Léa & I

This is my best friend Léa.

Léa speaks five languages,

cannot stop eating Haribo candy peaches

and has cystic fibrosis.

Which means that she was born with thick mucus trapped in her lungs

and so is hyper susceptible to bacteria

that could limit her ability to breathe.

It means she takes upwards of twenty digestive pills a day,

means she will go to the hospital every three months

to test her lung function for the rest of her life.

And it means, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

that her life expectancy hovers around 37.

On average,

for most people.

But Léa isn't really most people.

She doesn't talk about cystic fibrosis.

She refuses to take antibiotics.

She almost never does her breathing treatments.

Léa smokes.

But she's fine.

She's more than fine, actually.

She's more alive than anyone I've ever met.

Léa falls in love every three months,

loses her phone every two weeks

and works out doing flying trapeze.

For my 21st birthday

Léa handed me a cake with 21 joints on it.

For my 22nd birthday

-Léa made me jump off a bridge. -

And at 23,

as we graduated,

she convinced me to take a trip.

One, she promised, would change my life.

In three months, we traveled through an indigenous village in rural Jalisco,

a hippie beach town on the Mexican coast,

the Peruvian Amazon,

and the Atacama Desert in Chile.

Léa was sure that in Latin America,

there was another way to heal herself

and she was ready to find it.

And as always

I was coming with her.

The summer after we graduated from college,

Léa tested positive for a dangerous bacteria in her lungs:

Pseudomonas.

Five years before, according to Léa,

a woman in Mexico City had cured her of the same bacteria, using magnets.

The only biomagnetist in California, according to Yelp,

was in a strip mall in Upland.

-Hello. -Hi.

-Hi. -How are you?

Magnets are so cheap

and they have been around forever.

And it's a shame that people don't know

all the things that we can do with magnets.

-Do you know what cystic fibrosis is? -Yes.

-Right. So I have cystic fibrosis. -Okay.

One of the main dangers of the sickness is that

you can catch bad bacteria

that normal people would eradicate.

These are my most powerful magnets.

We don't want to waste too much time looking for a spot, right?

Right. So, no, it's for sure in the lungs.

With basic detox, we do lungs, kidney, pancreas, bladder,

ascending and descending colon.

And the basic detox addresses the Pseudomonas?

Trust me, once you body returns to a pH balance,

it won't tolerate any toxins.

We're going to give this until four, which is more than one and a half hours.

Okay, thank you.

Do you think this is really going to work?

I mean

I don't know, you know...

We flew to Mexico City

and as we get there, this woman does this.

But now this is like my life, and then, she just says, like it's gone.

I was like, "Are you sure it's okay?"

"I know, I checked, it's gone." And there's no more of it, you know.

And then maybe my mom

You know, you're just like...

Yeah, we like walked out and then came back to L.A.

and then did the the test and then it was gone, you know?

And like, maybe it's the antibiotics, but for me

it was just such a...

-It was just crazy, you know. -

And no one, like no one knows about this and like,

in moments where you're like close to death

like something so important that you're... you're down to just like

throw away all your beliefs,

there's things that are crazy that happen

if you're open to it, but I've no idea if this is true, though.

Wow, I can really do feel different.

-You do, huh? -

A few days later, Léa's test came back negative for Pseudomonas.

And even though we couldn't prove it was the biomagnetism,

it was all the evidence she needed.

Léa felt like she had found

an inexplicable alternative to antibiotics.

And by her logic, if that was possible,

then the world was full of inexplicable solutions.

And she wanted to find one.

Or a few.

So she made a plan for us.

We would start in Mexico City and go south from there

going wherever and talking to whoever we needed.

She was ready to try anything,

essential oils, plant medicines,

shamanic ceremonies,

horse therapy,

and frog poison.

It's just that I really want frog poison.

Life was easy for me in L.A.

I was born into an Iranian Jewish family

with an elaborate web of on aunts, uncles,

grandparents, sisters and cousins in L.A.

who are all quite sure that I did not need to go off to South America

hunting a cure for an incurable disease

I didn't even have.

Actually, after hearing a brief outline of our plan,

my mother yelled

that I would get kidnapped somewhere in Mexico

and then she would get my fingers in the mail, demanding ransom money.

She was...

fifteen months.

I have a very bad memory in general, but that moment

is stuck in my mind forever.

What were you thinking was going to happen to her?

I was thinking that I should...

I don't want to speak about this now.

Okay, okay.

I was thinking...

You do it.

Come already.

I don't want to talk about it now.

I mean, we were expecting to see her with more, more issues, you know.

Um...

But she's Léa, she's Léa and she...

thought that... I can't really explain.

Especially because it seems like...

I mean, she doesn't do her treatments so well.

-I know. -Right now.

I know she doesn't do it.

Well, I don't.

I think she's going a little too far.

-You think so? -Yeah.

Because of you think... like, in what way?

I think she's taking too much risk.

Sometimes I think that she lives, she acts like if she wasn't sick.

That summer,

when it was time for Léa's checkup in Brussels

- - I went with her.

One, two, three.

- - There you go.

That will do.

Okay.

Do you smoke?

Sometimes. Very rarely.

So you have a few smokes here and there.

This last year, would you say your symptoms have evolved?

Yes, I've been coughing a bit more.

- Have you taken antibiotics? - No.

I hesitated.

I thought, since I'd be seeing you full time...

You should have taken antibiotics.

Sorry.

Last time, I tried to make you take antibiotics,

just think about it twice a day, morning and evening.

You don't do it, and you don't look bad, that's for sure.

But what's also true is that,

if you get worse, you probably won't notice immediately.

The problem I have with antibiotics, it's not due to time, it's...

- You're scared of them. - Exactly,

just the idea of antibiotics killing bacteria, I just...

I know it kills good stuff too,

so I wouldn't mind them for a month,

but taking them non stop, I just can't.

It might sound stupid, but I just can't bring myself to doing it.

No, it's not stupid. You're in a much better state than others.

You won't live forever, but nothing ever does.

No, that's right.

Well, lots of people have died before you,

but you are taking a risk.

With chronic cough, you never know when to expect it.

-Oh, it's him. -

Dr. Lubeck warned me about the trip.

Léa could lose her pills.

She could contract another bacteria.

He said cystic fibrosis is vicious.

Even if she's fine now,

she could suddenly get really sick somewhere remote

and there wouldn't be a hospital for me to take her to.

The whole thing you have to keep the... you is, it's the...

Only the right finger moves,