One Sunday afternoon not so long ago, my 7-year-old daughter Kyla
came home from a girlfriend’s house feeling sick. She said she
didn’t want to play anymore and confessed that her stomach hurt,
with more discomfort on her left side. The little girl’s mother
expressed concern to me about possible appendicitis. Since the
discomfort was on the wrong side and more in the back than front, I
didn’t take this concern too seriously.
After taking Kyla’s temperature and finding it normal, I called
my favorite health practitioner. He said that from my description, it
might be that Kyla was toxic, possibly from food poisoning. This
seemed likely, since she had eaten pepperoni pizza at the friend’s
house. I knew food poisoning was a common health problem, often
misdiagnosed as flu or virus.
At the practitioner’s suggestion, I taped a high-powered battery
operated magnet called an Elmag on the main vessel to the stomach and
encouraged Kyla to drink fluids. She slept fine that night.
The next day, however, Kyla lay on the couch and refused to eat.
Since I work at home, it was easy to keep an eye on her. She napped
for short periods of time, and the others kids played quietly with her
when she wasn’t sleeping.
That night, Kyla woke up numerous times to complain. She was
uncomfortable, her side hurt, her back hurt, could she sleep with me?
By the next morning, there was no improvement and her pain was
constant. She wasn’t able to have a bowel movement although she
tried, and she couldn’t remember the last time she had one. There
was no fever, but through the healthy tanned color of her skin, she
looked yellow – especially the palms of her hands and feet. I
wondered if the pain in her left side was due to constipation. Or was
it something else? I began to feel nervous. Something wasn’t right.
I called my practitioner again, and he told me to bring her right in.
Kyla’s dad was out of state at a family reunion, so my two
younger children came along and we all waited in the office to be
worked into the practitioner’s busy schedule. When he finally had
time, the practitioner started kinesiology testing of Kyla’s body to
find weak systems. Kinesiology is a muscle monitoring, feedback system
that can give very accurate information about the body.
After a few minutes of testing, Kyla was pronounced toxic. The
practitioner felt there was infection, and that inflammation seemed to
be centered in the appendix. Though Kyla felt more of an ache on her
left side, when the practitioner examined her, he found her right side
sore and painful to the touch. His best guess was appendicitis. He put
an Elmag on the appendix and went back to his other patients, saying
he would return soon.
I was immediately upset. Appendicitis! Didn’t that mean surgery?
Since both my husband and I are self-employed, we have no medical
insurance. All of our health care comes out of pocket and is
holistically oriented. My last three children (ages 9, 7 and 6) were
born at home with midwives. These kids had never even been to a
medical doctor. We chose not to vaccinate them, and all the minor
illnesses children usually get had been successfully treated by
holistic practitioners and natural remedies.
We also did a lot of prevention. I tried my best to keep our diet
healthy. However, for the last few weeks, the kids had eaten much more
junk food than normal, due to picnics and end-of-school parties.
Thinking back, I realized that Kyla hadn’t been as energetic as she
normally was the last few weeks. She had also recently complained of
painful urination, which I had treated with cranberry tablets and
magnets on the bladder alarm point.
As I sat with Kyla, I worried about surgery. I didn’t have the
thousands of dollars it would probably require for an operation. But
more than that, I had fear of medical trauma. I didn’t want her to
have to go through doctors, hospitals, endless pokings, proddings and
examinations.
Because one of my older children died of medical treatment ten
years ago, I had a keen sense of what could happen. In my upset state,
I immediately started to pray. Dear God, I am on the verge of
medical trauma again… what am I supposed to do? Why is this
happening? I knew the answer might not come immediately, but would
eventually unfold. I had walked this path before.
In 1985, my then 9-year-old son Toby had been diagnosed with acute
lymphoblastic leukemia. He went through 31 months of hospitals and
invasive medical procedures, including chemotherapy and radiation. I
saw him medically traumatized over and again. As soon as the
doctor’s standard drug protocol was finished, he relapsed. We
refused a mis-matched experimental bone marrow transplant and, in the
eyes of the medical profession, brought him home to die. They gave him
six weeks to live.
