Positive thinking does a body good

Kivi Hermans, Staff Writer

By Kivi Hermans

So as my mother and I are not religious, I took a bold move and sought help and advice from a doctor who does holistic medicine. Mom had gone to him before her lung cancer surgery and said she felt like a new woman after their visits.

He would do a massage without touching and, kind of like a therapist, he would get her to conjure up feelings of her past. Apparently it revitalized her. After the stroke, when I had been at the hospital for a week, and I had doctors giving me a not-so-good prognosis for mom, I decided to bring him back.

When the doctor arrived, you could see something on her face that she could feel his presence. He began by holding her hand, and putting his hand on her head. It was interesting to me, since my mother is more into a spiritual world and not necessarily a believer of one thing. Standing in that hospital room with this doctor and my mother was so emotional. I cried the whole time. Probably the best part of the whole hour he was in the room was at one point when I looked at my mother and she opened her eyes for a minute and she looked at him. She did a double take and turned her face completely to look at him and stared with adoring eyes and the closed them again. She looked like an angel just staring at this person whom she seemed to trust with her entire life.

So, with this holistic type of medicine, the soul talks and it is in turn reciprocated into words. The doctor told me so many things, some of which I still do not know if I agree with. One of the things he told me was that my mom was showing him a dog in the terrier family. This dog would be my protector, savior, best friend; and I instantly thought of my mom realizing that if she ever passed, this dog would be her presence. My first child is going to be a girl according to my mom and she will be a major influence in the area that she lives in. The doctor also said through mom that whenever the wind blew, it would be her, watching over me.

This next part is still something that makes my stomach curl up in knots. Our friends and family would definitely understand this, but my mom is not one who wants to be anything less than she was before. She enjoys her tango dancing and taking her daily runs. Apparently through the doctor, my mom told me that she did not know if she wanted to return to her life. She did not know if this was the life that she in fact wanted, with a chance that she may never be able to walk again. She was not even sure if she still wanted to be alive. She wanted to take a week to consult with her “guardians” to decide whether she wanted to remain on Earth.

Those words were a blow to my head. I knew that no one could influence her decision and it would ultimately be up to her. I cried and cried that whole week because I could not imagine my life without my mom. She is my everything! The only thing that I said to her the whole week was that I hoped that she wanted to be here and that she still had many generations to endure so she better be up for it.
When the doctor came back the next week to hear her decision, I was so nervous. This was it. This was maybe my last chance to make my final peace with my mom. Well, something must have clicked with her because she obviously decided that she wanted to stick around. I was elated to hear the news that my mother has chosen to be with me, no matter her fate physically.

Then something very crazy happened. When I was allowed to ask questions, the one thing I thought I would ask was if she knew when she was going to be fully recovered. She said that she would fully recover but it would take some time. She would walk again and even dance. She said she had a GOLDEN CARROT waiting at the end of all this. What is so interesting about the golden carrot is that when the session was over, I walked out of the hospital room and out to talk to the nurse, who had become a good friend.

She asked what had happened and hugged me when she knew mom still wanted to be here. I told her about the golden carrot and she stopped me dead in my tracks. I then found out that the night before her stroke, which in fact she had predicted was going to happen to her after a friend visited that night, she had been talking to the nurse and they were talking about her dancing and a lot of things about me and my mom told this nurse that she had a golden carrot waiting for her when she got out of the hospital. Now, I do not know what in fact I believe in, but talking to that nurse just about sucked the wind out of me.

The next day after finding out my mother wanted to stay, she ate her first bite of food in a week. Who knows what the plan is for everyone’s life and what their fate is, but I am so happy that for the time being, my fate is to be with my mom everyday!