Forty-nine years old Niels Holgersen, Esbjerg, Denmark, is now able to work effortlessly in the airport for fifty hours weekly but until he came to The Hugo Nielsen Institute in Gram his future didn’t look promising. He imagined a life without the job he likes, chemo tablets every day for the rest of his life and himself sitting in a wheelchair.
Text: Bodil Moes
When Niels Holgersen was thirty-eight he had more than a seven-hour working day and at that time he started to get some rash of psoriasis and later a soreness in the body.
“Gradually I also had pains in my wrists and elbows and it was a sort of pains that moved on to other joints. It had to be rheumatism,” he says.
An illness that is hard to trace in the blood.
“In 1993 I went to a very, very good specialist in rheumatism but the many blood samples showed nothing. After nine months the doctors at long last felt sure that I suffered from rheumatic psoriasis.
As this special illness is hard to trace in the blood. I now got a medicine which acted slowly and in 1994 things had become so bad that I had to use a half or a whole hour to get out of bed. I also began to doubt whether it was wise to take the medicine which was chemo tablets and morphine. I would certainly become a drugged-out wreck if I just went on. Now the specialist sent me to a hospital where they treated rheumatism. Here I was for three weeks for rehabilitation, and the staff told me that if I went on working I should end up in a wheelchair. They also said that I had to take the chemo tablets for the rest of my life, and in the local administration they believed that I had to give up my job in the airport and for instance consider driving a cab or a bus.”
The darkest hour is just before the dawn
Niels Holgersen was fortunate to have a place of work where they accepted that he did what he was able to manage but in 1995 he was going from bad to worse. “Gradually it took me about two hours to make myself ready for the job. Not until then the joints had become so warm that it was possible to start,” he says. “At that time I had heard of Hugo Nielsen who with his needles was almost able to cure anything, and as sick as I was there was no harm in trying his special acupuncture.”
“It was in 1997 I went to Gram and said to Hugo Nielsen: “You may prick me with your needles even if I don’t believe in what you do!” Today I certainly believe in it even if I still don’t understand how he was able to cure me.”
A lot of strange things happened in my body
“I fell asleep as soon as Hugo Nielsen had placed the needles and when the treatment after twenty minutes was over I went home and slept for eight hours.
First I went there once a week. After three months it was throttled down to three times a month for the next nine months.”
“During the first months a lot of strange things happened in my body. It was sweaty, I felt dizzy and had pains which had not been there before, for instance in my right shoulder. “Something violently must have happened to that shoulder,” Hugo Nielsen said and he was right. Ten years ago I had broken the shoulder! Now he told me that it was the body which was able to “remember” what had happened.”
“I stopped at the clinic in July 1998 and for the last six months I had only been treated twice and later once a month. Hugo Nielsen now decided that no further treatments were necessary unless I got pains – and that I never did!”
The good life without the rheumatic psoriasis.
“Both my skin and my body suffered from psoriasis but today I only have a little rash on my scalp and at an elbow and in frosty weather sometimes in my face. The specialist in rheumatism and my own doctor could see that I was well but they didn’t try to find out how it had been possible. As one of them said: “If you believe in it I guess it is right.”
“I was lucky not to have cancer but I am convinced that without parallel-acupuncture I should have been wheel chaired for five years. Instead I often work for fifty hours weekly at the airport and I am so happy that I didn’t have to leave my working place.”
Esbjerg, Denmark
April 2nd, 2003