Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (145 page)

Often when I’ve rendered a second opinion, I’ve agreed with the referring surgeon’s rationale for the hysterectomy; heavy, irregular bleeding that has resulted in anemia, for example, is a conventional rea son for hysterectomy. Though there are many ways to treat the problem besides surgery, if surgery feels like the right solution to the woman, she should go with that. If, on the other hand, she is open to alternatives such as dietary change, she should give those a try. The main thing to be aware of is that there are often many different choices—all of which have merit.

Women who have taken the time to read and gather information embark upon a chosen course of therapy or a surgical procedure from a place of strength and knowledge, not because some authority figure said they should. This is a great place to be! No one should ever have elective surgery if she feels she doesn’t have permission to speak up, disagree, or get more information.

Finally, understand that this surgery is a choice. If you want to cancel at the last minute because you’ve rethought the whole thing or it suddenly feels wrong, then go ahead and cancel it. There are two times when a woman needs to grant herself full permission to change her mind: one is at the altar before her wedding, and another is before having elective surgery. (This doesn’t apply to life-saving surgery in emergencies.)

B
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A
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Four to six weeks before major surgery such as a hysterectomy or myomectomy, donate two units of your own blood (unless you’re too anemic) in case there is any risk of blood loss requiring transfusion. The needle used by the Red Cross for blood donation is large. I suggest you ask your doctor for a prescription for either EMLA or Lidoderm (15 percent lidocaine cream), transdermal anes thetic creams that can be applied to the antecubital fossa of the arm (the area where the blood is drawn) one hour before your blood will be drawn, then covered with a plastic bandage known as Tegaderm. It makes the procedure painless.

Surgery Is Not Failure but a Healing Opportunity

Too often, women think they’ve failed if they require surgery for their problem. This is an example of dualistic, black-and-white thinking. One woman with a fourteen-week-size fibroid uterus said to me through tears, “I’m so ashamed. I keep thinking that I should have been able to prevent this or at least to have made it go away by myself.” Further questioning revealed that she had the type of family background in which she had repeatedly heard the phrase “Don’t cry, or I’ll give you something to cry about.” She felt that asking for help and having needs were signs of weakness.

Gail, whose ovarian cyst healing was covered in chapter 7, said, “As a good ‘New Age person,’ surgery was my last resort. With classic New Age hubris, I felt I should have been able to heal myself, and if I chose surgery, I was a failure. So I tried a gamut of holistic approaches—acupuncture, herbs, castor oil packs, working with a friend who is a channel, and visualization. All of these methods were helpful and were surely healing on certain levels. But I realized that this cyst was too dense, both physically and spiritually, to be melted even by acupuncture needles. It needed to be cut out.”

Another patient of mine, June, had a persistent ovarian cyst and very much wanted to avoid surgery. She spent three months doing vi sualizations, emotional cleansing, and dietary change to heal her cyst. I told June that I felt that surgery was her best option. Her cyst was large—ten centimeters—and had failed to go away on its own after three months. Though she wanted to believe that the cyst was gone and that she could avoid surgery, she had had the following dream: “I went to get my car from the repair shop, and it wasn’t ready yet. This dream recurred several times. I started to wonder if the cyst was indeed gone. I never had felt that the cyst posed any real danger to me, but even though I felt that I had completed my work”—she had developed a great deal of clarity about what the cyst represented in her life and had experienced a great deal of grieving and sadness about this—“I wondered if maybe the cyst was still there. I rarely admitted that thought to myself at all, choosing instead to think positively that it must be gone because I had completed what I thought was my healing work.”

A few weeks before her scheduled surgery, June had dinner with a woman she had just met who was fascinated with myths, dream work, and art therapy as tools to help people heal themselves. “When she heard about my car dreams,” June later wrote, “she started to push hard. She asked if I knew what was wrong with my car. She said I should have found out what was broken and called in a specialist to tell me how to fix it.” This was to be done in a dream state. “She was horrified that I was going to let someone take my ovary without trying harder to keep it. The implication was that if I did not try things her way, I wasn’t trying hard enough. I answered her questions seriously. The questions felt so heroic, so guilt ridden.
⁹
I am responsible, and this cyst must be what I want. After I left her place, I felt dirty, sort of emotionally raped. Later I realized that searching endlessly for a nonsurgical cure is addictive, that I could keep the cyst and be addicted to the process, or I could just let it go and be done with it.” June had the inner strength and wisdom to recognize that sometimes the proponents of alternative modalities can be just as arrogant and intransigent as those who believe in the conventional health care system. Although June was briefly intimidated by this woman’s insistence, she quickly realized that the feelings she was left with after their dinner were a sign that she was being manipulated in a way that was toxic to her.

