(Clearwisdom.net) My name is Lai Jiandeng and I am 53 years old. I am a medical doctor, an ear-nose-throat specialist, and I started practicing Falun Gong in March 1997. I have suffered from illnesses throughout my whole life. I fought other people for self-interests, and my health declined by the year. In the past decade I hit rock bottom and almost lost the desire to live. That was the time I found Falun Dafa. From then on, my life changed completely.
I study Western medicine and have a certain understanding of the treatment and recuperation process of certain diseases. When I was young, I suffered from various conditions. In the years right before I practiced Falun Gong, I was afflicted with a stomach ulcer, stomach bleeding, a stiff back, inflammation of the eye, dizziness and sciatic nerve pain. These problems took turns attacking me. Treatments could only suppress them temporarily and could not prevent them from recurring.
It was the day before Tomb Sweep Day and the beginning of a long holiday when the eye inflammation first came on. My eyes were red for two days, and all of a sudden my eyeballs suppurated from inside. They swelled up and were extremely painful. I could barely open my eyes and when I did, I couldn't see anything. Pus had filled my eyes and it was as if someone had plastered my eyes over. I cannot describe the intense fear I had of losing my sight, because the next thing that would usually happen was my eyeballs would fester and I would lose my sight. I immediately went to an eye doctor, who injected medication directly into my eyelids. The injections are usually administered into the muscle, under the skin or into blood vessels, but I was injected directly in my eyelids and in the tissue around the eyeballs. Sometimes I had shots twice a day. The condition subsided after about two weeks.
That was only the beginning of a nightmare. The disease came back every spring. The injections only suppressed the surface symptoms and could not treat the underlying causes. Each relapse would last a month or so and I had to get injections around my eyes, otherwise it would be difficult to control the symptoms. I received prednisolone in large doses [a derivative of prednisone, a steroid treatment].
After more than a decade, I was extremely afraid of this disease, because over time I could develop kidney problems even if I didn't lose my sight, and I could end up living on dialysis. This disease was also accompanied by ankylosing spondylitis [chronic inflammation of the spine], and my spine started to hurt more than 20 years ago. After I had a car accident over ten years ago, my back hurt terribly on top of other complications that already existed. In the winter my spine hurt when I moved, when I lay still, when I rolled over and when I got out of bed. When I sat in a car, I could not tolerate the slightest jarring. I had to push myself up with my hands to alleviate the pain, and it also hurt when the car accelerated. My spine would hurt so much that I would well up in tears when the car would go over a pothole or came to a sudden stop. I was scared to death of going out in a car. Even when I walked at home, I could not walk steadily due to my back pain, and the pain was there no matter what position I was in.
My mother was on her deathbed when I first saw Falun Dafa books, so I didn't have the desire to read them then. Since I never obtained a good cultivation method in any of the different religions, I assumed Falun Dafa was the same as the others, so I didn't pay much attention. After my mother's funeral I picked up the book Falun Gong, I suddenly realized that this was different from all the religious books I had read, so I read it until 3:00 a.m.
The next day, I continued to read Zhuan Falun and other Falun Dafa books. It's hard to describe my feelings, but it was far deeper than anything I had experienced before. When I read religious books, I felt that I had just crawled out of the soil and saw the sun for the first time, and I felt the world was wonderfully huge; with further understanding, I felt I had climbed up on a building and when I look down, I felt my former understandings were trivial. But when I read Falun Dafa books, all those feelings and knowledge became insignificant in comparison, and I felt like I was looking down from the universe. The difference was tremendous and I was truly happy. I realized that Falun Dafa was what I had always sought after, even though I had no idea that I was after it.
The next summer, my stomach ulcer pain began to subside and then disappeared. The unbearable pain in my spine was also reduced a year later. The inflammation of my eyes came back several times. I did the meditation exercise since I could not do the other exercises involving movement. Eventually the dizziness went away.
The majority of my illnesses are history. I am now healthier than I have ever been. I have truly experienced something profound and supernatural. I devoted myself to religion for decades but was never free from illnesses. As a doctor I know about illnesses and it's easy for me to obtain medication. I took pills in great quantities, but the pain was still there. Now I understand that only cultivation can help a person become truly and completely healthy.
Falun Dafa has given me guidance in life. It helped me to reduce hatred, conflicts, and other bad feelings. I am able to see my shortcomings, and through cherishing the chance to practice Falun Dafa, I will diligently improve myself.