Most people try to avoid any contact with bees. However, to some people, honey bees are miniature flying drugstores that could reverse the course of multiple sclerosis. It is a controversial treatment known as bee venom therapy.
A bee being placed on Kelly's lower back
The bee was placed on her lower back
Kelly Ames was in high school when multiple sclerosis crept into her life. By the time Kelly was 22, her symptoms became impossible to ignore:
“One day I was at work and I was walking down a flight of stairs—there must have been, like, 12 stairs—where I just lost the feeling in my feet… and I fell down a flight of stairs. And the women in my office… I explained to them that my feet sometimes get numb.”
Medical tests revealed the cruel truth—Kelly had MS. The unforgiving disease first robbed her of the ability to walk alone. Before long, the disease attacked Kelly’s eyes:
“Within that week, I lost the vision in my left eye and I had no control over my muscles. It was just very devastating. I hated to depend on other people, but, at times, I needed other people to help me.”
A bee being palced behind Kelly's ear
Bees also stung Kelly behind her ear
Kelly’s doctor put her on steroids. These potent drugs can temporarily relieve the symptoms of MS. But for Kelly, the steroids could not stop the advance of the disease:
“Having the steroid dripped into my arm, I would sit there for an hour and a half looking at other MS people coming in the wheelchairs and wondering if that’s going to be me someday, in that wheelchair.”
Then Kelly met a woman who had literally walked away from her wheelchair after stinging herself with honeybees. For Kelly Ames, it was a last ray of hope. Kelly’s father brought her to a local beekeeper who had been helping MS patients for years. The rest would be up to Kelly:
“He told me that he didn’t want to be bothered by me if I wasn’t serious about it. He said, you have to do this for six months straight every other day, faithfully. He scared me when he said that because I realized I really had to take the responsibility of sticking to this. And I did.”