I couldn’t let my son die. I prayed constantly and waited for
divine intervention. Through meditation, I frequently heard, "There
is another way." I followed my intuition and was brought to
holistic healing. I began to reseach many different types of holistic
methods and modalities, much of which, at that time, was underground
and shared in a grassroots way. A number of holistic practitioners and
I created a protocol of live foods, herbs and other remedies, along
with bodywork to heal Toby. It took us more than nine months to clear
the cancer. Almost a year to the day that he was given six weeks to
live, he died as the result of a heart attack, followed by a stroke
caused from the damage done to his heart from medical treatment. I
would not go through this again, watching another one of my children
become medically traumatized.
When the practitioner came back into the room, he did some more
testing. According to his tests, the function of the appendix was very
low – it was heading for a crisis. He suggested that I find a
medical doctor. At this point, I felt neither intuitive nor divine
guidance to do this. I asked what the treatment for appendicitis was,
other than surgery.
Our treatment plan included an Elmag to the appendix for 6 hours
on, 6 hours off. I gave Kyla one capful of Hydrogen Peroxide added to
four capfuls of water or juice, every three to 4 hours for the
infection. As the practitioner found a disc out of alignment in
Kyla’s back, he did an adjustment and told me to bring her back the
next day. We agreed that if things didn’t turn around soon, I would
take her to a doctor.
Kyla did settle down after the treatment began, but her stomach was
touchy. She vomited the Hydrogen Peroxide. That was a problem, as we
needed to treat both the toxicity and the infection. I put what I had
left of the peroxide in a big bowl and had her soak her feet in it.
The pain subsided. Kyla slept all night – something we all needed
after the restlessness of the night before.
The next morning, the practitioner retested Kyla. He worked on her
back (the disc was out again), and found that the function of the
appendix was up a little while the infection was down a little. I
still had a very sick child. The Elmag had to go on the spine because
the adjustment wasn’t staying. We agreed to give it another day. My
husband Tim was due home that night, and I was glad that he could now
help me make the decision whether to go to a medical doctor or not.
Back home, Kyla began to want baths. Every couple of hours, she
went in and out of the tub. I called other health practitioners to get
information and advice. Some friends who were bodyworkers offered
their work, and three different practitioners came to do their own
brand of bodywork on Kyla at the house.
After one friend had done a Reiki session, she picked up
intuitively that a large part of Kyla’s problem was constipation. We
had to get her bowels moving. Later that day, my friend came back with
a flower remedy and essential oils to apply topically to the colon
area and the bottom of her feet. We added Epsom salts and baking soda
to Kyla’s baths to help her detox. Foot rubs with the oils and some
herb tea got the bowels moving within a day. I also gave Kyla a
psyllium husk capsule with the water that I was reminding her to drink
every 15 minutes. We started with one psyllium capsule the first
night, two the second, and so on, working up to four a day. She still
wasn’t eating anything except a little fruit.
Tim arrived home from his reunion to find his child in crisis. It
was a tough call, but we decided to give the holistic work a little
more time. The next day, before we went to the practitioner’s
office, we decided to also have a blood test taken. We knew that was
the first thing a MD would do anyway. Most common blood tests can be
done without a prescription, and doing it yourself is cheaper. We saw
Jill at the Mobile Medical Lab in Anchorage. She gave me a lot of good
information before drawing Kyla’s blood. A few hours later, the lab
faxed me the results. Kyla’s white count was high to normal. We
surmised the appendix hadn’t yet ruptured or the white count would
be abnormally high.
My main practitioner worked on Kyla every day that week in his
office. One day, he cleared an allergy to the infection. Most holistic
practitioners work the body in layers. Nothing has just one cause with
an acute condition. There is usually a cause on top of a cause. You
treat one condition, and another will show up, as if hiding underneath
the first. As soon as we had got the bowels moving, body tests showed
that Kyla had picked up a parasite. Now we had to do a correction with
a magnet on the parasite point along with everything else.
Kyla was feeling considerably better by Friday and had started to
eat. The pain in her side was gone, and only her back hurt a little.
Her bowels were moving; she was eating and lively. The function of the
appendix was steadily coming up and held at 85%. The disc was also
holding and everyone in the practitioner’s office was cheering Kyla
on. Even the yellow cast of her skin was gone. She looked pink and
healthy, though a little thinner. We began to relax.
