Dr. Dorothea Daley of F.H.L (Faith, Hope and Love) Medical Centre. - Ian AllenBy Avia Ustanny,
Staff Reporter
WHATEVER IT is that promises to make patients lead a more healthy and comfortable life will be fully investigated, and promptly applied if found to be effective.
At the F.H.L. (Faith, Hope and Love) Medical Centre, 20 West Kings House Road, St. Andrew, this is the credo of the practitioners. Dr. Dorothea Daley, guiding light behind the activities, states a belief in the never-ending search for the better way. This includes methods that are outside of traditional medicine.
So powerful is her belief in what she feels is a ministry, that she abandoned a career in Information (master's degree in Information Science, City University of London) to qualify for the M.B.B.S. degrees from the University of the West Indies, Mona.
This is why, too, though trained in traditional medicine, she has chosen the alternative path to healing.
"I consider myself an integrated physician," said Dr. Daley who uses such therapies as chelation, vitamin therapy, aromatherapy, Ozone therapies as well as relaxation and hypnosis in her practice.
Often traditional medicine seeks to treat one condition, but in the process thoroughly dislocates another, she observed. The example is that of cancer patients who come to her with lungs damaged from radiation therapy or with severe allergies to prescription drugs.
Dr. Daley noted that one of her female patients had such severe allergies (in the afternoons her skin would break out in hive-like rashes) that she was limited to eating yam and vegetables that were not brightly coloured. The patient had a low thyroid function for about 20 years and was on replacement therapy and was chronically constipated. Her allergies developed as a result of medication. At FHL medicentre, she was treated with a combination of intravenous vitamins, herbs and colonic washouts to good effect.
"Our most challenging cases have been cancer (patients) because most of the time when they reach me it's a last resort," said the doctor.
"Cancer is an admission of failure of the immune system," she added.
Dr. Daley and her team have also risen to the task of treating HIV-positive patients. "If they come early there is a good chance of reversing the virus' progress. Ozone therapy has been used in this regard.
"The drugs that are used for AIDS are potentially toxic, both to the liver and the kidneys. In trying to alleviate one problem, we cause others."
Gentler and just as effective therapies include chelation, vitamin therapy, as well as aromatherapy.
Also in her bag of treatment are relaxation and hypnotic therapy.
"Let's not deny the value of the mental and the spiritual. Your mental and psychological, emotional state can reverse your consequences," she believes.
The doctor pointed to a patient who had stomach problems. While she treated him with food supplements and aloe, the most important thing was for him to share his thoughts and to find within himself the resources to deal with problems. The man recently passed his real estate examinations for a new beginning his stomach problems having long since disappeared.
"Along with relaxation therapy and hypnosis there is a lot of counselling and allowing people to bring out what they were unwilling to look at," she said.
As to her medical colleagues who may be sceptical of these efforts, Dr. Daley said: "When the practice of asepsis (washing of hands) came in, it was fought down by doctors and many women would die in childbirth as a consequence. Today, no one operates without aseptic techniques.
"Pioneers will always meet opposition until the evidence becomes so overwhelming that they have no choice but to acknowledge the truth of it."
Regardless, she aims to remain true to her mission. "I believe that what we are about is healing," she said.
