Pretty Please? A Goddess Wish

This is a request for Stardust on behalf of the goddesses everywhere on planet Gaia who are giving birth. As an OB anesthesiologist who apologizes for sticking needles in people's backs, who says, 'this is the best way we know how and when there is a better way I am going to use it!' each time...my dearest Galactic Brothers and Sisters, this is an open letter to you:


Childbirth is painful.

I am skilled in the relief of this childbirth pain.

Our methods are crude at best. It involves the insertion of local anesthesia into the central nervous system via a subarachnoid block (spinal) or epidural block for analgesia in labor.

Not long ago a mother came in who was like this:

She had a birthing ball, a birth plan, and wanted nothing to do with me. I made my rounds in the morning, wished her luck sincerely, and went on with my day.

Until I remembered this device:

I had seen it at a trade show last weekend. I had a demo sample on me. I asked her nurse if it was okay to invite the patient to trial it in her labor. The nurse said yes. So did the patient and her husband.

It felt so good to be able to offer non-drug pain relief that uses circulating energy in labor; the way it works is it stimulates the LI point with acupressure.

She wore it and she walked around in early labor. According to the nurse, the device came off once the 'active labor' hit.

But in a way, the device was a success because it helped the patient and I to form a relationship. And when later she asked for her epidural, it was different. We had both tried to avoid the needle, not just her.

She also had full knowledge of my Reiki training, and my intuitive strengths, since we met.

To get to this point takes incredible effort on the part of the mother. It requires a team. And whether it is in the OR or the delivery room, for most women on the planet, it is the most painful and fearful experience of suffering that exists.

I know for myself, as a survivor of molest, with PTSD,  there was no way I wanted to experience pain in my reproductive system. At all. But my OB thought 'natural was better' and I was induced against my will. I got 'stuck' at four centimeter's dilation, and had the section I always wanted after I had reached complete and total exhaustion, mentally, physically, and spiritually.

Although I had an epidural, I was praying the whole time for Jesus to come take me and the baby to Heaven. I was done and I wanted OUT. I have never prayed this prayer for my own demise before or since.

Why on earth should the most beautiful act of creation make a mother pray to die?

Life is a beautiful experience; that is the intent of Creator, is it not?

Stardust can take all pain away in fifteen minutes

That's how long my epidural takes to work. But my epidural is invasive, and requires a ten centimeter long needle into the back.

As an act of Divine Mercy. please send it here. Please send the Stardust to the mothers if it is safe. Please help them in their suffering. I am trained in pain relief--it is my profession. Please show me how it is used. I will train others. Please show me the dosing schedule, the contraindications, the side effects (if any).

I will show the world.

Please take the needles away. Please show us how it is done. Please send help NOW to those who suffer, starting first with mothers in labor, who have earned the place to be first in line.

Goddess wants nothing less.




Aloha and Mahalos,
Namaste,

Reiki Doc

Post-Call Reiki

I am so tired right now I am nodding off. Yesterday I worked a twenty-four hour shift on Labor and Delivery. I adore working with the new mothers and their babies. It takes a lot out of you, however. And Reiki helps make the exhaustion of having not slept easier to manage.

I was responsible for the anesthesia care in the delivery of ten healthy singleton babies.  I inherited three at seven a.m. from the anesthesiologist who was on call the day before. I did a c-section using one of the epidurals on one of those patients.

I also trained/proctored a new hire, a delightful woman of thirty-eight who is just starting out. She and I have similar temperaments. I enjoy spending time with her. There is only one more epidural for her to do under observation, and then she is in the O.R. on duty rotations like the rest of the team.

It is hard not to have a little time to squirrel away to the call room in the day. I like to relax and store up reserve energy for the night. I excused myself at two. I have to be careful in the call room. I can't leave all my stuff out. I have a my Reiki Doll Annie, for sending distance Reiki. I have my pendulum Porphy (I name them), my journals, my book I am writing...all would not be understood by a colleague who would happen to walk in. Or even a cleaning lady.

Speaking of the cleaning lady, Maria, my second mom-seriously-caught me in the hall. 'Are you in today? Was that your underwear? Did you see it? It was in the bed?' I was like, 'WHAT?!?'.

Sure enough, she had moved it. A pair of tighty whities, soiled with a brown stain, and a tee shirt. She had seen the guy on call with his girlfriend in the patio while he was on call. Were they having sex in the call room? we wondered together, Maria and me. What should we do with it? You know what we did? Put it in a pillowcase and stuck it in the file folder for billing slips for that doctor!