Late Saturday afternoon, Kyla developed a temperature. She began to
have the toxic, yellow skin coloring again, and her energy was
dwindling. She was back to wanting a bath every few hours, saying they
made her feel better. I prayed quite often to get some assurance that
I was doing the right thing for Kyla. The temperature scared me. In
meditative prayer, it came to me that Kyla’s appendix needed to
clear the infection and junk that it was holding. This is a healing
crisis, but it will pass.
Since Kyla wasn’t in pain, we stuck to our healing plan. I took
her temperature every 15 minutes. It climbed to 104 degrees in about
an hour, but with baths and cold clothes we got it down to 102. I knew
that in order to clear itself, the appendix was probably dumping
accumulated toxicity into the blood. The fever was doing a necessary
job – revving up the whole immune system to its highest function.
Even though it scared me, Kyla needed the fever.
Early Sunday morning just after midnight, Kyla’s fever climbed
again to 104. She started having bad fever dreams. I let the fever go,
blessing it to do it’s work. I prayed a lot. Up and down, that fever
raged. Then, suddenly, it quit. It had finished its job. Kyla woke up
Monday morning cool to the touch, asking for something to eat.
For the next week, we continued our healing regime: peroxide foot
soaks; magnet work; herbs for the colon to clear parasites; essential
oils and flower remedies; foot rubs to keep the bowels and lymph
moving; lots of purified water and constant detox baths. Kyla was
eating and feeling better. Her energy returned. On Thursday, July 1,
she was pronounced out of the woods and on her way to complete
recuperation. Testing showed we didn’t need the peroxide treatments
any longer.
Then, on the night of July 3rd,
as we were all sleeping peacefully for the first time in weeks, Kyla
woke up in the middle of the night. The temperature was back. This
time she was crying. She said it hurt to urinate and the pain in her
back was intense.
I put the magnet on the bladder alarm point, then on the left
kidney and let the fever rage. I gave her cranberry juice pills and
increased her water intake. According to the last kinesiology testing,
the function of the appendix was up and the infection was clear, so we
had stopped soaking her feet. But now I had a kidney/bladder condition
up for clearing. Here we go again!
We went back to Hydrogen Peroxide foot soaks. The fever ran all
weekend until Monday and then broke. The pain left with the last fever
and Kyla began, once again, to improve rapidly.
As of today, Kyla appears to be a normal healthy child. She is
eating well and playing all day long. Her testing confirms that she is
doing great, though we continued to take her in weekly for two months
following her crisis to clear the yeast problem in the kidney/bladder
that probably started this whole crisis.
Though Kyla was saved a probable appendectomy, healing was not an
easy task. It was a rough three weeks not only for Kyla, but also for
her parents. As I see it, however, it was time well spent. It was
worth it, every moment – to once again have a healthy, untraumatized
child.
The beauty of holistic health care is that Kyla is in better shape
now than she was before she got sick. We were able to treat the cause
of the problem. In Kyla’s case, the answer was not to pluck out her
appendix, but to work at healing what caused the appendix to go out of
balance in the first place. The power of holistic health care
continues to amaze me, especially in children.
They respond so quickly and clear so rapidly. My answer as to
"why is this happening to me?" came, as I knew it would --
It’s time for children to have access to holistic health care in a
larger way. Most holistic care is not covered by insurance, and many
parents cannot afford the additional expense. Alaska Wellness Magazine
is now in the process of becoming a non-profit organization. We are
starting to create a network for sick children who could benefit from
holistic health care, either because the medical profession has given
up on them as incurable, or as an additive to medical care they are
already receiving.
If you are the parent of a sick child and want your child to be a
part of this program, please call the Alaska Wellness office
(277-4775). If you are a health care practitioner and would like to
contribute free work on sick children, please call us. Or, if you feel
called to help in a volunteer capacity, please call too. We will also
be accepting donations of health products such as magnets, herbs,
supplements, etc.
Jackie Kosednar is a Body-Mind Therapist specializing in
personal growth. She is the publisher of Alaska Wellness Magazine
and author of the book, "One Miracle After Another."
