★★★★★
In 1995, I was living in a small rural town without medical facilities when my bowel ruptured. When my husband got me to the hospital in a neighboring town, they did emergency surgery and removed 14 inches of my descending bowel. Because I had peritonitis, they weren't able to close the incision completely. It had to heal on it's own. I was taught by a home health nurse to pack the opening, which went from my breastbone to my pubic bone and was gaping open about four inces across. Each day I would wet yards and yards of gauze with sterile saline, fill the wound and cover it with a dressing. I was told it would take three months for the sides to pull together and close. I had comfrey growing in my yard, and decided to do what I could to help myself. I made strong comfrey tea with the sterile saline and soaked the gauze in the tea before packing the wound. I don't have to tell you how gross it looked with the green gauze soaked with body fluids, but I watched, each day, facinated, as tiny translucent, flesh colored globes of granulation tissue grew in the bottom of the wound. The home health nurse came ince a week and was amazed at how rapidly the wound was closing and how free of infection it remained. When I went for my six week checkup, the doctor said, "Your nurse has told me what you've been doing. I want to see this. " When he removed the dressing (which I'd put on for his benefit) he said, "Well, I'll be --------. " All that was under the dressing was a clean white scar, completely healed. I've used comfrey, as have these other people, for many purposes, for many years, but this was the most spectacular. Right now I'm using it as a poultice on a biopsy of a cancer on my nose while I'm waiting the results. Whatever the outcome, I know I'll heal well with comfrey.
