The Healer Within. Mariena Foley
You’re a new mum, and it’s normal that you doubt yourself…”
I broke in, “I’m not the panicking kind. We need to see a paediatrician, now. I insist!” These last words I delivered about three inches from the midwife’s face. I had noticed my son’s nostrils flaring a little.
“You need to get back into bed and rest, Melissa.”
“Please, please get a paediatrician. Please!”
“Please get back into bed! I know you’re nervous…”
“I am not f…g nervous!” I picked Jack up and started walking as best I could, after twenty-four hours of labour and stitches to boot. “Where do I find a paediatrician?”
Because of my medical history we had chosen a Level 3 hospital, ready for all eventualities. We assumed if anyone might need that level of care, it would be me. In answer to my insistent demand, they brought the registrar down from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, because that was who was available at the time. She took a brief look at Jack, alarm struck her gaze, then she picked him up, saying to my husband, “You’d better follow me!” I had enough time to beg Andrew to not leave Jack’s side, and they took off at a run.
I was left sitting in the hospital room, alone. No explanation, but a generous amount of fear had been left with me, so I wouldn’t get bored or lonely. The silence in the room closed in around me. No one came to inform, explain, comfort or otherwise. Looking through the doorway of my room, I could see the concerned faces of the midwives and hear the hushed whispers as they glanced with trepidation toward my room.
I tried to get up and follow Jack, shuffling determinedly out of my room and down the hall, but the many hours of labour had taken their toll and I collapsed in the hallway, clinging to the rail on the wall. My heart was shredding within me, the sobs tearing within my chest, the tears falling unaccounted down my cheeks. Nobody was telling me anything! That was my son! I had been holding that little boy for nine months, what made them think I would let go now? Something was very wrong and I needed to get to my little boy.
Someone saw the grief-stricken heap in the corridor (me), and I heard yelling. I was ready to fight to the death to get to my son! I would not be going back to that room! It must have been written all over my face, because the nurses raced to me with a wheelchair, threw me in, and ran, pushing me, all the way to NICU.
Jack had been exposed to bacteria in the hospital and his newborn immune system had no hope of defence. Jack had double pneumonia. They raced him to NICU and started treatment immediately. When he was only eleven hours old, they did a lumbar puncture that confirmed he also had bacterial meningitis. He was fighting for his life.
He was supine in what looked like an open tray, angled upward. Tubes ran in and out of this tiny newborn body, taped across his face, aggravating his soft, petal-like skin. Each breath was a struggle, with only the energy to survive. I couldn’t leave him. At the time I remember the need to keep going despite how unwell I was, to keep my wits about me, to hold my boy. Years later, my sister would show me a photo she had taken that day, and the terror in my eyes and the state of my health is plain.
The discovery of Jack’s infection triggered a search for others. Seven babies in total that day had been exposed to this bacteria and all were infected. Within a few hours they were all alongside Jack in Bay 7 of the Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit, critical. The time that passed before finding the infected babies was crucial, and as my son and I fought for his life together, the others were losing their battles around us.
The horror was far too real.
It was one o’clock in the morning when they assured me that he was stable and wheeled me back to my room to rest. Three hours later, at four o’clock in the morning, the nurses exploded into my room. “The baby has taken a turn for the worse! We have to get you to NICU!” How much worse could it get?
He was sixteen hours old. Jack had gone into a massive seizure, his entire system trying to shut down. They couldn’t get any lines in and the panic on the faces of that extraordinary medical team was evident as they parted so that I could be next to my son. They told me I needed to speak to him; he needed to hear my voice.
I looked down at his grey, stiff little body. No detectable heartbeat. Not breathing. I touched his sweet, soft cheek, and said, “Hi Angel.” And his little head turned toward me.
I started to talk to him. It was our first serious conversation. Believe me, there was no brave hero or courageous mother in me when I told Jack that if this was too much, he could leave. I won’t even try to describe the utter desolation and despair in my heart at the thought of losing my child. Only experience lends you that kind of pain. My heart only knew sheer despair at the thought of him dying; the pain is still real for me now. But the battle ahead of him was brutal. Please, don’t mistake it. I was not spiritually evolved, I was not an outstanding woman by any means, there was truly nothing heroic about it.
I loved my son. I had, from the moment the incredulous doctor said, “You’re pregnant!” I didn’t understand why he would leave so soon, why he needed to go now. How could any mother’s heart understand? But I knew something big was at play here and the decision was Jack’s.
They worked frantically as I sang and spoke to him. Finally, I heard the magic words, “He’s stable.” A nurse touched me on the shoulder tenderly. “Would you like to call your husband?” I looked at the clock. It had been two and a half hours.
Not even a day old.
Seven babies had been exposed to these bacteria that day.
Jack was the only one to survive.
Exactly three years later, on Jack’s third birthday, I met one of those significant friends that come in and out of your life with a single purpose: to direct you.
I was reading an article about some fairly extraordinary work a gentleman had been doing with healing in the United States. This article was vague, but it was about the possible effect of quantum frequencies on human cellular regeneration. I read this and something within me clicked over, not unlike the arrow on a compass. I burst into tears, and not really understanding why I was so overwhelmed, I turned to my husband and said, “We have to find this man.” Bursting into tears is not common practice for me; the importance was evident, so after reading the article he said, “Whatever it takes. We’ll find him.” We had no money to spare and it looked like we needed to go the United States, but we both knew this was incredibly important. We started placing phone calls around the world trying to find him, only to discover that three days later he would be lecturing in Melbourne, the city where we lived.
So I went. From the beginning it was an unusual journey. The lecture was held at a facility I wasn’t familiar with, so when I arrived, I was at the wrong entrance for the facility and walked in at stage level. Immediately there was a small smattering of applause, as a few in the audience assumed I was the presenter. I took rapid evasive action and dived for a seat in the front row.
The crowd surprised me, to say the least. I had a double degree in science and had worked in the rehabilitation and sports industries. I expected other such professionals to be there. Honestly, part of my anticipation of these things is the incredible education that sprouts from the incidental acquaintances you meet; so I was expecting doctors, specialists, physiotherapists, etc. However, the incidental education I was to receive was not at all what I expected. Instead, the audience was filled with an extraordinary mix of people, having all manner of injury and illness, all of them wanting to be healed.
The lady next to me presented a very bad mix of chronic fatigue syndrome, and I spent most of the time throughout the “presentation” asking her if she was alright. She was all bundled up and yet still shivering, her breathing rapid and shallow. If I needed to know where the presenter was, all I had to do was watch her watering eyes as they tracked him. She desperately needed help, she wanted to be healed, and this man was the “miracle healer” she had been waiting for. (Miracle healer? Am I in the right place?) I listened to her impassioned yearning throughout the presentation. All I heard of the lecture was at the end, when one of his assistants