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Statement of Beliefs · Study on
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(c) By Sue Payne
My illness started in my teens. When I was at University the food allergies got really bad although I didn’t know at that time what it was. I would stop eating certain foods because they made me ill, and find something else to eat, & eat that thing every day. By doing this I made myself allergic to practically every food, because the Candida caused a leaky gut and the foods were getting into my bloodstream, which caused my body to see them as foreign bodies. For years I didn’t know what was wrong with me, & couldn’t understand why I couldn’t eat like other people. Eventually I ran out of foods to eat. I went down to 5 ¾ stone (80.5 pounds/36.5kg*). The symptoms were so horrible; the only way to avoid them was not to eat. I decided it would be better to starve to death, it was just not worth eating the foods, I felt so ill. It was at this time my housemate saw a doctor on television who seemed to be talking about the illness I had. He was a private doctor, Dr Mumby. I went to see him in London. He told me I had allergies, but I thought allergies were something trivial that gave you a rash and I knew I was really ill. I argued with him for an hour. In the end he burst out at me," I have never had a patient argue with me like this. Look, I know what is wrong with you and I know what to do about it!" He did testing on me and found one food which I was not allergic to, millet. Eventually I sorted out a rotation diet of millet, spelt, quinoa, yam and sweet potato, with plaice, pigeon, duck, mango and pineapple. On my allotment I grew vegetables like Amaranth, purslane and New Zealand spinach. My main chemical allergy at that time was Tobacco smoke.
Then around 95 the chemical allergies were getting worse and I had some neutralisation treatment for them with another private doctor, Dr Dowson, who used Vega testing. The neutralisation drops were making me worse and I rang Dr Dowson about this but he told me to keep taking them. I did this but it put me in a hypersensitive state and I started hypersensitising to everything around me. I became acutely allergic to plastics, printed material, perfume, the TV, the radio, my stereo, my bed, bedding, dyes in my clothing, perfume, washing powder, my cats, rubber, traffic fumes etc. I went from leading a fairly normal life to having to live like a caged vegetable, within the space of a few days. I couldn’t do anything except pace up and down in my room all day. I managed to read books by completely covering them up with a glass pyrex baking dish.
This put me in a state of complete despair. My Dad came over from South Africa to look after me. My GP had said one of my family should be with me. He made me go outside in the garden every day. He cooked my meals for me, and washed the dishes. I couldn’t tolerate him for any length of time in my bedroom because of the washing powder smell coming from his clothing. He would spend his time downstairs watching television with Rose my housemate.
Dad took me to see various private doctors in London. I saw a consultant who was also an NHS consultant, Dr Jonathon Brostoff, and also Dr Len McEwan who had developed Enzyme Potentiated Desensitisation (EPD) , which is like a vaccine that covers lots of food and chemical allergens. They recommended that I have EPD in a controlled environment to correct the hypersensitisation, and after a long wait the NHS agreed to refer me to the Airedale Allergy Centre in Yorkshire for the treatment. At the Airedale they control the environment by not having any chemicals in the place, using cotton bedding, and not letting anyone in with perfume or hairspray etc. At first it seemed to help but after the third EPD treatment I found I could no longer tolerate my clothing and I had to discontinue the EPD.
By this time I had also become electrically sensitive. I was living in isolation, and the only control I had over the allergies was avoidance. I tried the Bicom treatment but it made me worse. I tried phoning all around the world to see if there was any new treatment that could help me. There was no hope. I had no quality of life. There were times when I couldn’t even read to occupy my mind, I reacted too strongly to the print when I lifted the pyrex dish to turn the pages. All I could do at those times was wait all day long for night-time when I could have some sleep which would give me some oblivion. I had the most unbearable symptoms. I was even reacting to my bathwater, so I couldn’t have the pleasure of having a bath. I started saving up my sleeping tablets to commit suicide. The plan was to save enough to do it properly. I didn’t want to die, but I couldn’t have carried on in that state.
When I first became really ill, the Holy Spirit had started to draw me to God. I read some Susan Howatch novels, which had themes of Christianity. God started to seem real. I felt I should read the Bible. I started to read the Old Testament but it put me off because I thought it was a bit violent. Later, I had the feeling that I should find out about Jesus, and that Jesus was the answer. I asked a friend about Jesus because he had been to Sunday School but he wasn’t a believer and said some horrible things. I thought I would read the New Testament to see what Jesus had to say, but I started reading the Old Testament where I had left off. and it was the book of Job. It was like my life story; Job thought he would be better off dead and so did I. At one point he said ‘my very own clothes shun my body’ and so did mine because I was allergic to them. I was really taken aback by that. Shortly after that I read a book and that scripture was in there again. I had the feeling that if I read to the end of the book of Job I would find the answer to my problems. I read to the end and it said ‘If you believe in Me you will be healed’ I said ‘that’s not very likely is it God’ because my illness was incurable, and put away the Bible. (Later when I became a Christian I discovered that it doesn’t say that in the book of Job. God had put it there supernaturally to speak to me). Then it was like God was responding, to say ‘oh yes it is likely.’
