Becoming Whole

Today my heart is aching for a few reasons, not the least of which is that a dear friend’s husband passed on a few days ago. He stood up against his cancer diagnosis, fearless, strong, and determined- and put his trust in his body and set his mind to recovery. While I understand that no medicine can guarantee anything all of the time, not chemo, not surgery, not herbal medicine, not energy medicine, it is still with great regret and sadness that I learned of his passing. He was an extraordinarily loved and loving man to his family and those whom he came into contact with, and I feel blessed to have known him and his family.

When I first began my journey into the world of Chinese Medicine it felt very much like today feels to me. I feel like this story wants to be told.

When I was a teenager, 15 years old maybe, my Granny, the strongest, funniest, most loving and supportive woman I’ve ever known was diagnosed with cancer. It wasn’t really talked about in our family, at least not with my brother and me, until she became visibly sick, but I knew that something was wrong. She began to lose some of her vibrancy, slowly, but steadily, and eventually I was told just how sick she was. I don’t really remember processing the thought that she could die. I just remember wanting to be with her all the time, I never really let myself think about why. She went through the conventional American standard cancer treatment- chemo, drugs, surgeries, radiation, of which I was told very little at the time, but I saw her losing her spirit.

One of the most powerful memories I have in my life was the day I was laying in bed with her looking through old photo albums. She was telling me who people were in these funny little faded square photographs with rounded corners. I wasn’t really concerned with the people in the pictures, and it was everything I had not to cry the whole time, but I just needed to be near her and know she was still there. I remember her getting a little confused and having difficulty remembering some of the names of people, and kind of getting frustrated with it, then in a sudden moment of clarity she looked up from the album and turned to me. She said something along the lines of, “Hayley, if I had this to do over again I would never have let them touch me”. I never asked what that meant to her exactly, though everything in my heart knew that she was talking about the cancer treatments she had undergone.

At this time I knew absolutely nothing about medicine, other than I was interested in it, and I certainly knew nothing about alternative medicine outside of its existence. Sometime shortly after that day my Granny passed away and left me thinking and wondering about what could have happened had her disease been handled differently. I fell into my own depression following her death, and was faced with an inner world of my own that needed to be healed. I was thrown from antidepressant to antidepressant, unable to sleep or wake, let alone smile; I was completely lost.

After a year or so of this terrible state of existence I started staying after class to talk to a teacher in one of my Health classes I was taking in high school. She had been through similar things in her life as was experiencing at the time and she sort of took me under her wing and helped me out. I’ll forever be grateful to her for showing me that kind of support and compassion. I began going with her to her Acupuncturist and getting herbal medicine, and got off the medication I was taking. It was a long way to feeling human and healthy, but I got there. Through this experience I realized that this may have been the alternative I was searching for in my mind, what Granny was talking about. I decided that I wanted to finish school and get my AA and Bachelor’s and go for my Master’s in Oriental Medicine. It was that simple. I started reading everything I could about health and nutrition and herbs and alternative medicine. I was on a mission of my own to heal myself in a very serious way, but I was driven by the need to make what happened to my grandmother at least some sort of sacrifice to help someone else’s life better. I couldn’t stand the thought of her dying just being the end of a struggle with cancer. That wasn’t good enough; it needed to be the beginning of a new kind of hope for the next person. I still feel that way.

Sometime thereafter I began an internship with Dr. Ni, quite randomly; I called a few different acupuncturists in the area to set up interviews and try to observe them in their practices as a part of some sort of “career class” I was taking at school. I was 17 at this time I think. Dr. Ni met with me and decided, for some odd reason that I will never be privy to, that I would be a good protégé, and he allowed me to observe him. He began teaching me more than I could have ever imagined, and I started putting in more and more time learning at his clinic. Long after the career class had ended I continued to spend my free time learning from him, and it came to my attention that he was one of the few Chinese Medicine practioners that was comfortable and confident treating cancer patients. In fact, a large percentage of his patients had been diagnosed with various types of cancer and were experiencing mind-blowing results with his medicine. I felt like I had been guided there by none less than my grandmother’s hands and I did everything I could to make the most of this opportunity.

As time went by I was hired to work in the herbal pharmacy, I learned more about the herbs and had a unique experience in understanding them on paper but also by touch. I became immersed in a Traditional Chinese culture that prized preventative medicine and lifestyle, and completely changed the way I looked at my health, my mind and body. I kept working toward my license to practice Chinese Medicine, one degree at a time until I got what I was after. (That was the super-abridged version; I won’t bore you with more rambling details.)

By the time I was a licensed Acupuncturist I had traveled China and Taiwan with Dr. Ni, seen the medicine at its deepest roots, and had experienced it like I could have never imagined. The more I learned the more I realized that I had to learn, and that this journey to understand and correct these diseases in the human body would never be over. There were so many aspects to the state of disease in one person that it took such a great understanding of thousands of years of medical knowledge to even follow how Dr. Ni was treating his patients, let alone do it myself. Eventually he decided to stay in Taiwan and mostly teach seminars and lecture over there, and had me begin seeing patients at his clinic in Florida with a few other physicians that he has trained over the years.

I am not treating cancer patients at this point, though when I feel confident in my ability to achieve the results Dr. Ni once did I fully intend to. That is where my heart lies in this medicine, but in the past few months I have come to realize that there is something more that needs to be sought after for me to get to that point. The foundation Dr. Ni has laid for me is absolutely invaluable in this endeavor but its only the beginning. As technology multiplies, toxicity grows, mind-body disconnects, and stress takes over our lives, this “modern disease” gives the proliferation of cancer a terrifying advantage over our healthy bodies. The problem with the degrading state of our natural resources and the increase of toxicity on this planet is that Chinese Medicine pulls its strength from herbs and energies directly from the earth. When the earth is sick it produces lower quality medicine, which provides less healing for the people who need it. There are so many aspects to this that I don’t even know how to begin thinking about it, let alone doing something about it.

Right now what I can tell you is that my search to finding the ultimate solution to this problem is bringing me to Portland, Oregon. I will be moving there May, 1. I will be working in a lovely space adjacent to a wonderful Chiropractic clinic and practicing Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine. I feel very blessed and excited to have this opportunity. A large part of my draw to Portland lies in the broad spectrum of holistic medicine practitioners found in such a city, as well as the communal attitude of the people. Everything in my life has felt like it has happened for such apparent reasons, all for the promotion of this cancer solution and I very much feel that Portland will offer me the next step that I am looking for. I will be eventually be studying with a handful of brilliant physicians out there that will hopefully lead me to some of the missing pieces I need and I am looking forward to exploring different modalities of natural medicine in the “Land of Naturopathy” that is Portland Oregon. Some of the physicians I will be seeking to continue to learn from are Dr. Heiner Fruehauf, Dr. Brandt Stickley, and Dr. Arnaud Versluys.

I am so grateful to have had the support from everyone here in Florida, and I am sure at some point I will be back home, but right now I’m being pulled to the other side of the country. With any luck I’ll be back with more answers to the problems we’re faced with in alternative medicine and probably more questions than I could have imagined. I will continue to update my blog and stay in touch, hopefully more frequently.  I hope that you will all follow me on this adventure in search of a more complete understanding, solution and practical application of alternative cancer treatment in this society, economy and state of ecology . Thank you for reading.

Advertisement