Pamela Gerry, NN, CCT

Pamela Gerry has been a nurse since 1975. She apprenticed as a colonic therapist in Boston in 1978, then took a refresher course to earn her certification as a CCT (Certified Colonic Therapist). In 2004, she traveled to Vancouver to obtain certification offered by Prime Pacific Health Innovations (www.thecolonet.com), because her research indicated that this clinical experience, coupled with the academic piece provided by Boucher College of Naturopathic Medicine (http://www.binm.org), would provide her with the state-of-the-art foundation that she wanted to offer her clients.

After graduating from nursing school (clinical portion- Whidden School of Nursing, Everett, Ma.; academic portion- Northeastern University, Boston), she wanted more than info about “drugs and post-op surgical care”; she wanted to learn about ‘natural healing’, not palliation. At that time, there were no graduate courses in her preferred field, so she designed her own modules and set out to study with the world’s most skilled ‘holistic’ healers. First up, was an apprenticeship with Dr. Ann Wigmore, the “Mother” of the Holistic movement.

From there, she latched on to the American Natural Hygiene Association where Dr. Herbert Shelton’s Natural Hygiene teachings continue to guide her. For 20 years she had proximity to renowned healers/educators including: Drs. Doug Graham, Keki Sidhwa, Alec and Nejla Burton, D.J. Scott, Frank Sabatino, T. Colin Campbell, Neal Barnard, Alan Goldhamer, Joel Fuhrman, Vivian Vetrano, and others. For ten years, she sat on the board of directors of this organization, helping it to transition into the National Health Association (www.healthscience.org).

In 1996, Pamela’s husband was diagnosed with Squamous Cell Carcinoma (tonsil) with metastasis (Stage 4), by the docs at Dana Farber, and told he had a 20% chance to survive 2 years. When her husband made the decision to forego all conventional treatment, not only were the couple penalized by having to pay for all treatments out-of-pocket- (they had “excellent” conventional health insurance, (HealthSource), at the time that would have paid for a radical neck re-section, chemo and radiation), but they were also snickered at (“The immune system and diet have nothing to do with cancer…”), and treated condescendingly by attending practitioners. The couple had to travel to NYC to find an MD, (hemotologist, oncologist, pharmacologist), who could guide them using non-toxic modalities. The first thing he told them when they entered his office was, “Please don’t tell anyone where you are coming; if the FDA knows I have success treating cancer, they will shut me down.”

Very long story short–Doug survived the death sentence, using all natural approaches, and is vital to this day. (And when he later visited those practitioners who had doubted his desired approach, they took notes as he told his story.)

This experience, coupled with an incident that Pamela will never forget, helped chart her future course… Early in her career, while working at Salem Hospital as an agency nurse doing medication dispensing, an elderly man was admitted who had just lost his wife. The poor guy was mourning- anorexic, listless; not understanding, his family had him admitted to the hospital for evaluation. Within 5 days he was on 3 meds, and by the second week he was on 7. He died in his sleep soon after that, and when she approached the Head Nurse to express concern that the multi-med interaction may have contributed to this man’s demise, Pamela was abruptly dismissed with, “If you don’t want to be a team player, get off the team!”- This caused Pamela to become greatly disheartened. She felt she could no longer take part in the system as a conventional nurse, but what could she do with the education she had invested in? She cross-trained with local nurse-midwives, and began to assist in out-of-hospital, birth-center births.

At this point in her journey, Pamela has developed great expertise in understanding the language of the body, expressed through its symptomatology. Perhaps the greatest learning experience for her to date, has been a month-long, water-only, therapeutic fast, medically supervised by Dr. D.J. Scott of www.iahp.net/refer.htm. This was an incredible emotional, physical and spiritual experience that demonstrated the amazing recuperative capability of the human organism.

A life-long learner, Pamela is currently studying local identification and foraging of wild edible and medicinal plants, whose constituents are exponentially more nutritious than culitvated plants. Mentor – www.arthurhaines.com

Pamela is concerned about the union that currently exists between corporations and government, to the point that ‘profit’ now trumps everything, including the kind of ‘health care’ citizens receive. While conventional Western medicine does provide state-of-the-art care in trauma intervention, burn care, neo-natology and orthopedics, internationally, our rank of 37th indicates we do not provide the best outcomes for our medical patients. (WHO report- )

www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

Pamela urges everyone to ‘study, to show themselves approved’, so they will be able to advocate, and to be responsible for themselves. Truly, “Health Care Is Self Care”, and ‘prevention’ is the key to an optimal outcome.