Ashok Puri
Ayurvedic eye treatment helped heal my eyes, after Western doctors declared my condition 'untreatable'.
Some years ago, I had a cataract operation. At the time, I was overly anxious and excited to have my vision improved. Cataract operations are so routine and quick that I couldn't wait for the results. After the operation, I opened my right eye, expecting 20/20 vision.
Unfortunately, this was not the case. My sight went unchanged and remained at 20/60. I was diagnosed with idiopathic perifoveal telangiectasia shortly after. This is a rare, irreversible condition in which there is leakage of fluid from extra blood vessels around the fovea, a part of the eye that allows sharp vision for reading and watching television. The worst part was not just that this condition can lead to blindness, but that there is no known cure in the allopathic system of conventional medicine.
I was given one option, an expensive non FDA-approved injection called Avastin, which had no guaranteed results.
While I was still contemplating whether I should go for the injection or not, my job brought me to India. I went door-to-door looking for answers, exploring everything from homoeopathy, naturopathic doctors, eye specialists, to mystic men with healing powers and quacks with claims of magic cures. Finally, I ended up in an eye clinic in Kerala, southern India. The clinic, called Sreedhareeyam, practiced Ayurveda --a system ancient Indian medicine, developed over thousands of years of trial and error.
The head ayurvedic doctor assured me with confidence that the clinic could definitely arrest the leakage and further deterioration of my eye, but could not guarantee restoration of the already deleterious effects of the damage already done.
This news was very reassuring. After three weeks of intense treatment in the clinic, I returned to Vancouver. My total expenses, including lodging, fees, treatments, a four-month supply of medicine and all meals, was only $800 CAD. None of this, of course, was covered by the Medical Service Plan (MSP).
How did this ayurvedic treatment work? My typical day started daily at 5:30 am, with freshly prepared mixture of herbal extracts called kashayam. At 7 am, I was off to the massage centre where two strong masseurs were ready to tone me with specially prepared oil mixtures. They work on you in the such synchronized time that you would think only one person is massaging you. At around 9:30 am, I would begin the netra dhara, a special cleansing technique of pouring of herbal extracts in a stream over the eyes for 15 – 20 minutes.