No wonder why the other OB anesthesiologist had noticed the smell of urine in one of the pillows and thrown it out!

The day was full of the bizarre, the unexpected, the humorous-if-you-look-for-it.

And there were the miracles. Some of the ones that made me cry almost in front of the patient was the patient saying thank you to the nurse for suggesting the epidural even though the husband was pushing the natural childbirth thing and she was ready to bail...seeing the joy on a new mom's face in post-partum when I went to check on her the next day...the baby RN sharing her stories with me about growing up in Vancouver...and the OB whose mom had seven miscarriages before successfully carrying her a to pre-term (35 weeks) and her brother to term births.

Everyone says, 'Rest up, have a good day' when I am leaving the hospital. I do not have the luxury to do that. The car is six-hundred miles past the service due. I have an appointment. I have to go. I also am getting my hair styled for the first time in six months, due to my tight schedule. Tonight, I would like to go to swim lessons to watch the progress of my kids (usually Dad takes them and I work).

When can I rest? In little spurts here and there. When can I shower? Hopefully before swimming so I won't stink!

Where is the Reiki? It was there every minute since the time I showed up to work yesterday. It was there when I gave Reiki and the transition symbol while holding the mother's hand during four c-sections. It was the patience when I had to replace epidurals that were malfunctioning twice. It was the humility in having to accept ruffles potato chips and onion dip at the nurses' station as my breakfast because there was no time for anything else. It was the post-partum charge nurse who made me a cup of the vietnamese coffee we have on L&D because she saw how sleepy I was from a hard case. It was the facebook post of NAMASTE from my childhood friend as I walked down the hall in the wee hours to go put another epidural into a technically challenging obese parturient (woman in labor). It was the text I sent to a friend whose house had been robbed, offering to replace any jewelry that her deceased son had given her if it had been stolen, not that it would be the same, but to let her know I love her and that everything would be all right. It was her post on her page, that 'God had shown her that which could not be taken away by robbers--the kindness and love of family and friends' in gratitude for my offer, which she declined because there was only one necklace from her boy, and that she never takes it off...

Reiki is in the writing I had to do before driving to the car appointment. Before feeding the pets. Before eating myself. I love it more than I admit, this connection I have through Reiki to all of you. I adore being here to guide you, and to console you, to inform you, and to simply wait together for the changes that are going to arrive on Earth.

Namaste,

Reiki Doc

A New Normal, Part 1

I read an article posted by a friend who has somewhat similar and yet in other areas, highly opposite beliefs from me. It upset me. What was it about? It was about a Family Practice Doc, who had his wife try a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) at home with a midwife. They got into trouble, and he insisted they take the wife in to the local community hospital where he worked. He delivered his son, and then they refused certain protocols, choosing to modify or delay customary treatments for the child. Child protective services was called on the parents. And an investigation opened up.

I wanted to jump in to that argument. I read the comments on the original article, and also attached to the post. But I thought about it. I asked myself the question, is this where we want medicine to be? No, not really. Not adversarial. But not 'botique' where the patient gets to pick and choose what they want either.

I envision a new normal for patient care. One where auras and energetic systems are acknowledged.

For example, the interaction between a former-chief-of-staff who was able to deliver children, but not someone typical in the Labor and Delivery department, must have included auras, trust, mistrust, and turf issues.

Let us rewrite the script.

Mother and father are into empowering women through home birth. They have a lifestyle that is based on the green movement, and holistic concepts. The midwife buys in to all of that herself. Their auras are mutually compatible. They are in the home, and it is harmonious to their belief systems. That is okay.

Father, through intuition and medical experience, senses trouble. He is outside his comfortable 'safety zone'. For the record, he was not completely in agreement with the home birth in a vaginal birth after cesarean in the first place.The couple transfer mid-labor to the local hospital.

Here is where the differences emerge: the belief systems and energetic systems of the facility and the patient do not match. This would have been a perfect opportunity for someone like me to intervene. Countless times, I have been called to what the nurses call, 'the crazy room' to intervene on behalf of their baby. I have seen Bradley Method couples where the wife wants the epidural and the husband, according to the plan, is trying to enforce the intervention-free birth. I have seen VBAC's refusing an i.v. and had to coax epidural insertion, not for analgesia, but for a safety device in the event of imminent c-section so I would not have to put the mother to sleep at the last minute. I am like a radio tuner capable of dialing in on any frequency of energetic aura system. I try to 'match' before I talk to somebody, whether it is a doctor, nurse, patient, or family member. Communication works best that way.

As we transition to the New, and we are well on the path towards it, I see the importance of the energetic system of each form of life on Earth to be recognized and taken into consideration.

