Hi everyone.
I apologise in advance for a long post.
As many of you are aware and may remember from previous posts, I have been trying to bring Reiki into hospitals for cancer patients here in Dublin, Ireland.
Even before my husband passed away, I often thought that it would be great to offer Reiki as yet another complementary therapy alongside Reflexology and Aromatherapy at Irish Hospitals. But while my husband was still alive, I neither had the energy nor the time to explore this further and wanted to give my whole energy into caring for my beloved husband. But when Paul passed away, I felt that it was time to revisit this idea.
I approached the hospital here in Dublin where Paul attended for 15 years and where we received the most outstanding care and support. I thought that, because they knew me there, they would be willing to listen to my proposal and give it some serious thought, maybe even invite me to let me present my idea. This has never happened.
My proposal was to offer Reiki treatments to interested patients of the hospital on a voluntary basis for one or two days per week.
The palliative care doctor was the first one I approached; and she told me that it was too early in my bereavement for me to offer such a service.
I then approached the chaplain of the hospital who told me that he would enquire about it and talk to the Director of Nursing; he got back to me a couple of weeks later to let me know that there was no policy in place to support this. Then I wrote a long letter to the medical director of the hospital outlining my proposal; I didn't get a response for two months and then I received a letter in which he expressed his condolences on the passing of my husband and told me that, if I had any questions about my husband's care, I should approach the doctors who had been looking after him - if you ask me, he had deliberately misunderstood my letter, it was a friendly yet very clear way of telling me to go away and that they were not interested in what I had to say. I wrote to him a second time, basically telling him that I would appreciate if he read my letter again properly and got back to me about my proposal, but I never heard from him again.
I wrote to the Director of Nursing then outlining my proposal and followed my initial letter with one, a second, a third and then a fourth email; I never heard a word from her.
Then I contacted Paul's consultant; he told me that Reiki for cancer patients would be a great idea, but when I wrote back to him enthusiastically to see if he would be willing to explore this idea further I never heard from him again.
I did manage to meet the senior psychologist of the psychooncology department of a different hospital and presented my idea; but he told me that he was not in a position to help me.
I also tried to do a lot of campaigning on Twitter and Facebook and wrote a long article on Linkedin where I added mostly people working in the Irish healthservice to my network; the article and posts got likes and shares, but nobody contacted me to explore my idea further.
Then I developed my idea further. I thought we could run a trial where I give Reiki treatments to cancer patients who attend the hospital as outpatients. My idea was to treat interested patients once a week for the period of two months and evaluate the success of the treatments afterwards. My main question for the patients taking part in the trail would be: Do you feel that your over all quality of life has improved? But also: Have your levels of tension and anxiety changed? Has your sleep improved? Have the side-effects of your treatments changed? And again I contacted everyone I had contacted before with this new approach. I have never heard back from anyone.
I can't tell you how frustrated I am at this point.
Firstly, I think my idea is really good. Everyone's experience of Reiki is different, but all are agreed that it is a very relaxing, very calming and very comforting treatment which eases tension and anxiety, improves sleep, boosts energy-levels and reduces side-effects of Chemotherapy and radiation treatments. There is no scientific evidence here in Ireland, but we have plenty of anecdotal evidence from many, many patients who have experienced Reiki treatments and found them very beneficial.
Secondly, I know that many people are of the opinion that it is very early in my own bereavement. And it may look like this from the outside. However, what people don't realise when they say that is that I have been grieving for my husband much longer than only since last year when he passed away because I knew all along that he was very sick and that he was probably or most likely going to die from his cancer. So I have been grieving for a long time really. And, also, I personally don't see why my own bereavement should stop me from working with cancer patients. If anything, I feel it would help me in my own grieving process because I would feel that I can help people in a similar situation to the one my husband was in, I would feel that I can work with people to whom it really matters, I would feel that I can make a real difference.
Thirdly, I know from my own research into this that the complementary therapies offered in Irish hospitals, the only complementary therapies aproved by the health service here, are Reflexology and Aromatherapy, and those treatments can only be offered by nurses. That doesn't make sense to me. There is no reason to believe that Reflexology and Aromatherapy are more effective treatments for cancer patients than Reiki, and why should our nurses, who are already working under immense pressure, be the ones who have to offer the complementary therapies as well? It would be much more beneficial if nurses do their job as nurses and complementary therapists offer their complementary therapies, everyone does what they are good at, and together we work for the benefit of the seriously ill patients.
Fourthly and lastly, I can see that hospitals would have issues with this because of insurance, and perhaps with me as a newly bereaved offering this service, but what I don't understand is why nobody is willing to actually sit down with me and talk to me about it.
Now, and this is the reason behind this post, there was one nurse on Linkedin who suggested to me that I find out what hospitals in the states, particularly she mentioned California, have to say on the practice of Reiki on cancer patients. I don't know why she particularly suggested California. But since I know that there are many people from the states on this forum, I thought I would write this post and see if any of you know anything about Reiki being offered as complementary therapy at hospitals in the US. I think if I find hospitals in the US that offer Reiki for their patients, I could bring that into the discuisson here; Irish services are usually very fond of whatever is being done in the US.
As you can see, I am really determined and not at all willing to give up. But I don't know where to turn anymore or what my next step in this could be other than hopefully finding out from other hospitals where Reiki is already being offered. Any other ideas? Any thoughts or comments?
Thank you.
Mel.
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