Amelia Nathan-Hill of the Allergy Association had previously given me the tel no. of the organisation where she had had been miraculously healed of ME, but I put it away in a drawer and forgot about it. A while after I had read the book of Job my neighbour came up to me and said ‘God can work miracles.’ That evening I rang the tel no. Amelia had given me. The man told me about their next meeting but later that night his wife felt directed to ring me to ask if I was alright. I said no I’m not and told her about my situation. She gave me various testimonies about herself and her family having been healed by God and I knew she was telling me the truth. She said to me ‘if you really believe that Jesus will heal you He will’, and I said in desperation, ‘how do I believe in Jesus?’ When I put the phone down, what I had read in the Bible came into my mind, and I rang a lady I knew of in Edinburgh who was a Christian, with similar allergies. She sent me some prayers and healing scriptures. I felt very awkward praying at first because I didn’t really feel that anyone was there, but startling things started to happen to me. I spoke to someone with allergies who told me about SOZO ministries in Southampton where they particularly minister to people with ME and allergies. I rang them and they sent me a testimony booklet, which had lots of people with the sort of illness I had who had been healed. That brought me hope, and I thought, if I go there this might happen to me even if it takes years. I gradually realised that there was a God (this was a real surprise to me), that He was right there watching over me, and that I was going to be alright.
I prayed a prayer asking Jesus to come into my heart and the next thing I knew I couldn’t swear anymore. The ‘S’ word used to be part of my normal language. I didn’t know what was happening. I went to one of the Sunday meetings at SOZO with some people from Bristol, and when I told them about it, one of them said ‘you’re saved’. I said ‘am I?’ I had thought to myself, I don’t want to be one of those ‘born again’ people, and one day I realised, ‘I am one!’ I had received the Holy Spirit. I had been really resentful about my old housemate because she had said she thought of me as a sister, then when I had had to move out and get my own place so I could control my environment, she did not come to visit me. One day I said a forgiveness prayer and prayed about her because she was the person I felt I needed to forgive. Immediately all the bitterness went and I couldn’t feel resentful about her anymore.
I spoke to the lady who had told me about her family being healed again and she said she felt that I needed to go to Shekinah Ministries in Bournemouth. This was a couple in a council house. He is a Romany gypsy, gypsy John Warwick who used to be very violent before he became a Christian, but Jesus appeared to him one day and his life was transformed. They have had a deliverance and healing ministry for 30 years and seen lots of people healed. The Holy Spirit spoke to them and showed them what ministry I needed to receive my healing. They told me God was saying He loved me very much and He wanted to see me set free from the illness. Before I went to Shekinah I tried a spiritual healer because I was confused about healing. When he told me to imagine myself somewhere wonderful I tried to think of myself on a beach in the sun but all I could see was a vision of myself kneeling before Jesus for protection, and later found out that the power they have is demonic.
I started going to the Sanctuary church Bristol. I had some clothes without chemical dyes, and I would wear them just to go to church. I used to take a folding wooden chair with me to sit on. God spoke to me through someone there when I went up for prayer, and said ‘If you see yourself as set free you surely will be’. I didn’t understand what this meant. I was waiting for Him to heal me so I could wear my clothes and eat normal food. One day I felt really upset after trying to put my clothes on and still feeling ill, and there was a Word for me in church, ‘Jesus is saying He wants to heal you’. A while after that He started speaking to me, telling me how to step out in faith. I heard a voice saying ‘wear your brown jacket’, and so I wore my brown jacket and I didn’t feel too bad. He told me to put on the clothes with the worst dyes in, to go out and buy Ariel washing powder and coldgate toothpaste. The smell of the washing powder in the house terrified me because in the natural these things would have made my illness much worse. I said to Him when I’d bought them. ‘Lord, I’m really frightened that these things will make me ill’, and He said to me, just as clearly as if He was sat across the table from me, ‘If you obey Me you will get well’. All my clothes were locked away in a trunk in a downstairs cupboard. I went to get them out and I said, Lord, I will wear them after I have washed them lots of times in cold water to get the washing powder out. The Lord spoke to me very strongly and said ‘No, wear them and I will heal you’. So I acted as if I was well and wore my clothes and gradually started eating foods and doing other things that I had previously had to avoid. I got my cat back. I still felt fearful but I would say to myself, ‘By His stripes I am healed’, because that was what the Bible said, and if I still had the symptoms I would say to myself, no matter how bad I feel I believe I am healed. Then as I kept doing this, after a while I would begin to feel healed. If I was taking things too fast the Lord would speak to me and tell me to be careful. Over the course of about a year He gradually healed me. It was wonderful to sleep in my bed & wear all my clothes and to go to Tesco and buy anything I wanted to eat. I no longer had to live in isolation. I am now completely well with no restrictions on my life at all.
Having the allergies was like a living death but God gave my life back and restored everything to me. Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. All things are possible for God!
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