Do we really want to deny our animals a chance to live and grow by eating meat?

How about the right-to-life of a tree standing in the way of a football stadium improvement?

Does anything that is not Fair Trade have as healthy a vibration as something that is Fair Trade?

Is your money being spent in ways that help Earth, or hurt her?

When you are sick, is your vibration optimized? Of course not! How can we best 'right' it again, together? For this transition period, we will have to thoroughly assess your system of beliefs, connect with you, and ramp up your energetic system. Be it with tea, chanting, Light, or conventional medicine for now.

There is so much more to it than meets the eye. Or the Mind. And Reiki is an excellent tool to be a part of this transition. By both allowing a Reiki practitioner to sense and to transmit, healing may be fine-tuned to individual needs best.

Namaste,

Reiki Doc

The Moribund: times when it is too late

This is mom saying goodbye to dad. 

There is an expectation in the community that is not balanced. Actually, there are several of them. Today I am going to share stories with you I have seen in practice as a resident and as an attending that are important for you to know.

1) Your loved one will get better

 Infection is a time race between the infecting organism (a parasite) and the host (your loved one).

It is a race of time between when the host immune system will beat the organism, or the other way around.

Sometimes the organism wins.

I have to intubate patients anywhere in the hospital who are in trouble. I was called once, while about five months' pregnant, to intubate a three year old in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. This kid was toxic. When infection spreads fast and far enough, the coagulation (clotting) mechanism is overwhelmed.  This is a late finding in the battle, and is not good. Blood comes out every poke hole in the skin, in the mucus membranes, everywhere. I intubated him. And even though I was in and the sats were up, he coded. I watched the PICU team code this child a half hour and give it up. I saw them go to the hall and tell the parents that their boy had died. I heard the scream.

I will never forget that scream for as long as I live. It was agony voiced.

The mistake that these parents did, is that for whatever reason, medical care was not sought until the infection had the upper hand. There is a race of time. When the bacteria or whatever is about to win does not give enough time for the medicines and therapy to work.

Any temperature over 101.5F is a fever. I know there are lots of parents out there that hate to go to the doctor. You have to take time off work, and it can be the middle of the night. But I think most parents should know that A) this is YOUR kid and B) YOUR kid is sick and you need to do something about it.

I don't care if the authorities are going to deport you back to someplace you worked hard to escape and you are here illegally. I don't care if you believe in antibiotics or not. If you are not trained in the medical field, you are going to miss some important signs and symptoms of illness if you do not have a trained person on your side. Give them a call as soon as possible. Ask them what to do. 

This is NOT GIVING UP POWER! This is using an important resource that is available at this time on Earth. Be sure you know when and where to use it.

2) The doctor is always right

I can't begin to tell you how many stupid doctors are out there. I diagnosed my own mother's cause of kidney failure. Her protein in her urine and blood was high when she had had nausea and barely eaten for six months. I asked for serum electrophoresis to make sure it was not Multiple Myeloma, which presents like that. I was close. It was a different antibody and was Goodpasture's syndrome. 

My niece around kindergarten had bloody diarrhea. This was not good. The doctor said it was the flu. That's what they said about my mom. My sister kept taking her back. Sure enough, full blown e. coli. Very severe. Almost died. My sister trusted her intuition and kept going. She has saved the life of my mother three times and her daughter once because of that.

Your intuition is as right as the doctor

Listen to it, if you are a child, a parent, a friend. When there is a conflict with what the doctor says, and your heart, always listen to your heart. For after all, you will have to live with your heart and the result of this decision for the rest of your life.

3) Natural is better

Primitive Mommy posted about 'was your birth plan respected?'

She and the entire birthing rights community has it backward. All births are special. Yes. Are all births normal? They are not.

If Nature was to rule, we would have to accept Natural Selection at work. That would mean, acceptance of death and injury to the infant/mother in childbirth.

People die. They always have. In less advanced societies. And historically. People die while giving birth.

There is only so much a midwife can do. I work with them. Sometimes they have to call the doctor. And we have to operate. This is called a 'crash section'. You do not want to be that.

Let me explain. A crash section means we rush to save the life of the baby and/or the mother.

Under good circumstances it takes less than five minutes to take a child out of the womb with adequate dissection of the bladder off the uterus to protect it. In lay terms, we 'make room' to get the baby out.

In a crash that child is out in less than a minute.

If you are faced with the prospect of a c-section, wouldn't you rather  have it be under non-Crash circumstances so they can take care of 'everything else' down there? I would.

