An incurable illness held in peace

Eighteen years ago the now thirty-four year old Thea R. Aunbøl, Årre, Denmark, was attacked by the rare and incurable illness in the connective tissues, lupus, which attacks the internal organs. This is her report of a nightmare that ended when her mother took her to The Hugo Nielsen Institute in Gram.

Text: Journalist Bodil Moes

”I was sixteen years when my fingers started to swell up. The Tests showed rheumatism in my blood and for a while the doctors believed that is was a chronic children’s` arthritis, Thea tells. ”When I was waiting for an examination they gave me the pain-killing drug ”Brufen”. When I stopped taking the pills my joints hurt again and so I took one more pill. Immediately my temperature increased to 40 degrees, and I could hardly breathe and was in great pain. So I was sent to hospital and it was during this period that the doctors found that I suffered from the very rare illness in the connective issues, Lupus, where the blood corpuscle (erythrocytes and leucocytes) are involved.”

The illness attacked my kidneys

Thea again got the pain-killing Brufen but after the first pill she had the same violent attack. ”For four years I now got Prednisolon for this illness in the connective tissues that attacks the internal organs.  In my case it was the kidneys with an inflammation that destroyed parts of them”
”When it after a couple of years became still more serious the doctors gave me chemotherapy for the inflammation. It lasted one and a half year and I was critically ill. I had 10 litres of fluid in my body and had to sit up when sleeping. If I lay down I could not breathe. Because of the pains in my joints I could also only wear slippers.”
”So miserable was my condition when my mother after the end of the chemotherapy twice a week took me to Hugo Nielsen about whom some people had told her.”

It was a tough fight but my lupus was kept down

”When I began to get parallel acupuncture my mother one day phoned Hugo Nielsen and said: ”Thea is so sick!” Hugo Nielsen answered: ”She must pass through it and she must hold on.”  After ten weeks I began to feel better but it was a tough fight! Gradually I was able to drive to Gram on my own and my joints were no longer full of pains. My incurable illness was in peace and I really got well.

Now I only went to Gram once a week and when I had now my one years old son Oliver and I sometimes missed a week. This illness often reopens during pregnancy and after a birth but that did not happen in my case. I am really fine and work part time in an office.”

”That my young years became years of illness was sad but on the other hand I have with parallel acupuncture got a fine life where I on the whole never feel anything in my joints,” Thea Aunbøl ends her report.

Årre, Jutland, Denmark
July 1st, 2008