Georg Strobele was both my doctor and my friend. It was a year ago today that he passed on. We were the same age he and I. He played squash, he ate healthy. If ever you could say that someone really knew how to live life, you could say that about Georg.
I like to say that I ‘inherited’ him when my previous GP retired. From the very beginning Dr Strobele was not a typical doctor. He spent a lot of time with his patients and he had a wealth of knowledge beyond his young age. He had studied medicine in South Africa where he was born of German parents and had travelled extensively, studying alternative medicines in places such as China. It was this quest for alternative therapies that led him in the direction of being more than just an MD – he was truly a healer and could be credited with making the lives of many of his patients better. It was he who first suggested that I see his naturopath, Jackie, when I developed cancer years ago. Through Jackie’s high dose anti-oxidant therapy my cancer started to shrink. My oncologist was amazed since I had been refusing radiation for almost a year. Without ‘conventional’ treatment I was told that I would eventually die and yet here was the cancer definitely getting smaller. Georg rooted his belief in a complimentary approach to healing by combining traditional western medicine with the naturopathic skills of his colleague, Jackie. He also fell in love with her. They were the perfect couple, both in practice and in private. He was at the height of his career and the happiest that I have ever seen him in his personal life.
There is hardly a day that goes by that I do not miss my friend. I think about how he must be smiling down on Lennie and I for our couragous decisions in fighting Lennie’s cancer with unconventional treatments such as Laetrile, Iscador, Hyperthermia and nutritional support. I know he would be proud of me for trusting in his wisdom and that of nature; in a belief of being able to cure disease -not just treat the symptoms – and for taking a whole-body approach to defeating as formidable a foe such as cancer. I remember his dry wit and his humor and the way he was always up for a challenge, whether he was facing some new adventure, challenge, or taking on the College of Physicians for getting his patients other therapies when the conventional ones in Canada were not working. He would never say to anyone that there was “nothing more that he could do”. He was always ready and willing to do more. And as many great pioneers in medicine he was hounded by the narrow-minded, binomial thinking bureaucrats of the CMA. (In 1847 a Dr Semmelweis was fired from a Vienna hospital for his ‘alternative’ idea that did not sit well with the regulatory board of the day: Dr Semmelweis had insisted that nurses and the other doctors wash thier hands before delivering babies or performing surgery. He was fired for this radical idea, even though the mortality rate of childbirth dropped from 18% to 1% while he was on staff there. It would be another 20 years, before Louis Pasteur discovered germs, that hand washing would become mandatory in hospitals.) It was almost a decade ago that Georg was using Light Therapy. Scoffed at then, it is now used in the treatment of cancer at some hospitals.
And so it was a year ago today that he passed away suddenly of a brain hemorrhage without any warning signs or symptoms. This great man, whom I am proud to say was my friend. This man who touched so many other lives and cured so many. He saved the lives of some and gave others back the quality and dignity to theirs’. I feel that by helping Lennie treat his cancer naturally, I am also paying homage to Georg and trusting with every fiber of my being that we are doing the exact, right thing.
I will miss you and your wisdom forever Georg and will honor your memory by passing on whatever knowledge I can and helping whoever crosses my path.
Auf Wiedersehen my friend. You were taken much too soon.
Kathryn