Kidney Specialist Intrigued by Herbs

By Marian Liu, March 10, 2001, Correspondent, Alameda Times-Star Newspaper (San Francisco Bay Area Newspaper Group)

Patient’s health suddenly better

BERKELEY — Every single system in Sylvia Shornick’s body had catastrophic damage. Doctors repeatedly told her she wouldn’t make it.

Her liver, kidney, heart, respiratory and stomach had failed. Her body endured four surgeries and 14 heart attacks. Shornick, a 54-year-old former model, gained 50 pounds of fluids, becoming completely unrecognizable to her closest niece.

“She was a train wreck,” said Shornick’s doctor, Dr. John Mouratoff, a kidney specialist at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center.

But Friday, after almost a year of hospitalization at the University of California, San Francisco, and Alta Bates in Berkeley, she proved them all wrong.

Shornick came home with a smile on her face, eager to eat whatever her daughter, Christina Hackett, could cook up.

“It was closure,” said Hackett, who was by her side every day. “This is finally it, I can’t believe it.”

Hackett spent more than $200 for the homecoming meal. Leaving the hospital, she happily smeared her mother’s name off a large chart board as her cousin, Crystal Fenle, pushed Shornick out. Fenle was in tears, singing, “I believe I can fly, I believe I can touch the sky.”

They thought this day would never come.

Last March, Shornick suffered a brain aneurysm, which began her steady downslide. She was a senior at the University of California, Berkeley, studying philosophy, adding to her prior degrees in literature and biochemistry.

She was treated at UCSF, where she alleges she was given a drug that had adverse effects. The family has filed a malpractice lawsuit against the hospital. The hospital could not be reached for comment.

In May, Shornick was transferred to Alta Bates. Throughout the ordeal, Hackett began to research alternative medicines. Her father, James Shornick, was working with Hulda Clark, a researcher from San Diego who claimed she could cure cancer and other diseases.

He recommended Dr. Clark’s use of herbs to cure Shornick, and that began a fight with the Alta Bates staff to use the herbs. The hospital wouldn’t use anything not FDA-approved. Yet Christina swore by the remedies, maintaining they helped her mother walk and cured her daughter’s potential tumor.

Mouratoff came on to help Shornick. He met with the whole family and allowed the family to administer the herbs themselves, providing they signed a waiver.

“I don’t want everyone to go out and get these herbs believing that it’ll help,” said Mouratoff, who is taking more alternative medicine classes to learn more. “But it’s important to keep your mind open to it.”

Mouratoff is currently working with the Pharmaceutical and Therapeutic Board at the hospital so other patients can use alternative medicines if they want to. He admits the herbs did help with her digestive problems, but says it was a combination of the family’s and nursing staff’s care and support that healed her.

“Everyone had the common goal to get her home, so I just worked with that goal,” Mouratoff said.

Hackett now has a new goal for her mother — to get off dialysis.

Now a UC Berkeley sophomore, Hackett hopes to become a doctor someday. She wants to integrate what she learned about alternative medicine into her future practice. She is working with the school to help her mother graduate. Shornick is just three classes short of a philosophy degree. Officials said that if she couldn’t walk, they would present the diploma at her bedside.

But Shornick wants to be there. She wants to graduate. Her battle for her life is over, and walking across the Greek Theater is just the next step. Currently she has a live-in caretaker and is confined to a wheelchair.

Hackett has opened a trust fund to pay for Shornick’s care. Checks or money orders, payable to Sylvia Dennis, account #103-243909, can be mailed to The Mechanics Bank, 9996 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito, CA 94530.