Introduction

Mitchell May, a 27-year-old man from Northridge, seems quiet and friendly enough, certainly not the kind of guy you would expect to see in a fight. But six years ago Mitchell became involved in a battle that forced him to take on the entire orthopedic staff at UCLA. He was fighting to save his life and his right leg, both almost lost in a head-on crash.

The outcome is so spectacular that Mitchell is more than a winner; he is medical history. He has accomplished a first for the human race by regenerating an extraordinary amount of muscle, nerve and bone in his right leg, a feat unknown to medical science until now.

Doctors have long suspected regeneration was possible and have had some success with children and in lab experiments with animals. But never before has an adult regenerated so much in such a short time. In 1972 when Mitchell’s accident occurred, he had only a small nodule of his calf muscle left. Today it is 85% normal. There is no other case comparable to his.

This phenomenon is the result of an unusual combination of efforts: Mitchell’s will to survive; doctors; medical technology; and the assistance of Jack Gray, a therapist, now 68 years young, who specializes in what he calls transfer of energy.

The remarkable progress Mitchell made is a mystery to the doctors who worked on his case, and the supplement of unorthodox healing methods has raised questions about its validity that most of them chose to ignore. Yet, the evidence exists. There are many instances of “miraculous” results obtained from unorthodox healing, but Mitchell’s is one of the few to be fully documented. His condition was known before the unorthodox treatment began and was obviously not of a hysterical nature. X-rays and reports written by the hospital staff carefully documented his progress during treatment. Today, a very lengthy file stands on record, as does Mitchell in defiance of the doctors’ prophesy that he would never be able to save his leg.

September 1972

After a collision on a rainy road in Alabama, Mitchell was taken to a small hospital where doctors were sure he would not survive his injuries. His lungs had collapsed and his right leg was almost severed, every bone from the hip down broken. Doctors wanted to amputate because there was so much muscle, nerve and bone lost below the knee. They decided to wait until Mitchell’s body stabilized. It didn’t.

He went into shock and continued to bleed so profusely that the hospital ran out of blood and nearby townspeople were bused in for transfusions.

Heavily sedated and unconscious most of the time, Mitchell thought he had a broken leg and would be fine in a few months. When he found out his true condition, he made a serious decision to go against doctor’s recommendations to amputate. After a week he was transferred to a larger hospital in Tennessee where they hoped better technology would save him.

Marvin and Lorraine May, Mitchell’s parents, flew out from California to be by his side. Three weeks after the transfer to Tennessee, they made arrangements to bring Mitchell to UCLA. Prior to the trip, doctors put a metal plate in the leg to hold the severed parts together. In a full body cast, his leg bleeding and infected, Mitchell made the cross-country trip in hopes of finding the help he so desperately needed. Instead, he found an even greater wall of resistance.

“When Mitchell came here he had a displaced fracture in his right leg and the bone was sticking out through the skin,” said Dr. Edgar Dawson, assistant professor of orthopedics at UCLA and the man who was in charge of this case.

“The injury was grossly infected, unstable and there was a lot of tissue loss. The chance of healing it seemed extremely remote and it was the consensus of opinion of a conference of forty doctors that the leg should be amputated.

“Also, Mitchell had pain in his leg from causalgia, which is one of the most painful conditions known. It’s basically a nerve pain. You know how it feels when a dentist hits a nerve in your tooth? Well, it was that kind of pain and there is no good treatment for it.”

A series of minor operations were performed to remove pieces of infected bone. The fractures in his leg were not set because the doctors felt it was too long past the time of injury. High doses of antibiotics were being administered, but infections continued. Mitchell still insisted that his leg not be amputated unless the infection was certain to cause brain damage.

Doctors predicted Mitchell’s leg would be a useless, painful limb even if they could save it. This was frightening to Mitchell because the pain was literally killing him.

“At one point during an operation I had to stay awake so they could find out if I had any feeling left in my foot. They poked pins into me and were amazed that I had sensitivity left in my foot. But the main thing was that I had sensitivity past my foot.