And for those of you wary of epidurals and anesthesia in childbirth, here are the facts:

Onset and placement of epidural: fifteen minutes if mom holds still and has normal palpable anatomy of spine

Onset and placement of spinal: ten minutes if mom is not fat or thrashing

Onset of general anesthesia: less than one minute.

That's right. If you go through labor with no epidural, and crash, guess what? You are going to sleep. The event you are hyper-focused on will take place while you are unconscious and your spouse nowhere in sight. And you put your child at risk due to the general anesthesia that is in your bloodstream. They are born 'asleep' and have to 'wake up' in addition to going through a traumatic birth that made you need a c-section.

Bring your birthing balls and candles all you want. We honor your birth plans as much as possible. BUT, when birth starts to be anything other than routine, your Labor team will start to give suggestions. Try pitocin. Take an epidural. Why? Because these have helped us to avoid doing c-sections in the past with mothers whose labor patterns were like yours.

Healthy mom plus healthy baby. Isn't that both of our goals?

4) Our loved one is a FIGHTER!

I am sorry. When more than one organ system starts to go, in the ICU we call that circling the drain. Add any more organ systems (on a ventilator, with pressors to help the blood pressure and the heart, and add hepatic failure) and the chances of recovery are next to nothing.

This is the time to accept.

We did a take back on a patient with Hepatitis C with a large brain tumor who was bleeding into the wound. There had been a heart attack in the past. And coma with the hepatitis c. Why put your loved one through all that? Why spend your copayments and your loved one's insurance to stave off the inevitable? Give them comfort. Give them care. But don't try for heroics.

Last week a pulmonologist had a patient who was hypoxemic and and endotracheal tube of 7.0 mm diameter in. He wanted a tube of 8.0 mm, or at least 7.5 mm, so his bronchoscope could fit.

I got a partner to help me do it. Sats were 80% and weight was BMI of 80. I had said no to the doc but my partner said yes. I got the soft exchange catheter. We stick it in one tube, slide the old one out, slide a new one in back over it. Mine did not have good ability to ventilate, but it could. The partner wanted better. They went back to the stockroom and got the fat yellow one. Guess what? In shoving it down, the mucosa bled. Although the exhange was 'successful' all the pulmonologist saw in the airway was blood.

I think of situations like this as 'giving them their chance'. I think that sometimes we should not be so generous in doing so. This patient died the next day. The low oxygen sats took their toll on the kidney, and it failed. Patient was too unstable for dialysis.

5) They are THEM and we are US

That is not true. My fearful Bradley method mother in labor with the piercings, tattoo, dark as Priscilla Presley hair and husband from Portland had couplet contractions. They were two contractions close together with not much rest in between. She knew enough that this was not normal, listened to her body and knew herself, saw the big picture, and listened to her labor nurse and got an epidural. She was concerned that once her water broke she was going to have pain she could not tolerate any more. That is what made her decide. And after she did, she was glad.

I told her 'healthy mom, healthy baby', 'enjoy your labor', and  'at each step of the way, we make an informed choice'. Baby does not read the book on natural labor.

When the nurse left the room, I shared, "I gave you Reiki. I am a Reiki Master" It was a total disconnect for them. Their jaws dropped as they were struggling to understand. I had to rephrase it, 'I may not look like it now, BUT I AM ONE OF YOU! I can't tell anyone here now, but I want you to know I am working so that one day I can.'

Do you KNOW how many doctors and nurses have published about Reiki and Intuitive Medicine and Energetic Medicine? There are a LOT. Meredith Kendall. Mona Lisa Shultz. Caroline Myss. Many many big names. Look at Dr. Oz! Deepak Chopra...There is a movement. And for every one of them there are hundreds of healers like me who are afraid to talk.

Dad touched my arm and thanked me for what I did. I felt the Reiki coming back. They were healers too. That newborn was going to be lucky to have them.

Friday, I was at Starbucks with a Mormon coworker to discuss politics at work. We are both single parents and can't afford to follow the lead of others who had left over the disagreements. While we were talking, my first patient I gave Reiki to openly in the hospital was there. Evan. She was a nutritionist who told me to get off soy. And I did Reiki on her postpartum. I blogged about it. Well she said, 'You were the one that did Ray-i-ki on me' right in front of the Mormon. I was glad she did well, and would have loved to talk more, but I couldn't. Not with him. But she looked great and the child was a little crystal child. I could feel it.

Things are moving up towards enlightenment and ascension in the practice of Medicine. Give it time. Until then, please leave your expectations at the door and go into the medical center with an open heart. And listen to it!

Namaste,

Reiki Doc