“Dancing Healer” was the name of a book about a medical doctor that went to practice on an Indian reservation where he was introduced to the concept of healing, which included an individual’s ability to listen to and understand body processes and be in control of them, and participate with the “doctor” in healing. The doctor didn’t believe it until confronted with evidence, and after that he was able to describe the difference between a doctor and a healer.
Doctors are not healers. If we had healers participating in our wellness, I would have paid more attention to the signals I have been getting: a sharp pain that started in my left breast last winter, like a signal to my brain. My certainty that there is a connection between what I eat and the pain in my side which I “see” as undigested fat gathering on my liver looking for a missing gall bladder to process it, until it has to go somewhere. The day I looked at the skin on the back of my hands and thought, “I have cancer” because it looked the way I clearly remembered the look of the skin on the face and hands of a man that I worked with in the 70s. The feeling that groups of people who have died were gathering around me.
If we had healers, they would encourage us to tell them about these signals and thoughts. To tell the stories and the intuitive signs. They would use these to help us heal. I would have told them these things.
Instead, I only talk to the doctors about the connection between my pains and what I eat, and I have begged for their attention and help with this for the last several years, until recently I informed the latest in a series of local clinic doctors that I was giving “you people” one last chance to help me figure out what was wrong with me, and the next place I was going if they didn’t was to the acupuncturist. Several thousand dollars worth of tests later, waylaid by breast cancer, I still have no answer to this question.
Now the breast cancer surgeon is scheduling me for appointments with “the team” which does not include anyone who is remotely interested in any of my other medical history or other symptoms or health issues I have been confronting. Nope – the breast cancer doctor said – we are looking at your breast. I had to argue and argue again the point of having someone look at me as a whole entire complex human being body and not just a left breast to get her to agree to add an internist to “the team.”
That is so far from encouraging us to listen to our bodies and describe what they are telling us, I am so offended by this type of medicine (and our lack of access to even this type of care) that I can barely be civil to doctors. That isn’t helpful, or useful, or healing. What is the alternative?
When I was in the hospital with pneumonia after having the last round of tests, I asked a doctor to please look at all my new test results in conjunction with this new event. “Oh! Too many cooks!” she said, as she was just treating me for pneumonia. No, I told her - the trouble is, there aren’t any cooks in the kitchen.