A world less delicious
An hour later I'm standing before John for the second time. The fire in my gut is burning uncontrollably. The woman in line in front of me, seized by a fit of emotion, has fallen into John's lap, weeping. I'm tempted to do the same, but when I step toward him, he takes my hand softly in his and listens carefully to my intentions. The translator mentions the eye first. John shakes his head and tells me something in Portuguese, using his free hand to make a slashing motion.

"He can't improve your left eye, but he can stop your vision from getting worse," whispers the translator. "And he'll do his best to protect your right eye."

Then we get to the Crohn's.

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Before the whole question is translated, John cuts the translator off and says, "Cirurgia. Esa tarde." (Surgery. This afternoon.) With that, I'm led away, but I hear John's deep voice calling me back. He holds his right hand over his stomach and says something excitedly.

"He says you must be willing to go 6 months without eating red meat," the translator tells me. "Can you do that?"

My world has suddenly grown less delicious. I look John in the eye and nod my head. "Of course."

At lunch, I mull over the idea of physical surgery. John has been in and out of jail many times for practicing medicine without a license. Responding to the controversy surrounding John and his work, a team of Brazilian doctors and researchers analyzed 30 surgical procedures performed at the Casa. They examined cell samples from patients and the methods and tools employed in each procedure.

They published their findings in 2000 in Revista da Associação Médica Brasileira — the journal of the Brazilian Medical Association. "We wanted to make sure the surgeries weren't a fraud," says Alexander Mureira de Almeida, lead author of the study. "We found that John of God was really performing these surgeries without anesthetics or antiseptics, and largely without the presence of pain."

Follow-ups failed to find any incidence of infection. They documented no dramatic signs of recovery and suggested more research be conducted to monitor the short- and long-term effects of John's procedures. So far, there has been no research.

Opting for spiritual treatment
My intestinal uprising continues.

But I struggle back to the Casa for my appointment. They take me to a back room with 20 other people scheduled for surgery.

A grandmotherly woman comes in holding a tray of surgical tools like a batch of warm cookies: "Would anyone like to volunteer for physical surgery?" Four people (an eye-scraping candidate, two nasal-forceps patients, and a man with some large cuts on his back) follow her back out to the stage.

I've elected spiritual surgery. My pre-op team includes a man in a wheelchair, chanting in Portuguese, and a woman who speaks over him in a slow, deep voice: "Focus on the areas you wish for the Entities to work on. Place your hand on the places if you like."

So I place my left hand over my eye and my right hand over my belly button, close my other eye, and focus as instructed. John enters the room, and his powerful voice rises over those of the others. The repetitive, lulling chant stretches on for what feels like hours. I am neither physically touched nor, as far as I can tell, addressed personally, but when a woman tells us to open our eyes, I notice that the wail from my stomach has been reduced to a whimper. Fifteen minutes have passed since we first sat down.

She leads the five English speakers into a room with a picnic bench, where Matthew is waiting to give us the postoperative breakdown. "I know that it may not feel like it, but you have all just been through surgery," he says. "Please take it easy. Collect your herbs from the pharmacy, and go back to your rooms. You will sleep for 24 hours."

I have slept maybe 12 hours total since arriving in Brazil 5 days ago, so I'm not expecting much as I close the curtains in my room. My head hits the pillow, and I'm out for 23 hours.

'No magic pills here'
I 've seen scary postop instructions, but nothing quite like the nightmarish message that hangs in the Casa: No sex for 40 days after the operation; this includes any raising of sexual energies, not just orgasm. Under the section labeled "If you take herbs" is the prescription warning from hell:

2. No pig meat.

3. No hot spices: no chilies, no black/white/red pepper.

And I thought my gut hurt.

The idea of life without pepper, without wine, without beef and bacon, and most of all, without arousal, seems physiologically impossible. (I am assured by a Casa administrator later that "uncontrollable erections" — aren't they all? — are permitted.)

John is right about my diet. Spicy food, booze, and red meat are digestive challenges my intestines don't need. In the past, I'd kept on eating and drinking the stuff out of pure physiological fatalism: I am sick and will be for a long time, so why deprive myself of any pleasures that come my way?

The Casa breaks people of their resignation. "There are no magic pills here," I've been told. "You must be willing to work hard for your transformation."

Pain in remission
It's Super Bowl Sunday — Colts versus Bears — and my dad and I are glued to the tube, making quick work of a pizza and a six-pack. We're in our hotel room, high above Brasilia, and okay, the pizza is meatless, the beer is nonalcoholic, and the play-by-play is in Portuguese. Still, we're pumped.

At halftime, we pack. My suitcase is swollen with white garments and herbs. The face of Saint Ignatius adorns each little bottle. Inside are 40 capsules stuffed with dried flowers of the passion-fruit tree. They have been blessed by John of God but have no proven therapeutic value. Tucked in next to them are two large bottles of Pentasa, my drug of necessity for nearly 8 years.

My dad is packing holy water blessed by John, a cache of crystals he bought in Abadiânia, and a double dose of pills to shower upon my brothers.

Before bed we toast Saint Ignatius and knock back a flower-petal pill with a swig of warm N.A. beer.

"What do you think of this stuff?" I ask, tilting the bottle.

"I guess we better get used to it."

Taking healing into own hands
The question everyone asks is the hardest one to answer: Did it work? Did what work, exactly? Did Saint Ignatius operate through John to soothe my swollen small intestine? Did John channel Oswaldo Cruz, a 19th-century Brazilian doctor and scientist, to protect my right eye from a future blackout?

I can't prove either effect. But I do feel remarkably better. My eye remains unchanged (as John forecasted), but except for a really painful month following my encounters with John of God, my Crohn's symptoms have relented. And yes, there could be a lot of reasons for the remission of my gut pain, including happy coincidence. Or it could be that John of God reached my disease in a way it had never been reached before.

As Dr. Isaacs said when I told her about my progress, "Why not?"

And Blue Cross will be happy to know that for the first time since my dad was diagnosed with Crohn's, he's down to a token dose of prescription medicine.

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Discuss: How far would you go for treatment?

But you don't need an 8,000-mile Hail Mary miracle mission to create your own remarkable tale of recovery. In fact, you may need much more than that. My dad's new reality comes after 2 weeks at Casa de Dom Inácio, but it is also the culmination of 14 years of trial and error, tweaking, and fine-tuning. Healing doesn't just mean filling the prescriptions or even following all the advice in Men's Health magazine (though it does mean those things, too).

"Western medicine doesn't hold all the answers," says Dr. Oz. "Healing cannot always be described in numbers."

A doctor once told me that my best shot at living with Crohn's was to stay healthy long enough for researchers to find a stronger drug. I can't wait on pharmaceutical companies to manufacture my solution. If they make it, I might take it, but until then, I'll do what my dad did: take the healing into my own hands.

It's an art form we all need to learn.

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