The Reiki Sessions - My Mother's Pancreatic Cancer Diary no.2

May 1st

Well, it's just May 1st. I just finished the hour long session. I am finding it interesting that my mother seems to become emotionally open (but not totally so) during these sessions. She looks forward to them before going to sleep. I just love that.

Tonight I massaged her arms and legs with some nice jojoba aromatherapy massage oil, which smells great with chamomile and lavender, put on a CD called Reiki Magic with Merlin, or something like that (I'm almost overdoing the other one Reiki Whale, which we both love), set up some frankencense aromatherapy, and lit that quartz crystal tea light. She especially loved the massage tonight.

Her back is getting stiffer and today she admitted that she in fact does have some kind of pain every day, although it's not constant or severe. She's also having trouble eating enough, like all pancreatic cancer patients. In this case, I also suspect some nerve damage from the surgery.

I'm nervous and creeped out that it's probably the tumor in her pancreas. I gave her some oxycodone. No need to be constantly reminded through intermittent pain what's going wrong. Trying to stay strong and not project my own fear about what she's facing. She's not particularly aware of how bad of a cancer this is, and doesn't really want to think about it. I don't blame her.

Monday is cyberknife radiation to reduce her tumor burden. I really think that will get rid of a lot of the pain for a good while.

Anyway, back to the session. Tonight at first I placed two hands on her hip area, toward the side, below the pancreas area. Then I moved one hand to her knee. More for variety and not to be too intense.

She seems to have a pattern of thinking of something from childhood at the beginning of these sessions. Tonight she was thinking of the lady at the end of her road who had chickens. This woman put plastic eggs in the hens' nests, I guess to promote egg production. So my mom, as a kid, would go exploring the hens nests, and one day took an egg to the woman who owned the hens. She was told to put the egg back, even though she was just showing it to the woman. I guess not in a scolding way, but just wanted the egg back under the hen.

I then reminded her of a dream she had one night during her second week home. She dreamed she was in a plane crash, which was very scary. But she and another women were among the few survivors. The woman was even making wise cracks, and after a while they started to have a little fun there. I thought this was really significant in terms of her own survival. But she doesn't remember the dream, so I have to remind her.

This also made her give me a little metaphor about life - sometimes you get stuck going down the wrong road and soon you are stuck in the mud, and you have to do all these things to extricate yourself. VERY interesting! Not only was this wise, but it really was a metaphor for what we're going through now.

Then she was worrying (argh, this is the root of a lot of this dis-ease, I tell you!) about the home health aide not having enough to do on her last day. Then it was returning some books to a friend and wanting to go to the library, which would be the first time since she got home. Yay.

I have to say, all of this little talk makes the hour go by quickly. When she first got home I was doing it for an hour, but she was really too weak to talk, or to really want to be touched at all. At that point, I just held my hands over her body, especially over the stomach surgery incision area.

I also get a chance to gently remind her that the worrying suppresses her immune system, and maybe she should do a meditation where she sends those worries off on clouds. She agreed, but the level of worrying she does comes from her subconscious, so it's going to be a challenge to get it to turn off.

Tonight she realized that she doesn't like to lie flat to sleep anymore. Is it the cancer, or osteoporosis, which is giving her a slight hunch? I really hate seeing my sweet mother deteriorate like this after being healthy and eating well forever.

So, at the end of this session, we were both more relaxed, at ease, and she was happy. We both look forward to the sessions, even though she sometimes tries to get me to go to bed after 1/2 an hour.

Tomorrow I'm planning on using Dick Sutphen's self-hypnosis CD "Healing Force" during the session. I'm figuring the Reiki will relax her so that she's especially open to the healing suggestions.

My huge worry is the not eating thing. She tries to make herself eat, but I am stretched to get her to eat even 1,000 calories per day. She's lost 5 pounds this month, and this can't go on. If the cancer doesn't get her, malnutrition may. I do give her a whey protein, flax and fish oil, berry shake that has vitamin powder in it, but really things are soooo difficult. The only time she eats is if I remind her. I can't even remember to get her to eat more than 4 times a day, if 3, so this is a big problem.

I hope the Reiki will eventually help with that too, since it is working to heal her on all levels.