Ask HN: What is your personal experience with alternative medicine?
I have ended up with quite a bit of experience with alternative medicine, some of which I didn&#x27;t even know about until a couple of years ago.<p>In Ukraine as a kid. The &quot;not sure if these do anything but they didn&#x27;t hurt&quot; part:<p>1: My mom would regularly draw &quot;iodine nets&quot; on my skin when I was sick. I can&#x27;t remember exactly what they were meant to do, something about sucking out whatever toxin was making me sick.<p>2: When I was young in Ukraine I got very very sick. I only remember  bits and pieces - most memorable is it hurting to move and getting shots in my hand every day. I was in hospital and getting worse, and the doctors couldn&#x27;t figure out what was wrong. According to my mom they were injecting me with some kind of weird hormone based treatment, and when it did not seem to be helping she became worried about what it would do to me in the long term, so she took me out of the hospital against the wishes of doctors - she said the doctor was yelling after her that I was going to die if she took me out as she was leaving. She took me to an alternative medicine provider of some sort, who gave me shots and those little round pills you kind of see some alternative medicine providers use. I don&#x27;t know which of those things worked, but I did end up getting better somehow.<p>3: This isn&#x27;t really alternative medicine but more of a placebo effect. After the above ordeal my temperature would just not go down. I felt fine, but whenever they checked my temperature I would have a massive fever. My mom was checking my temp multiple times a day for weeks with zero change. My doctor suggested that my mom stop checking my temperature for two weeks. After two weeks, we checked again and my temperature was back to normal. It was decided that I was so used to being sick and having a fever that the process of checking my temperature would actually make me produce a real life fever.<p>4: This one is about my sister. She was born with some kind of..bad kidney problems or something of the sort. She had to take multiple trips to the emergency room, frequently. I don&#x27;t know exactly what these attacks involved but it was bad. As a last resort my mom took her to a healer of some sort who gave her a special stone and did some kind of hand-healy thing. She apparently did not have an attack again. From memory I also got one of these stones, but a different one, but can&#x27;t remember where it is now.<p>Ukraine, the &quot;this was definitely a scam&quot; part:<p>1. My mom took me to a lady who had me hold two metal rods connected with some kind of wire thing to a machine, and she would make different words show up on screen and then say if I was sensitive&#x2F;allergic to those things or not. She guessed my strawberry allergy, but that&#x27;s probably because my mom mentioned it. She also said I had &quot;rakovie palochki&quot;, which freaked my mom out because it translates to &quot;cancer sticks&quot;, but the lady said that was normal. I think she was a total scammer and apparently she disappeared a few  years later...<p>----------------------<p>Sweden, my cat:<p>1. My kitten was extremely sick for a month. The vets had given up and said there was nothing more they could do. They let me take him home for his last night, I had an appointment booked to put him to sleep the next day at home - I didn&#x27;t want him to die in the hospital. As a last resort I took him to a &quot;holistic veterinarian&quot; who performed acupuncture and gave various drops and such. I don&#x27;t know if the acupuncture helped, but the next day my cat miraculously peed on his own for the first time in a month at home (his blockage was at the root of this problem, without peeing he would die and no amount of medicine or trying to manually express him had worked). I wouldn&#x27;t credit the entire recovery to acupuncture, but as a last resort treatment I am glad I tried it.<p>2. At the same time as the above, on the train <i>back</i> from the holistic vet home, I happened to sit next to a lady who started asking about him. I was on the verge of tears at that point but explained to her what was happening. She asked if she could reach her hand in the carrier and pet him, and I said yes. My cat was so exhausted and miserable, both of us were, but he seemed to relax a little when she touched him. We ended up getting off at the same stop and before going in separate directions the lady said &quot;I did some healing, it is up to him now. There is still hope - just take that cone off of him when you get home.&quot; (he was wearing post-surgery cone). I did as she said - he peed the next day.<p>-----------------------------<p>I should note that neither my mom nor I ever chose alternative medicine over traditional, scientifically-backed medicine. My mom from what I understand only used alternative treatments in conjunction with science-backed treatments or only as a last resort when normal medicine did not help. It was the same with my cat - he was in and out of traditional hospitals for a month. When those veterinarians said there were no more things left to try is when I began to explore more alternative routes.