John F Kennedy was one sick motherf*cker. No, literally, he spent his whole life ill, disease brewing at the back burner or front burner of his existence. He suffered from a range of illnesses from the auto-immune, to chronic pain, to infections. As a young kid he suffered terribly from colitis which got him started on an relentless course of steroids which probably contributed to a whole cascade of other illnesses and problems from Addison’s disease (an adrenal disorder), excruciating back pain and bone loss (that led to two surgeries), insomnia, and countless bladder and upper respiratory tract infections. He took an average of 10 medications per day, his whole life micro-managed to deal with illness and keep this ordeal from the country. I read about this article in last month’s The Atlantic Monthly and if you can get your hands on the article, it is worth the read. It is astounding that he did not suffer just from “a chronic illness” but really the genre of “chronic illness.” The medical management of his illnesses shows just how the medical establishment of his time was poorly equipped to deal with chronic illness and well, it does not seem like they have made many leaps and bounds since the 1960s either.
Which is why so many patients now seek alternative therapies and rarely tell their doctors about such “transgressive excursions” as they would in a word not-approve. JFK lived in a time when alternative therapies such as acupuncture, chiropractic, and nutritional therapies were less visible and socially acceptable. It made me wonder whether if he lived in this era, if he would indeed choose another path from that of carrying a small doggie bag of pills to survive the internal demons of his pain and illness. Today, I was thinking just about that, what leads a person to make a gestalt switch from one way of thinking or doing to another one, especially when it comes to health and healing. And my acupuncturist helped to answer that question when she told me about a patient who was quite skeptical of acupuncture, but was *so desperate* with her pain she was willing to try anything , even something that she did not believe in, at ALL. It is funny to think that desperation can be the condition of possibility for some forms of gestalt switches but so the case.
So, I want someone who is really desperate in the department of love, to make that faith-based switch and try this love potion and let me know, does it work? 
