Cancer Patient: Integrative Wellness Opens Healing Doors
Are You on the Cancer Patient Roller Coaster?
If you’re a cancer patient, I bet you’ve been through a roller coaster ride of healthcare processes, pills and painful transitions.
As a Nurse, I get what happens when you’re diagnosed, but it really hit home when my husband was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma.
He followed all of the conventional treatments, but I knew something was missing. There had to be a better way than just running from doctor to doctor hoping for pain relief, sleep relief and some way to keep his energy up in the midst of the chemo and other harsh medications.
I started searching for him, but I was also remembering the many hundreds of cancer patients and their families I worked with over the years. It’s funny how personal experience brings you a whole new perspective.
Bottom line: We felt powerless. We felt like we didn’t have any control. We felt dependent on everyone else, but they had so little time to help us navigate the emotions and confusion we were experiencing.
Can you relate?
My Husband Was a Cancer Patient
What would it feel like if you could stop sitting on the sidelines and learn how you can support your body, mind & spirit while being treated for cancer?
After taking care of my parents and their loss just a year before, I was emotionally and physically drained.
Who knows, maybe that’s why I was more open to integrative wellness methods, whereas before I only trusted medical treatments.
When I was depressed and exhausted, I found an integrative wellness method called Reiki. During my training to become a Certified Reiki Master Teacher, I watched my husband transform.
My husband had wonderful results from Reiki and we both became certified so that we could use it every day.
Unfortunately, I lost the love of my life, but through his journey, I witnessed the positive effects of using this practice. No nausea or vomiting. No pain and less anxiety.
See Dr. Axe’s article: What is Reiki?
You can also read additional research and evidence for Reiki and cancer treatment HERE.
I Teach Every Cancer Patient to Feel Better Now
When my husband passed I felt a passion to help other cancer patients experience the relief he did. I was led to branch out into a whole different type of medicine.
Two years after his passing, I became a Reiki Master Teacher so that I could teach cancer patients and their caregivers this practice and realize the benefits that it could bring to them.
But that wasn’t enough. I wanted to learn more. I then became a Holistic Cancer Coach. My eyes really opened to the benefits that nutrition, exercise, and mind/body connections have in the treatment of cancer.
Despite all of the medical treatments available, there are too many gaps and pitfalls in knowledge, awareness, treatment and care. In order to integrate cancer care approaches, physicians, caregivers, and patients need to become more educated.
Why Use Integrative Cancer Care?
- Enhance quality of life
- Reduce side-effects of treatments
- Strengthen well-being
- Feel Empowerment
- Reduce anxiety
- Enhance immune system
- Promote coping
- Provide a sense of control
All Cancer Patients Should be Treated as Whole People
My patient’s tell me that they feel as if they are sitting on the sidelines waiting to be told when to get into the game and be a part of the team. You deserve to understand your treatments and to learn what you can do to help with your healing.
Cancer treatments are not just about the tumor, but the person behind the disease. The medical community and patients are realizing that attacking the cancer is only one part of treatment. Those affected by cancer require attention to body, mind and spirit. Patients are searching for other modalities to help them with the side-effects of treatment and to accelerate their recovery.
Integrative therapies are used in conjunction with conventional treatments but differ in that they support the patient as a whole. Cancer affects your life on many different levels. Research has shown that cancer and its treatments have the capacity to not just affect the physical well-being but virtually every other aspect of your life including psychologically, spiritually, socially and economically. All of these components interact and shape you as a person; there is no separation.
Your body is made up of organs, tissues, cells and other components but functions as one integrated system. Cancer frequently results from an imbalance in that system. Cancer treatments focus on the diagnosis and fall short of treating the whole body, the whole person, and wellness promoting strategies. That is where integrative care starts.
Your emotions, thoughts, beliefs and actions are connected and literally shape the functioning of your body.
According to Cancer Treatment Centers of America:
“Mind-body medicine uses psychosocial support or therapeutic relationships as an integral part of whole-person care that recognizes the powerful ways emotional, mental, social and behavioral factors can directly affect a cancer patient’s health.”
Reach out to me to discuss how you can get off the cancer patients roller-coaster and tap into the natural healing intelligence you were born with. Contact Me HERE.
Blessings,
Bonnie
