The Power of One

On a recent trip, I went to visit a 6-month old little girl, whose parents had gotten in touch with me to ask for help with figuring out what is going on with her. By virtue of the medical detective work and interventions I had done with my own daughter, I am often asked to coach parents of children with all kinds of special needs. In this case, the girl’s Mom suspected her baby may have suffered hypoxia at birth. Barely a few days old, she had been put through a series of intense interventions, including a tracheotomy, G-tube, anti-seizure medications, Phenobarbital, several courses of antibiotics and so on. I had reviewed her entire medical file and it was clear that in addition to whatever may have happened at birth, there was also some type of mitochondrial dysfunction going on. One of her organic acids, involved in several important metabolic processes, was particularly low, several of the key organic acid ratios were off and her lipid metabolism seemed affected. I had prepared to talk to her Mom what other types of testing to discuss with their doctors, share referrals to specialists, therapy ideas, etc. and felt quite comfortable in what I could offer there. I had also spent a fair amount of time thinking about what I could pull out of my (still relatively limited) Eden Energy Medicine toolkit to help this little girl, but had come up with only general guesses about working with a few meridians that I suspected may be involved in what she was going through. Since I hadn’t seen her yet, I had no understanding of her energy state or even whether I would be able to assess it in any meaningful way. I had also never worked with anyone so young, so I didn’t feel confident I could offer much help in what seemed like a very complicated case.

When her Mom and I arrived at their home on a blisteringly hot early afternoon, little L. had just had her lunch feeding. She was hooked up to a monitor, which allowed her parents and the relief nurses to check her oxygen saturation levels and heartbeat constantly. When we walked into the room, we didn’t need a monitor to tell that L. was in distress. She was choking and her tummy looked swollen. According to the monitor, her heartbeat kept climbing up, while her sats were bouncing wildly up and down. Her Mom explained that this particular lunchtime feeding seemed to trigger great amounts of saliva that were pushed out from her tracheotomy tube. This was very stressful for everyone involved – the baby was choking, unable to breathe and her Mom and the nurse were rushing to suction it off with an annoyingly loud machine. The extra saliva production also meant that L. had to spent most of the time on her back because the moment she got picked up, she would start choking even more.

There are few things in life more painful than seeing a baby in distress. It triggered a sort of primal protective response in me, causing me to instantly forget any doubts I may have had about working with someone so young. I instinctively reached for her tummy and started making slow deliberate figure 8’s a couple of inches above it. I could feel lots of sluggish energy in the area. This was perhaps unsurprising given that her G-tube was inserted at a point that interrupted her Stomach meridian. In a couple of minutes, I could feel her energies begin to respond and cooperate. The monitor indicated that her oxygen levels were stabilizing at 98% and her heartbeat was steadily decreasing. Her Mom and I watched it drop from 156 to 136 over the course of a few minutes as L. relaxed and started dosing off.

We left L. in the care of the kind nurse, who had retreated to a chair and seemed to ignore us for the most part, and slipped out to the patio to have our conversation. Over the course of a long discussion, I learned that the choking episode apparently happened on a daily basis. Without fail, the baby would start choking between 1.30 and 2 pm, gasping for air and needing near constant suctioning off for an hour or so. It seemed that her other feedings were normal and she didn’t need help then. As I was listening to the Mom, the pieces of the puzzle started falling together. 1-3 pm is the lowest time of day for the liver meridian. And then L. also had really low levels of pyruvate in her system, which meant that her liver struggled with the glycolysis process. No wonder she was starting to choke and wasn’t able to breathe or process her meal at that particular time of day! Her system was getting overloaded with glucose at the exact time of day that her liver’s ability to process it was at its lowest point. L.’s Mom and I looked at each other, wondering if we had hit upon something. At that point, we heard her choking again in the nursery and ran in. Her Mom picked her up to soothe her. Moving away the monitor that was attached to L.’s left foot, I touched her liver source points, which send energy directly to the organ. Instantaneously, L. stopped choking and the bubbles from the tracheotomy tube stopped coming out.

I was at least as shocked as her Mom was. We looked at each other in amazement and laughed. I had not expected an intervention as simple as that to have such a profound effect. The fact that it did brought home for me what I now call “the power of one,” the idea that just one intervention – if used appropriately – can make a meaningful difference in the quality of life of a client. I held L.'s liver source points for a long while, while her Mom enjoyed the first time she was able to hold her child in her arms, without watching her struggle to breathe. When we finally returned L. to the crib, she was a happy little girl  ready to continue her nap, as if it had never been interrupted. 

Katerina

Comments

[Penny Fedje]

Katerina, I love this story; thank you for writing it, as well as the other posts, to this site. You write beautifully by the way. I too came back from the May 2011 EEM class in Phoenix re-energized with the feeling of community but didn't get a chance to explore this site "project" until the other day. I'm sure many others identify with your story as well--wanting to help in some way, not being entirely sure how, and then it's like my "thinking mind" steps aside and I watch myself reach out and do an EM technique without even knowing what that technique will be until I see my hands doing it, then my "mind" comes back and goes "wow" look at what just happened with that person. I'm amazed and very humbled every time I work with EEM techniques--thank you for sharing!