Instincts and the good side of healing The road from diagnosis to recovery is a long and complicated one requiring more than a residency at Mayo. Recovery takes on many forms. Sometimes it begins by recovering one's own truth.
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My experiences with mainstream and alternative medicine since being diagnosed 10 years ago with a chronic, "incurable," vague, confusing and complicated form of leukemia include the woman who charged me $200 to tell me I had a voodoo curse on me.
There was the shaman with his shirt unbuttoned to his hairy waist who told me I would heal if I had an affair (with him?). There were the practitioners, mainstream and alternative, who tried to shame me into better lifestyle habits. "You know you're carrying excess weight," the macrobiotic counselor snapped at me three times in 45 minutes.
There was the internationally recognized leukemia doctor who used scare tactics to try to talk me into treatment with serious side effects, even though the literature differed as to whether I needed treatment, even though I kept telling him I wanted to stay away from the meds as long as possible, which is why he kept upping the ante, aka scaring the hell out of me. "I certainly wouldn't want to pick up the paper one day and read that Debra-Lynn Hook ... well you know.." (Died?)
This is a complicated disease with controversial approaches. There are no known mainstream cures. The only drugs are so debilitating for this particular disease that even docs say they shouldn't be administered until the person is suffering from the effects of the disease. No suffering? Better not to take the drugs. The problem comes when doc and patient disagree with what is suffering.
Those of us who remember in our primal minds when medicine, healing and recovery were instinctive look to see the whole picture, including patient, doctor and other practitioners who can help address and guide to wholeness of body, mind and spirit.
I’m “lucky.” Mine is a slow-smoldering condition. And so I had time, to live into an understanding that
took me in and out of the offices of both alt and mainstream practitioners -- naturopaths, chiropractors, macrobiotics counselors, shamen, psychotherapists, hypnotherapists, cranial sacral practitioners, acupuncturists, reiki practitioners and a plethora of mainstream doctors. Last winter, I drove myself to Boston in one day to a mainstream doc and a week later, to a macrobiotic counselor in Asheville.
I have learned there is no one-size-fit-all when it comes to individual health and that health is not just a science, but an art. Given the uncertainty, I have learned to start with trusting myself. If it doesn't resonate, I step away.
There was the shaman with his shirt unbuttoned to his hairy waist who told me I would heal if I had an affair (with him?). There were the practitioners, mainstream and alternative, who tried to shame me into better lifestyle habits. "You know you're carrying excess weight," the macrobiotic counselor snapped at me three times in 45 minutes.
There was the internationally recognized leukemia doctor who used scare tactics to try to talk me into treatment with serious side effects, even though the literature differed as to whether I needed treatment, even though I kept telling him I wanted to stay away from the meds as long as possible, which is why he kept upping the ante, aka scaring the hell out of me. "I certainly wouldn't want to pick up the paper one day and read that Debra-Lynn Hook ... well you know.." (Died?)
This is a complicated disease with controversial approaches. There are no known mainstream cures. The only drugs are so debilitating for this particular disease that even docs say they shouldn't be administered until the person is suffering from the effects of the disease. No suffering? Better not to take the drugs. The problem comes when doc and patient disagree with what is suffering.
Those of us who remember in our primal minds when medicine, healing and recovery were instinctive look to see the whole picture, including patient, doctor and other practitioners who can help address and guide to wholeness of body, mind and spirit.
I’m “lucky.” Mine is a slow-smoldering condition. And so I had time, to live into an understanding that
took me in and out of the offices of both alt and mainstream practitioners -- naturopaths, chiropractors, macrobiotics counselors, shamen, psychotherapists, hypnotherapists, cranial sacral practitioners, acupuncturists, reiki practitioners and a plethora of mainstream doctors. Last winter, I drove myself to Boston in one day to a mainstream doc and a week later, to a macrobiotic counselor in Asheville.
I have learned there is no one-size-fit-all when it comes to individual health and that health is not just a science, but an art. Given the uncertainty, I have learned to start with trusting myself. If it doesn't resonate, I step away.
Maybe some people have voodoo curses on them. But this diagnosis did not resonate with me. I never saw that practitioner again.
Maybe I need to address my sex life. But not with this particular sha-man. Out, he went.
Shame? This one was a long road that I have not finished traveling, yet I am learning to say more quickly: I don't care how good you are at dispensing meds, food or affairs. I cannot have this kind of energy near me.
On the good side, and there is a good side: I have found nurses, aka people in the trenches, who treat me with care and nurturing, who know so much more (in my opinion) than the (often well-meaning, but often myopic) doctors who aren't necessarily in bed with Big Pharma. They just simply have a paradigm. They live in the laboratory. And if brown rice doesn't fit their paradigm, it has no place. This is unlike one nurse, who told me that several patients told her they eat popcorn to raise their platelet count. "The popcorn stimulates their intestine and they produce more platelets." True or not? I just like that she is thinking outside the box.
On the good side is the acupuncturist who said "You are so much stronger than they want you to believe."
On the good side is the new mainstream doctor I am seeing who said "While I may recommend certain treatments, I realize the side effects are extreme and your decision to continue working with food and lifestyle is likely what I would do were I in your shoes."
On the good side is the reiki/acupressure practitioner who came to my house when I was too overcome to come to her and rubbed my jaw, so tight from stress clenching, until it finally quit hurting. And the hypnotherapist who hugged me with tears in her eyes as I was crying and the psychologist who called me when she heard I was in the hospital and the cranial-sacral therapist who went to JoAnn's Fabrics and got crochet stuff for me when I couldn't walk.
On the good side is the reiki/acupressure practitioner who came to my house when I was too overcome to come to her and rubbed my jaw, so tight from stress clenching, until it finally quit hurting. And the hypnotherapist who hugged me with tears in her eyes as I was crying and the psychologist who called me when she heard I was in the hospital and the cranial-sacral therapist who went to JoAnn's Fabrics and got crochet stuff for me when I couldn't walk.
On the good side is genuine care. Look at this 18-second video.
I am not absolutely averse, by the way, to anything at this point. I am not “healed,” not according to Western medicine. I still have leukemia. I am still seeking - and, I must say, surprising docs with how well I’m doing.
I am not absolutely averse, by the way, to anything at this point. I am not “healed,” not according to Western medicine. I still have leukemia. I am still seeking - and, I must say, surprising docs with how well I’m doing.