“Even when I was doped up, someone just had to walk near the foot of my bed and I would wake up screaming. Everybody thought I was just paranoid, but I would swear that someone was walking into my foot.

“The pain was so bad that I had pulled out about half the hair in my beard. If I wasn’t in pain I was scared to death of it coming.”

Acupuncture and hypnosis had been tried with no success. The pain-relieving effects of morphine had begun to diminish.

Mitchell’s weight went down from 146 to 97 pounds.

It was about this time, three weeks after Mitchell’s admittance to UCLA hospital, that his mother made an urgent call to Dr. Thelma Moss, head of Neuropsychiatric Institute’s Parapsychology Lab.

She spoke with Dr. Moss about anything she might be able to do to help relieve her son’s pain. Dr. Moss referred the case to Jack Gray. In experiments at her lab Jack had shown a marked skill in hypnotism and transfer of healing energy—called by some people laying on of hands.

Jack agreed to see what he could do if the doctors gave their consent. They did.

Mitchell knew nothing about unorthodox healing at the time and when told about some “healer” who might come to see him, he didn’t know what to expect.

“My only knowledge of this kind of stuff came from TV, like ‘Dark Shadows’ or something. A part of me said, ‘oh, he’s going to come in here and do a lot of weird hocus-pocus,’ but another part said, ‘let him come in and put me to sleep and when I wake up the pain will be gone.’”

When Jack arrived that night at six o’clock Mitchell was surprised to see a quite ordinary looking man with a slight resemblance to Fred Astaire. As Mitchell watched him, though, something happened.

Jack started to walk into the room and when he got to Mitchell’s bed, he detoured around the foot of it. He was the first, and only one who sensed that standing too near the foot of the bed could cause his patient pain. Mitchell was intrigued by this sign, that someone understood what he was going through. Jack’s manner indicated a very different approach, as though he had brought a kind of coolness into the tense hospital room.

“Jack came over and introduced himself and put his hands on my forehead. He told me to relax, that we’d see what we could do. And for the first time in 2-1/2 months I relaxed. It was beautiful.”

Jack ran his hands lightly above Mitchell’s body; at a distance of two or three inches to sense and feel areas of weakness, strength and pain.

“The most important thing for me to do was take care of that pain,” Jack explained. I doubt whether Mitchell could have lasted much longer with that pain.”

About walking around the edge of the bed, Jack said, “The energy field, or aura, around Mitchell’s injured leg had enlarged so much that it was extended over the edge of the bed. Walking into the energy field was as painful to Mitchell as walking into his leg.”

When Mitchell fell asleep after his nightly medication Jack began to work to transform the sleep into a state of hypnosis. He says he had to contact the subconscious, the mind that controls all the bodily processes without the conscious mind knowing it.

“I began to talk to him, knowing his subconscious would be aware of my voice. The subconscious functions by habit and his had formed the habit of hurting, so I had to make it change. I had to make it pay attention to what it was suppose to be doing—healing.

“I would tell him, ‘you desire to be normal and natural, healthy and strong. You desire very much to save that leg by the power of your mind. By your own faith and belief and trust in yourself.’ Those were the words I used.”

Jack talked six solid hours that first night, six hours the next and five the next night. He also made magnetic passes over Mitchell’s head and body. After three nights the pain that had tortured Mitchell’s body suddenly stopped. Within two weeks he was free of all pain-killing medicine. The doctors were surprised.

“We had tried acupuncture and hypnosis, but without success,” Dawson admitted. “I don’t know if it was the ‘faith healing,’ the suggestions, or what, but something stopped Mitchell’s causalgia and it just shut right off. That is highly unusual and I don’t know why it happened.”

Jack continued to work almost every night with Mitchell for the next couple of months. With the pain gone the infections cleared up and the healing process began to accelerate.

Mitchell was told by his doctor that although the pain was gone the bones would never be able to bear weight. That meant full leg braces with a wheelchair for back-up the rest of his life.

However, after eight months in the hospital with both medical care and frequent sessions with Jack Gray, x-rays showed a healing process taking place in the bone. After eleven months Mitchell was out of the wheelchair, walking with braces and crutches.

