When my wife's cousin was in her early 20's she developed a great deal of hearing loss after a trip to the beach with some friends. One friend said the same thing had happened to him when he'd had a wax buildup that got softened up by the ocean water. He suggested she go to the doctor to get it cleared out. She had been practicing a system of healing through food for about a year, and had experienced many benefits from it. Like many new "converts" she was pretty rigidly opposed to using any kind of drugs or violent procedures to cure diseases. But the procedure he described sounded pretty non-invasive. Squirt some kind of solution into the ear and wash out the wax, and rinse out the solution. Off she went, expecting to be hearing by the end of her visit.
But it didn't work out that way. It turned out she had no wax problem. She had developed a cyst in her head that was pressing on something that was blocking her hearing. The doctor she saw wanted her to take cortisone and to have surgery to remove the cyst. She was mortified. This was far more invasive than she could accept. In shock, and a bit explosively, I tried to explain to the doctor why I couldn't do that. He cut her off mid sentence and and told her if she didn't immediately start taking the cortisone and schedule the surgery, she'd be dead in six months.
That was pretty distressing, but she just couldn't get on board with his proposal. She told him she'd have to go home and think about it. Over the next couple of months there were many twists, turns, ups and downs, terror, pain, anger, laughter and hope, but she did recover from the cyst without having to resort to drugs or surgery. It was necessary, however, for her to move for a while to live with others practicing the nutritional system, to receive help and more education in how it worked, because she did not know enough to be able to do it on her own.