Robin’s Story
by Robin Duncan

Prior to 1992 when I was 22 years old, I was a fully fit guy weighing 11 stone, I was a full-time Warehouse Manager and in the Territorial Army. In 1992 my troubles started and I attended the local hospital every week but was totally misdiagnosed from day one, they did every test they could think of but could not come back with an answer, this went on for nearly two and a half years. I had a few weeks in hospital because I was so poorly so they just pumped me full of steroids, they did not know what was wrong with me and the way things were going at the time I didn’t know what was going on. I had been a fully fit guy reduced in two years to a nothing, I had no energy and I was constantly on the toilet.
Eventually on 1st July 1994, I was diagnosed with Chrohns disease and I had my first operation, I was given only 12 hours to live, I was already in hospital when they told me that the tests revealed that my whole colon was about to explode and release poisons into my body. They did not tell me what to expect but when I woke up I was in the Intensive Care Unit with two nurses, 4 tubes sticking out of me and machines bleeping. The pain I was in was indescribable even with the morphine. The pain got so bad that I tried to kill myself in hospital, I just couldn’t take it anymore so I pulled out the tubes and tried to jump out of the 7th floor window. I was definitely suicidal, and just could not stand what I saw, my whole front was hanging out (they had fitted a Stoma) and it was just the tubes that were keeping me alive. To add insult to injury, just 3 days later, the surgeon told me that they had left packing inside my abdomen and they needed to operate again, this time they overdosed me with Potassium (salt) which induced two heart attacks on the operating table, somehow they brought me back to life again. Even worse, I caught MRSA the flesh eating killer bug can only be caught in hospital. They tried every known anti-biotic without success and I was isolated for 20 days, everybody who attended me wore facemasks to protect themselves.




 

 

I had problems returning to my flat which was on the third floor without a lift, there was no way I could climb the stairs because I was too weak. So when I was eventually released from hospital I went to stay at my Grandma’s and lived on the ground floor. I camped on her front room floor for 6 months until I was able enough to take the steps that I had to walk up to my flat, one step at a time, it took half an hour, holding on at every step. I was separated for all this time from my wife and son Ben (about 7 years old) and I very quickly had a nervous breakdown which I have never got over. Once I was back in my flat it was another two and a half years before I could go out properly. This didn’t actually put me in a wheelchair but on and off we hired a wheelchair so that I could go out but we needed someone strong to carry me down the stairs. I was fighting a losing battle, everything around me was wrong, everything in my body was wrong and I could see no light at the end of the tunnel, things just got worse and worse.
Two years later in 1996 I decided that I would have to change what I was doing, the hospital provided all the medication I needed, I was under four surgeons and attending two hospitals. It was suggested that I went to St. Marks Hospital in Enfield which is the major bowel hospital but somehow I knew that if I went I would die there. One surgeon agreed and said “if you go there they will not be able to help you, I am the only man that can help you and I will not let you go there”.

In the next 7 years I had Chrohns came back and they had to operate and reform the stoma again (that is what is coming out of me) this was in November 1996 and they let me out just before Christmas. I got out on the 18th December and for some reason I healed quickly. I thought I had no prospects, the Social Services had written me off for any work, I was not reliable enough, it was just one day on and two days off, so I thought that I must have a hobby. So in 1997, being football mad, I went with my son Ben to my local Football Club Southend United and asked if they had any jobs and we both got jobs as the Southend United Mascots dressed up in silly costumes. In the times when I was stuck in the wheelchair I had to get another guy to do it. I said to the Club that as my health got worse I could not take on too much because I could not guarantee that I could be there every day, they said “no problem, when you are not fit we will put you as the official P.A. guy for the West Ham Reserve games which are played here”. Later in 1997 the chap who played the music at the club left so I became the club’s official P.A. announcer with music and talk. I was not wheelchair-bound then, I was in remission, I was mobile for 2 years but still in lots of pain and I used to hire a vehicle when necessary. Myself and another guy from the football club started a fishing club for kids, it was both sea and inland fishing and we started with 40 lads. It was all therapy, the football was therapy for the brain and the fishing was therapy for relaxing and knowing that I was doing some good for the kids, it got them off the streets. I did that for nearly 3 years and the kids loved it, but in 1999 the fishing club had to disband because we couldn’t afford a new venue, we lost the church hall that we had used even though we had sponsors. When I lost the fishing I concentrated on football again and became part of the football family at the club, everyone knew me and today they just cannot believe that I have been through all that and come through to what I am now. When the fishing club was taken away from under my feet I became very depressed and relied on the medication more than ever just to see me through the day, I got to the stage where I was popping 45 pills a day. In theory, this should kill you but I was doing it and my G.P. was giving me whatever I wanted just to keep me sweet and happy, so that I would go away. I would only resort to Pethidine when it was so bad that I couldn’t cope but if I was at that stage I was too far gone and I had to be rushed A & E every second week, they injected me with a heavy dose of Pethidine straight away in my backside. Every time I went into hospital I demanded a P.C.A. which is a Personal Control Applicator, ie I was able to dose myself with Pethidine, but they wouldn’t let me have it after a while because they said that I was hooked on it, but I wasn’t, I was actually hooked on the codeine, I was popping the codeine in between having the injections because there was no other way to get rid of the pain. The hospital put me under a Pain Control Specialist and he said I haven’t got a clue what to do with you because your problem is so acute that I cannot really deal with it, I have got one thing that might actually work for you. It involved a surgical procedure where they put a pump inside your stomach and this machine has morphine-based liquid inside it which it releases straight to your spine. I had the preliminary tests for that and it did not work at all, for other people it worked but not for me. It was my only hope and when it didn’t work, my hopes were dashed, I didn’t know what to do, I was losing my eyesight, my body was just dripping away, I started to lose all my strength, my faith was just worn out, there was nothing more to believe in. I never had chemotherapy but the amount and variety of drugs that I was on made me lose my hair.
 