Jack continued to work with Mitchell once or twice a week. The bones aligned and knit together, despite the fact they had never been set.

Dr. Dawson remained calm. “I would have given Mitchell less than a ten-percent chance to ever heal that bone and that would have been with multiple operations. But that’s not the way it turned out at all. We put him in a cast and assumed in several months he would come back for a bone graft. But that wasn’t necessary. The bone healed. I never expected it would heal.”

The regenerative process in Mitchell’s case was highlighted on an ABC-TV Eyewitness News Report on psychic phenomenon in 1974. Anchorwoman Christine Lund interviewed Dr. Dawson and Dr. Moss. They filmed Jack working with Mitchell. The report gave 360,000 viewers the chance to watch Mitchell take his first steps without crutches.

The film showed Mitchell standing with crutches which are taken away. Jack then urges Mitchell to walk, telling him to remember how he used to walk. Surrounded by the bright camera lights, the continual encouragement of Jack, and the few people who had believed in his fight all along, Mitchell finally did what he had been determined to do from the moment the doctors said amputate: He took a step and he started to walk!

“I watched the news on TV that night,” Mitchell recalled, “and it really doesn’t look like a big deal to anyone else. All you see is a skinny guy with long hair and a beard, let go of a crutch and move his leg. But no one knows how I was feeling inside. I was really scared. I felt like a giant and the earth was far, far away. The only aid I had were the special shoes I wore, because my right leg was shorter than the left from having lost all that bone. “I felt scared and I was weak, but it didn’t hurt. I knew I could do it.”

Yet Another Fight

After eleven months in the hospital Mitchell went home. It was then he discovered another side of Jack Gray. Jack felt Mitchell should give up the vegetarian diet he had been on, but Mitchell disagreed. He found that when it comes to persuasion, Jack Gray is no Fred Astaire.

“I hadn’t eaten meat for five years before I met Jack, but he insisted I start eating meat again and it became a real issue.

“My wife and I were living in an apartment in Santa Monica. Jack and I fought like crazy men, yelling at the top of our lungs. I’m sure the neighbors wondered what the heck was going on.”

“Finally one night we were in a restaurant and I was eating a salad, as usual, and Jack said I had to start eating meat or he would stop working with me. I ordered a steak on the spot.”

Jack firmly believes a person can alter their eating habits only if they do it slowly and if their body can take it. In Mitchell’s case he insisted meat was vital to the healing process.

“He still had open wounds and you could see down to the bones,” Jack stated flatly. “I told Mitchell he needed meat if he was going to grow back the tissue he needed in that leg. It would never happen if he just kept eating yogurt, lettuce and soy beans.”

Today Mitchell looks back on that time with Jack with as much affection as the times when he was gentle, supportive or a source of strength. Mitchell took it all and had emerged victorious.

In January, 1976 Mitchell walked into Dr. Dawson’s office with no aid except his special shoes. Mitchell looked at his doctor, stood on his tip-toes and danced around in a full circle. Then he looked at the doctor again.

Dr. Dawson stood there characteristically with his hands in the pockets of his white jacket. He told Mitchell he was a lucky fellow. But what he found in the examination that day, made even Dawson break his unruffled countenance.

”I drove here by myself,” he said and gave the doctor one of his most endearing smiles.

“First we looked at my femur and tibia,” said Mitchell, “and Dawson’s face lit up. He said every one of my broken bones were completely healed and like new. I said that was nice and asked about my ankle. He had told me it was so badly damaged in the accident there was no hope of it ever working again. He was puzzled that I could walk on it pain-free because the ankle was still misaligned. But I sensed a change had taken place.

“We put the ankle x-ray up on the viewing screen and Dawson was absolutely amazed. He said, ‘I never believed it possible, but you have reformed an ankle bone!’ He also told me that my healing process was phenomenal and that saving my leg and being able to walk on it was like a miracle.”

