemed phased that Donna's toes were black and her feet were very cold.

On Monday, December 20th after 6:00 PM Donna was finally taken for another test. Late Tuesday morning, after she had been in the care of the hospital for four days, Donna's blood pressure suddenly dropped and she was rushed to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Donna had become septic and it was a race to get her blood pressure higher and her heart rate low enough to keep her alive. When the doctors were asked to explain what happened, they said that her mysterious skin disease was causing some kind of unknown infection and her body was in crisis. Donna was placed on ten different IV pumps and was intubated to get more oxygen into her. The doctors casually mentioned that her foot was gangrened but they firmly believed that it could not be the source of the "mystery" infection. The doctors told her family that they did not think that she would make it through the night and that if the next blood test came back with bad numbers they would discuss ways to make her more comfortable.

Her next blood test came back with better numbers than were expected. Donna, though sedated, was fighting for her life. The doom and gloom atmosphere lifted just moments before Geoffrey showed up to do an amazing energy session, tracing all of Donna's meridians, strengthening Heart and Circ-Sex, clearing her chakras, doing a million figure 8's, and projecting color onto Donna. Geoffrey let his intuition and Donna's energy guide him in a loving, compassionate, and organic way as he worked on her for almost two hours. Paradoxically, Geoffrey's use of Eden Energy Medicine, though simple, beautiful and natural, seemed so alien amid the readily accepted tangle of wires, tubes, machines, and constant supervision that represented the best Western medicine could do for her. Several hours later, Donna's blood pressure and heart rate normalized and stabilized.

Unfortunately, that progress was short lived. Donna's skin was weeping water to the point where her bed sheets needed to be changed every few hours. She was on a pressurized saline drip to force fluids into her but they were coming out of her skin almost as fast. The doctors could not understand why this was happening and could not think outside of their medical programming. The "mystery" infection continued to rage inside of Donna while the doctors tried to figure out how her skin problem was causing the infection. Donna's body had been in the habit of trying to eliminate toxins through her skin for over 5 years and the weeping may have been another example of her body trying to rid itself of the "mystery" infection. On Christmas Eve, Donna's kidneys started to shut down because fluids were not being processed correctly and her body could not utilize them effectively.

A Shaman friend of Geoffrey's journeyed to see Donna and reported back that Donna was not in her body but was observing it from the corner of the room. She did not want to get back into her broken and painful body and she did not want to disappoint the people that loved her and were trying so hard to help her get better. She was very tired of the fight and the numerous and pervasive indignities that she had been forced to suffer at the hands of the medical profession in the past 4 months. She was in a dilemma and needed to know that it was OK for her to move on.

On Christmas morning, Geoffrey observed that Donna's first three chakras were beginning to close, a sign that he has seen many times as people begin to die. He cleared them and reopened them. On Christmas night, Donna looked better than she had in days and her kidneys seemed to be functioning again. This was that moment when things seem to be getting better right before the final crash. Donna's brother and sister in-law were scheduled to fly in to see Donna the following day but wound up flying in Christmas night because of an impending winter storm.

As her mother, brother and sister in-law arrived on Sunday, December 26th they were greeted by a doctor that wanted permission to remove Donna's gangrened foot. This was the closest they would come to admitting that the foot was the source of the "mystery" infection. They said it needed to come off but admitted that removing the foot would not help Donna's current condition. At this point she was only alive because she was on oxygen and a dozen IV pumps. Donna's mother refused to allow the operation. Donna had suffered enough indignities at the hands of the medical profession. Enough was more than enough.

Donna's family said their goodbyes and gave Donna permission to go. Donna was then removed from the machines that were sustaining her biological processes. She quickly passed away at 2:00PM on Sunday, December 26, 2010.

Contribute to The Donna Corbo Memorial Scholarship Fund