 

 

In 1999 we moved to a 3 bedroom house near the hospital (this was after 11 years in that 3rd floor flat) and that was when I became wheelchair bound, we got the house and I took a turn for the worse, I didn’t go out anymore from then on, I did the football job every two weeks and nothing else. I wasn’t issued with a wheelchair

 

Chrohns is not classified as a disability because you have a bag and you can carry on with your life in theory, although I was given a disability allowance. If I needed a wheelchair we hired one from St John’s Ambulance. I lived downstairs in the new house and my wife and children lived upstairs, that was my life I just laid on the hard floor, it was the only way I could relax or sleep, watching television all the time, smoking and popping pills, plus frequent trips to hospital right next door. I was told that if I continued to deteriorate the Chrohns would be in my mouth and throat, this would mean a tube for feeding and no quality of life whatsoever. I was so ill, I used to stay in hospital for two or three weeks at a time and sometimes longer and the medication got changed constantly so that I was a zombie, they just did not know what to do with me, they filled me with medication and got me out of there quick. The amount of medication should have killed me but somehow it didn’t, it did affect my sleep which has been bad for years, I was practically housebound for two and a half years which takes us up to 2003. During this period I met George Chapman, a British Psychic Surgeon who cured me of Chrohns, I cannot speak too highly of him, that was a major break through.
The hospital found this impossible to believe, they said I was in remission but still had everything else wrong with me. 19 years earlier I had put my hand through a plate glass window , from this I suffered some nasty wrist wounds and my hand became fixed claw like, very painful and almost useless, to cut a long story short my hand was cured on my first day at The Casa, it was my first miracle, I was able to open my hand and flex my fingers for the first time in years. But back to my story, in January/February of 2003 my mother (Phyllis Bennett) went to Brazil to see Joao de Deus and her last day there she showed him a photograph of me looking pathetic and he told her to take me back with her to Abadiania within the next week and he would heal me. How my mother convinced me to go I don’t know because I was a complete and utter sceptic, black is black and white is white, but I felt guided somehow to make this all-important journey, how I don’t know we both managed because even the fit people were exhausted. I really wasn’t up to a 13 hour trip, I could not even get to the end of the road but it wasn’t my mum who persuaded me to go, I just knew instinctively that I had to despite everything. I fasted for 3 days before we went and I was looking forward to eating and drinking on the flight but I couldn’t eat and I had a can of drink with ice which made me very ill, I had a serious fever, probably the ice. I went out on the 25th March and returned on the 18th April 2003 walking without the need of my wheelchair and on my own, my mother stayed on in Abadiania. I went on the first Casa day to see Joao but never got to see him because his aides decided that I was too ill and need to spend time in their sick bay at The Casa, this lasted 3 days and I was very very ill and expected to die. They treated me with love and were attentive but there was little they could do, I was too ill to go to hospital. I met some lovely Australian girl travellers who pushed me everywhere, they were great, they took me back to the Hotel where I was sick and I lost my bag, I was in a mess. Beth the Hotel owner called a doctor who didn’t know what to do but she did the most amazing thing she prayed, lifted into my wheelchair and then cleaned me up, she did everything she could to help but obviously I was past that, so I was carried off to hospital and saw an American Doctor, they tried to get some pain killers into me but they didn’t work, I was lifeless all the way to the hospital, I didn’t care what happened to me. I was so sick that my Stoma was pulled inside my stomach, you cannot describe it, it was the most excruciating pain imaginable.

 

I spent 4 days in hospital there, my Brazilian friends visited me and somehow gave me a boost when nothing else was working, I just wanted to get out of that hospital. I went back to the hotel and I got somehow to The Casa and saw Joao who said for me to go to the recovery room,

 

I was put in the second cot twice but I was drawn to the third cot, I spent three days there until about 4 in the afternoon, Joao entered from time to time and said a prayer and asked that the people should be healed. These are called invisible operations which although nobody touches you, the operation has a profound effect on you, you are drained and need transporting back to the hotel. These invisible operations did in fact cure me and Joao is the catalyst but it was the Entities who cured me. I am in the wheelchair one minute and the next minute I am running around carrying this dog, nobody could believe it, but I knew I was cured. I am now cured of everything, my local hospital want me off their books, gone are the Osteoporosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis and the problems relating to the years of prescribed drugs. I am really fit now, obviously I still have the Stoma bag but I have got my life back and I am driving again and enjoying life to the full. I don’t want to lose what a wonderful gift has been given to me so I just take it one day at a time and try to live a good loving life.
Since I have been back I have been able to heal animals four times, these animals would have been dead, I cannot explain it but it happened in front of witnesses. I came home from Brazil 11 days early because I knew I was cured and my young son had chicken pox, I travelled without the wheelchair and with only hand luggage but I did it, it was a miracle. When I got to Heathrow I got a cab on my own to Southend, for some reason I chose the third cab and he also lived in Southend, was that a coincidence or not? In Brazil Stoma bags will not last in the heat, they last just about 5 hours, I took 60 bags with me and had to re-use them several times over. I was so ill that I still don’t know how I managed to leave the country and survive the journey to Abadiania. I am so healthy now, I found love. you can’t explain it and whoever you tell it you, they think you are lying, but look at the photograph taken in April 2003 when I arrived looking like a terminally ill skeleton, and then look at the other photo taken in June a few weeks later after my cure when I was back to 11 stone, standing unaided and driving again..

 

 

 

 

 

 

The hospital said there was nothing more they could do for me,

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