SHE'S back - and she feels like a new woman.

Multiple sclerosis victim Yasmin Heesom has returned to York after ten weeks at a New York complementary therapy clinic.

And friends and carers can hardly believe the transformation. "Yasmin has got her soul back," said carer Debbie Walker.

Her former athletics coach, Dave Curwell, who helped fund the trip to America, said: "It's incredible. The change is really amazing."

Before she went to the Schachter Centre, the 39-year-old mother was wracked by crippling pain, had double vision and had difficulties speaking clearly. And for the past six years, she had been unable to use a chair lift to get upstairs and so had to sleep in the living room of her home off Fulford Road. Her pain meant she had not enjoyed an undisturbed night's sleep in many years.

Now she says her pain is 80 per cent better and there are times with no pain at all.

"I am sleeping so well - all through the night. I am so relaxed," she said.

She can also use the chair lift to sleep in her own bedroom, can speak clearly, brush her own teeth, wash herself and put on her own T-shirt. But she is determined to continue making progress, with her ultimate aim being to get back on her feet.

Yasmin's treatment included an astonishing variety and number of vitamins, nutrients and enzymes, taken orally and intravenously, hypobaric oxygen treatment, acupuncture, chiropractic and also mind-body therapy.

Debbie says this was crucially important in helping Yasmin develop a positive frame of mind with which to deal with her illness.

In her last days in America, she was also treated with a new device called a Sonotron, involving the use of modulated radio frequencies to produce a corona, a blue arc of light. Yasmin says it had amazing results in combating her pain and relaxing her. She hopes one can be brought back to Yorkshire to continue the treatment here - if they can find someone medically qualified who can accommodate it.

Debbie ran up huge personal debts helping pay for Yasmin to stay on in America for much longer than originally intended.

She says her long-term aim is to start up a similar clinic to the Schachter Centre in North Yorkshire, enabling other people in a similar plight to enjoy the same benefits as Yasmin - without having to travel all the way to America.

Updated: 11:04 Saturday, June 30, 2001