Around the hospital medical wards it took just one sniff of talcum powder and the sneezing would begin. WIth an over active immune system I was miserable and exhausted.

My hay fever was out of control, and swallowing Anti-Histamine's in greater quantities wasn't an option. I needed a cure!

Around this time a fiery inflamed area developed on my face. Only the size of a fingernail it loomed ominously in my reflection.

Diagnosed as a skin cancer the specialist assured me that treatment was unlikely to cause any burning or disfigurement. Hey, this was my twenty-one year old face so that appointment was never kept!

Holidays were due, so deciding to do my own due diligence on the subject, I boarded a coach for home.

When I arrived I spotted 'The Grape Cure' on the living room table and immediately read it from cover to cover. Convinced that maybe this would be the answer I determined to give it a go. Boxes of 'in season' grapes were bought at the market, and with my 21 year old vanity at stake I began to eat grapes.

The regime was to try and eat a kilogram of grapes every few hours. When really feeling deprived I chewed up the pips! Sometimes I just drank cool clear water.

After about four days, everything took a turn for the worse. The inflammation doubled in size, grew fiery red, and ugly.

The hay fever increased into long and exhausting bouts of sneezes. Rather than be tempted to swallow one of my precious pills to give some relief I flushed all the tablets away.

It was a real surprise in another couple of days to realise the hay fever had abruptly ceased. At the same time the inflammation lost its fire, shrank, and within days completely vanished. I was elated!

In all my nursing experience I'd never seen anything like this happen before, and enthusiastically continued on with grapes for a further two weeks. My skin took on a sort of translucent glow and despite the tropical heat I didn't need deodorant.

You never take your health for granted when you recover after hitting a wall. I became aware of how little I knew about treating disease without drugs.

At that time I never dreamed that what I learned about raw foods and chlorophyll in particular, would be put to good use later on to help our daughter recover from Crohn's Disease without drugs.

Watch out for chlorophyll rich, raw 'Groovy Smoothies' coming up!