An Opportunity to Heal Old Fears

For many women, particularly those who are drawn to natural methods of healing, surgery is terrifying. My patient Gail, after her cyst surgery, said, “That cyst helped me uncover several powerful patterns I hadn’t been aware of. My terror around my body, disease, doctors, and hospitals was a result of my mother’s long mysterious heart disease, which led to her death. Throughout parts of my childhood she was in and out of hospitals, never seeming to get better, and the doc tors never seeming to know what was wrong with her. What caused even more suffering on my part was the feelings everyone in my family was experiencing around her illness that were never discussed.”

Many women have transformed their fears of the hospital and surgery, however, by using such experiences as a “spiritual initiation”—a time to face their fears and walk through them, as well as a chance to reverse old patterns that no longer serve them. Gail wrote, “As I contemplated my upcoming surgery it was absolutely clear to me that I had a wonderful opportunity to confront my childhood terror of hospitals and all they represented. I could experience that my story was totally different from my mother’s story. I learned some wonderful lessons. Reversing my family pattern, I shared my fears and concerns with my husband and dear friends and asked for their support. Their outpouring of love and support was a precious gift that I shall treasure for a long time.”

Giving yourself permission to let another individual help you can be a profoundly healing experience. When surgery is the best treatment choice, surrendering to the skills of the anesthesiologist, your surgeon, your nurses, and your inner guidance can be a true growth experience. If you received the message in childhood that your physical and emotional needs for support and comfort don’t deserve to be met, asking for support during surgery or a hospitalization is an opportunity to reverse this message.

Healing energy is available in hospitals. The nurses and staff can be seen as healing angels. The people who work in hospitals—whether they be nurses, nursing assistants, or orderlies—are often in these set tings because they are naturally drawn to healing. When you stop fighting those who are there to help, it’s quite a relief.

Take a friend or family member to the preoperative visit if you’re having surgery. Your friend can then accompany you to the hospital to meet the anesthesiologist and go through the pre-op phase in the hospital setting. After surgery, these friends or others can provide support at home through cooking, cleaning, or backrubs. Women must learn how to ask for this support. Getting it is a skill. Sometimes we need help learning this.

June wrote the following about getting support: “On my way home after finding out that I needed surgery, I knew I could not be alone that whole weekend, so I stopped at my friend Carol’s house. I think Carol became afraid when she saw how depressed I looked. She delivered a strong lecture about how important I am to my son, and to her, and to many other people. I never had acknowledged my importance to any of those people except my son. She made a very strong case for going forward and letting myself be supported by my friends. She told me that I was to recover at her house so that I wouldn’t have to cook or shop, or do any other of those details for myself.

She helped me immeasurably.” In preparation for her surgery, June went to see a hypnotist and had three sessions. Her hypnotist produced two tapes for her to use—one to prepare her for a healthy experience and a quick recovery, and a second to help her move on afterward. She used these tapes many times during the two weeks prior to surgery.
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She also began work with a physician who understood and taught chi kung (gi gong). Chi kung is an an cient Chinese art that teaches us to circulate our life energy through movement, massage, and the breath.

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OSPITALS

After spending fifteen years as CEO of various hospitals, Kelly Mather was convinced there was a much better way to help people and communities concentrate on getting and staying healthy. So in 2006, she founded an organization called Harmony Healing House, designed to partner with hospitals around the country to encourage them to take a more wellness-based, global perspective.

Mather developed a scientifically proven, low-cost, and simple model to take hospitals beyond the first level of healing (illness and rescue care) and through three additional levels: creating a culture of health via a staff wellness program; creating a healing environment that promotes physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual improvement techniques to patients and visitors; and taking the message beyond the hospital walls and out into the community by partnering with schools, wellness centers, and the like to promote health.

Hospitals that achieve all four levels will receive a “Healing Hospital” designation and will be listed on the organization’s website (
www.harmonyhealinghouse.com
).

How to Prepare for Surgery
(or Chemotherapy) and Heal Faster

Peggy Huddleston, M.S., a colleague of mine, is the author of
Prepare for
Surgery, Heal Faster: A Guide of Mind-Body Techniques
(Angel River Press, 1996), a remark able step-by-step guide to help people get the most out of their surgical experiences (see
www.healfaster.com
, which also carries her CDs designed to facilitate lasting healing). Her healing statements and steps to prepare for surgery have been clinically proven to decrease blood loss and pain and speed recovery. Her book and the program it outlines are being used in many major hospitals all over the country. I personally used her healing statements when I had my fibroid surgery years ago, and they worked like a charm. Having done surgery for years, I can assure you that nothing is more gratifying to a surgeon than having a patient who will work with her or him in partnership—each trusting the input of the other—so that optimal results can be obtained.

The techniques that Peggy uses have succeeded in helping many of my patients and thousands of people around the world achieve the following benefits:

Feel calmer before surgery

Have less pain after surgery