18 Nisan 5772
Back on April 5 I alerted you to the chance for meeting one of my healing helpers, the craniosacral therapist who restored the use of my surgically paralyzed eyelid. The corresponding nerve had been affected by the now-gone meningioma, and life-saving surgery to remove it.
Here's how that CST introduces me to readers in EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge:
Introduction
It was 5765/2005, a week before the Passover holiday. I was busy installing a new kitchen. While I attended the mundane my dear friend Yocheved Golani, whom I would actually meet a year later, developed a sudden case of blindness.
Alone in Hadassah Ein Kerem's emergency room, Yocheved discovered a terrible reality that would dictate the course of the next few years of her life. She had a brain tumor growing on top of the section in the brain that controls breathing and heartbeat. What's more the tumor nestled in a bed of nerves that control movement to the right side of the body, facial sensation, hearing, neck movement and vision.
Yocheved was at risk for permanent deafness, blindness, paralysis, and dying a slow painful death of asphyxiation that could not be stopped by medical professionals. She had little time left for successful rescue efforts.
It was not the worst news that Yocheved learned that day.
The part that nearly devastated her was finding out that the tumor had been identified eighteen months earlier, but never revealed to her. She had lost a critical window of opportunity to remove the tumor safely and completely with user-friendly Gamma Knife Radiation when the tumor had been quite small and relatively harmless. It would have involved one doctor appointment as an outpatient in the hospital. It would have cured her in an hour. At this point in time, it was too late to use Gamma Knife successfully. Yocheved needed surgical removal of the tumor.
Two prominent neurosurgeons refused to operate on Yocheved at this late date for fear that they would kill her by merely trying to remove the now enlarged growth. A miraculous event led Yocheved to the surgeon who agreed to try to save both her life and its quality. But, he cautioned, substantial risks would present themselves throughout the effort to save her. The doctor offered no guarantees, only his world-famous surgical skill and his experienced hands. Yocheved decided to take the chance. "GOD commands us to choose life. I refused to turn away the one opportunity I had for saving my life. I gave the doctor and myself the possibility to succeed. I agreed to let him operate on me."
Yocheved resolved to live past this crisis, and she did. Beating the odds for survival over the tumor that was slowly killing her, and the odds regarding devastating potential consequences from the dangerous surgery awaiting her, Yocheved clung to core beliefs.
She also developed some new emotional and spiritual muscles in order to remain alive and to recover from the effects of her medical condition. "I also needed to put everyone around me at ease so that we could work as a team to make me well," Yocheved explains.
This workbook is designed to help you to cope with a medical challenge, perhaps a medical crisis. It is based on actions that Yocheved took, ideas she embraced, and emotions that saved her life. Her new updated version gives you even more resources to use in this process.
You can adapt Yocheved's coping mechanisms to your life so that you too can face a medical crisis with dignity, skills that can improve your mental and physical health, and as much healing as HaShem (GOD) will bring to you.
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sincerely,
Andrea Kornfeld, LMT, C-CST
www.chanabracha.com
Craniosacral therapy did far more for my overall health than to restore the use of my formerly paralyzed eyelid. Chana Bracha and I hope to see you in the audience tomorrow night, where you can hear about that, and how CST can help you.
Ready to read about other forms of standard and alternative/complementary healing techniques that help people around the world? Buy E-book or print edition EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge.
Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.
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