Digest articles
Heart Failure and complementary Healing
By David Powell OBE
Dec 22, 2004, 15:20

Following heart failure in 1998, David describes how he used Reiki energy healing to help avoid a heart transplant.


Another November

Since leaving the RAF in 1993, I had become a freelance consultant working mainly in logistics and management development. November 1998 had started out as another ‘normal’ month. There were a couple of Management Development workshops in Newbury, while most of the time was spent as part of a project team based in Lancashire, developing support processes for the Hawk Advanced Training Aircraft facility being supplied by British Aerospace for the RAF at Newcastle, New South Wales.

A RAF reunion dinner in London on Friday, 20 November, was followed by a night in a stiflingly hot hotel room and on Saturday I thought I’d caught a chill. That evening saw us enjoying dinner with local friends. On Monday morning I drove the 202 miles to Lancashire. By now, I felt a bit under the weather: probably a touch of flu or, more likely, as I was not a heavy drinker, a delayed hangover.

Tuesday morning and I met up with one of the Australians on the project. As we walked down the road from the car park, I had to ask Arnie to slow down as I was out of breath. By Wednesday, I had to stop and catch my breath just walking up one flight of stairs! I resolved to do more exercise.

On the Wednesday night I retired to my hotel room early. Breathing was now difficult. If I coughed, it was as though I was drowning. Although dozing, I was afraid to go to sleep in case I coughed in my sleep and stopped breathing. My one thought was to return home to my wife Sue, and to be within striking distance of the excellent general hospital at nearby Aylesbury. I was OK if I sat still - it was moving which appeared to cause difficulties, so why not sit down - in the car? At 1.30 am I checked out of the hotel for a pleasant night drive back down the deserted motorways.

I arrived home at about 6.00 am. Once out of the car, I could barely get through the front door and slumped gratefully and apologetically into an armchair. Sue didn’t believe that I had a bad case of flu and called out our local practice duty doctor. He was round within half an hour. He left me with some pills and advised that he would be contacting someone.

The ‘someone’ had things moving quickly and by that afternoon I was with the senior cardiac consultant at Stoke Mandeville Hospital who introduced me to his ultrasound scanner; and that showed that my heart was making the funny noises. I did not have flu - I had viral cardiomyopathy and cardiomyolitis or - in plain language, heart failure.

In no time at all was I whisked through A & E and tucked up in bed on the cardiac ward, on oxygen, wired, dipped and drugged and feeling rather surprised at the turn of events November was turning out to be. I was told that they thought the specialists had seen me in time, but I would be in the cardiac unit for five days.

The above saga is included in some detail to describe what it felt like for me to experience heart failure, the speed at which it can arrive and the deceptively innocuous initial symptoms.

In my case I made a quick recovery and after about 3 weeks rest at home, I was working in the study writing manuals and back on the road in the New Year (once I was declared fit enough to have my driving licence back). Over the next few months I kept taking the pills and going for regular check-ups.

In June 1999 I flew out to Australia for two weeks to check on progress with the project at Newcastle. On checking with my GP, he advised that the trip should not present any problems, indeed with all the additives in my system, I was probably in better shape than most! Meanwhile, the cardiac consultant seemed pleased and all appeared stable.


Once more with feeling

A year passed and June 2000 found me scheduled for another trip to Australia. Although I felt a bit tired, I still went, hoping that a change of scenery would shake the cobwebs out of the system. However, soon after my return, I started to swell up and quickly became breathless. When we were out shopping, I had to keep telling Sue to slow down!

We went back to see the consultant. Pills were changed. I put on and then lost nearly 20 pounds (9 kilos) in six weeks! However, I was obviously still far from fully fit. In August we were told that there had been no significant improvement and now the only sensible thing was a heart transplant while I was still strong enough for the surgery. This came as a bit of a shock as that wasn’t in the script.

The wheels started moving for referral to the specialist transplant unit at Harefield Hospital. This is when I made an important decision. I would use Reiki.


A chair and a cat and Reiki

For those of you unfamiliar with Reiki, it is a form of natural healing. Reiki (pronounced Ray-Key) can be translated to mean the passage of Universal Energy. If our energy or life force is low, then we are more likely to become sick or stressed. Reiki healing seeks to recharge the natural healing energy.