The Fall of ‘76

Mitchell’s case was almost a closed book when in another fateful fall he broke his right leg a second time. Again it happened on a wet, slippery surface, this time, stairs. The fall was not due to any structural weakness in his leg. In fact it broke in the only place which had not been injured in the accident!

It turned out to be a propitious event, for it led to the removal of a metal plate implanted in Mitchell’ s leg from hip to knee. After surgery doctors advised he would be “useless” for about three to six months as the thirteen screw holes left in his leg made the bone “about as strong as a piece of Swiss cheese.”

Jack advised Mitchell to disregard the negative suggestion. He worked on Mitchell only a few times after the operation as he had taught Mitchell how to accelerate his own healing process.

Six weeks after the operation Mitchell was without a cast, using only a cane for occasional support.

Soon he was walking again, going on hikes in the country and helping friends move heavy furniture up and down steps. He is especially pleased that now he can sit on the floor and hug his knees, an indication of how flexible his injured leg has become.

Mitchell is scheduled for a new set of x-rays very soon and is excited about what they may show.

“My right leg was 2-1/4 inches shorter than my left after the accident. Today it is only one inch shorter. That means in my tibia I must have regenerated an inch and a half of bone! The new x-ray will show exactly what’s happened.”

What Made It work?

The first thing to take into consideration in assessing Mitchell’s case is the amount of time it took—almost six years to date. The healing is still going on. Most people are too impatient to endure the long process involved in transfer of energy. However, the result can be fantastic if one can get away from the idea of “instantaneous” cure.

Though the pain left swiftly, becoming whole again took a tremendous commitment on Mitchell’s part. He had to weather the ups and downs, the shifting currents of doubt and certainty that he felt throughout the ordeal. Jack points to this determination to fight off the negativity of pain and disease, as a quality people can use all the time to stay healthy.

“Mitchell was using the automatic ability everybody has to concentrate on themselves and change themselves through their thinking. By changing your way of thinking you can change everything within you—blood pressure, breathing, organ, glands, everything. And anybody can do it if they train themselves, the way they train themselves to read or drive a car. Unfortunately, most people pay more attention to what’s bothering them than to what should be normal and natural.

“For instance, when all Mitchell could think about was that pain, he began to want to die. He couldn’t get well. I helped him direct his will to live and as soon as he accepted the suggestion his whole system went back to work, working in a normal, natural way.

“When I said the pain would go away and then it did, that really changed his mind. Once you change the mind, anything is possible.

“The change in the flesh and bone proved something was happening. The actual healing began when I started to make magnetic passes.

“In making passes I can feel temperature changes as I pass my hands over the body. Each pore in your skin is like an airshaft, shooting out currents of hot or cold air. By feeling the different temperatures I can tell where something is wrong. Then I direct the sub-conscious to either give or take energy. I know it works, but why it works is just as mysterious to me as to anyone else. “I know that the energy is electro-magnetic in nature and follows some of the laws of magnetism, but there is no one yet who has investigated it deeply enough to make it a science, as well as an art.”

Jack gives a great deal of credit to the work done by many of the medical professionals who worked with Mitchell. He has no quarrel with doctors and feels an integration of orthodox and unorthodox methods would produce extraordinary results more often.

Doctors are still skeptical. Not one of them at UCLA asked Jack what he did with Mitchell to stop the pain or accelerate the healing to the point of regeneration. Some credit should be given to Dr. Dawson for at least speaking publicly about this case, which all of the other doctors on staff refused to do.

Mitchell is grateful to all of those who helped him through the long years of struggle—his parents, his wife, the blood donors, doctors, prayers of friends and strangers. Most of all, he is grateful to Jack Gray.

“Jack’s whole thing is to heal yourself and he always said he wasn’t doing anything except showing me how to heal myself. He said if I could get in touch with my whole self, that that was the healing power. But I wanted to live and I wanted to save my leg and it was all going downhill until he arrived. Then everything changed. He was the catalyst.”

Returning the Favor

Mitchell May is vice-president and research director of the UHRF. He is now completing his master’s degree in psychology and plans scientific evaluation of the kind of work Jack does, so it will someday be a more available and acceptable adjunct to the medical profession.