This form of healing originated in Tibet many centuries ago and was rediscovered in Japan in the late 1980s by a Japanese scholar called Dr Mikao Usui. To treat someone using Reiki, the client lies down or may remain seated. The only clothing you need removed are your shoes. Reiki healers lay their hands gently on or over various parts of the body in a sequence of positions. Please don’t ask me for a scientific explanation. It’s a bit like gravity; I know it exists, I know what it does but I have never seen it and I don’t know how it works.

I had been introduced to Reiki through our cat Miffy. In June 1998, shortly before my heart failure, Miffy was rushed to the vet with a stroke. The initial diagnosis included a sheared optic nerve and the prognosis was not good. Meanwhile, one of Sue’s friends, Verity Richards, had become a Reiki healer and was working with animals. Verity worked on Miffy with considerable success. Not only did the cat’s sight recover but over a period of just a few weeks, Miffy went through all the stages of growing up from kitten to cat but speeded up as, helped by Verity, it ‘unscrambled’ her brains.


Reiki healing

I felt that I couldn’t ask Verity for Reiki. At that time she was very busy with a full-time job and her animal healing. I know that I wanted lots of Reiki and at regular intervals. Luckily, Sue was using a local holistic therapy clinic and through them I was recommended a Reiki therapist at Aylesbury. On 4 September the healing hands of Sandra Bradshaw, Reiki Master, entered my story.

By now my booking for Harefield had arrived. I was to report for four days of heart transplant assessment on16 October.

Sandy began weekly Reiki treatments; apparently I was taking in a lot
of energy.

A final boost from Sandy on the Saturday before I went into Harefield. Meanwhile, I was in a real funk, especially over the angiogram which would involve pushing a camera up my arteries – whilst conscious! However, to help me, Sandy had taught me how to think of a beautiful place and introduced me to the wonderful Bach Rescue Remedy.

On Monday I checked in at Harefield to begin a programme of swabs, blood tests, X-rays, ultrasound, electrocardiograms etc. However, by now, just after six Reiki sessions, I was actually beginning to feel quite good! On the Tuesday I had a ‘difficult’ time with one of the Harefield team whose job included helping me come to terms with the big question: ‘Why do you think you are here?’ My suggestion that it was ‘just in case?’ and ‘I am sure that there are far more deserving people who need a transplant’ did not go down too well. I had to accept that I was now on the first rung of the transplant process. I was ill and I wouldn’t have been referred to Harefield unless a heart transplant was the only option. After two hours of counselling, I was agreeing that I had started the process and that my life depended on a transplant if a donor could be found in time.


“Compared with a visit to the dentist for a filling; give me an angiogram every time.”

Wednesday arrived and I had to face the dreaded angiogram. With Rescue Remedy for starters – and I was visualising being in my beautiful place – the headland overlooking the Gap (the entrance to Sydney Bay, I will spare you the details). Suffice to say that compared with a visit to the dentist for a filling; give me an angiogram every time. Furthermore, where the camera had been inserted in my groin, there was just one small red mark: no bruising, no after-effects at all.

The final day of assessment and I was told that, surprisingly, things were quite good and perhaps they would just keep me under periodic review for the time being. I now had to learn a new mantra: ‘I am not going to have a transplant – yet!’

For ten months I continued with fortnightly Reiki treatment. The skill of doctors and their clever pills were curing, I adopted a more balanced lifestyle with less rushing around, more exercise and the Reiki were healing.

A new ‘problem’ was that sometimes the Reiki healing became out of step with the curing resulting in low blood pressure. This was corrected by reducing my cocktail of pills. This led to a still ongoing cycle of Reiki, low blood pressure, doctor reduces the pills, more Reiki, normal blood pressure, Reiki, low blood pressure and the doctor reduces the pills!


Moving on

By the summer of 2001 something or someone was telling me that the time had come to move on to being a Reiki Healer. Not only did this mean that I could start exploring a new journey of helping others, but one of the features of Reiki would be that I could self-heal, and I now normally give myself four or five half-hour treatments each week.

David Powell
H.E.A.R.T UK wishes to stress that prescribed medication should only be adjusted under medical supervision and patients should inform their doctor if they are receiving complementary therapies while undergoing medical treatment.

© Copyright 2001 HeartUK Ltd