High Touch Cancer Care
The Queen's Medical Center, Health Connection, Winter 2001
If ever there was a person in need of a friend, it's someone just diagnosed with cancer. Bosom Buddies of Hawai'i is a unique partnership developed to assist women with breast cancer during the first year of treatment. "That first year is really a critical time," says Hob Osterlund, RN, of Pain Management at The Queen's Medical Center and a driving force in the creation of Bosom Buddies. "It's a time of many decisions, worries and procedures—an ideal time to have unconditional support."
Bosom Buddies pairs new patients with a certified Healing Touch practitioner specifically trained for attention to breast cancer. Healing Touch incorporates a variety of healing modalities to promote relaxation and well-being. Practitioners stress that Healing Touch is not a substitute for traditional approaches, but a complement to them.
"I was overwhelmed," Debra Duggan-Takagi recalls of the initial period following her diagnosis. "My Bosom Buddy was so patient, so generous with her time." Bosom Buddies is supported by 13 local organizations, including the American Cancer Society, Hospice Hawai'i, the University of Hawai'i School of Nursing and three local hospitals, in addition to The Queen's Medical Center. "We have a part-time staff of one—me!" laughs Queen's Office Manager Susan Suzuki. She diligently returns calls and handles all the paperwork to match Healing Touch practitioners with their new buddies. Everyone else is a volunteer. All funding comes from private donation and grants from organizations such as The Breast Cancer Fund of San Francisco, the Lloyd Symington Foundation, the Hawai'i Affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Healing Touch International and Healing Touch Hawai'i.
"The steadying force that my Bosom Buddy Lynn Hearl so generously provided had a tremendously positive impact on my rate of recovery," Duggan-Tagaki asserts. She credits everything from the rapid healing of her incision and skin after surgery and radiation as well as her positive attitude to Bosom Buddies. Their year together as Buddies is over, but the two see each other regularly as friends.
One of the best parts of Bosom Buddies is seeing the connections made through helping others. Duggan-Tagaki is now certified in Healing Touch and a trained Bosom Buddy. "I like to see that cycle of care," Osterlund says. "People experience something that made a difference to them and makes them want to give back."
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Second Annual America's Healthiest Cities
Natural Health, April 2001
By Katherine Gallia and Clare Horn
The metropolitan life has its advantages. Instead of driving, you can take public transportation. If you want to join a yoga class or shop at a natural food store, chances are there's one close by. And if you need a quick escape, a beautiful park is often just around the corner. Because of the services they offer, cities can make it easier for their residents to live naturally healthy lives.
But some cities are healthier—and more desirable—than others. So for the second year in a row we've separated the stars from the duds. We rated the 50 largest urban areas according to a list of 37 criteria. We also identified America's most unhealthy cities (see "Our Holistic Hall of Shame," page 79). Find out if your home city—or one nearby—made our best, or worst, list.
#1 Honolulu, Hawaii
Amenities, B
Physical Health, A
Environment, A
Happiness, A-
Overall grade: A-
How Honolulu made the grade. Honolulu scored highest in our physical health category with low breast cancer and heart disease rates and a life expectancy that far surpasses any other city we evaluated. A low production of toxic chemicals contributes to the good health of its residents. Honolulu residents are also active. Perfection comes at a price, however: Honolulu is the second-most expensive city to live in on our top list.
How citizens are making a difference. While Hawaii's breast cancer rates are low, many women of Polynesian descent don't seek health care until their illness is far along. To change this mind-set, in January of last year a group of Healing Touch practitioners helped to found Bosom Buddies of Hawaii, a nonprofit breast cancer support group that matches breast cancer patients with volunteer Healing Touch practitioners. Patients who have been diagnosed with breast cancer receive services free of charge for the first year after their diagnosis. Bosom Buddies hopes to attract funding for research projects on Healing Touch, but for now its main goal, says director Hob Osterlund, is to promote self-care with complementary treatments. (For more information, call 808-679-0073.)
Population: 395,789
Size: 86 square miles
Average temp: 71° (Jan), 79° (July)
Geography: Island city stretching between Pearl Harbor and Koko Head, an extinct volcano
Median age of inhabitants: 36.8
Life expectancy: 79.3 Years
Median household income: $45,227
Cost of living: 56% higher than the national average
How we did it
We used 37 criteria, averaging scores and then translating them into letter grades.
Amenities grade
What we measured per capita: Acupuncturists, farmers' markets, fast-food restaurants, fitness centers, natural food stores, vegetarian restaurants, and yoga studios.
Sources: National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, Reference USA (database), USDA, Vegetarian Resource Group.
Physical health grade
What we measured per capita: Rates of breast cancer, heart disease, obesity, and smoking; fruit and vegetable consumption; life expectancy; lack of physical activity; and work sick days.
Sources: Community Health Status Report (CHSR)
Environment grade
What we measured: Air and water quality, number of car pools, politicians' votes on environmental issues, fuel wasted in traffic, recycling rtes, and toxic-chemical production rates.
Sources: CHSR, Environmental protection Agency, League of Conservation Voters, surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP), US Bureau of the Census, www.bestplaces.net
Happiness grade
What we measured: Rates of crime, depression, high blood pressure, and unemployment; charitable donations; houses of worship; commute times; cost of living; marriage-divorce ratios; plastic surgeons; poverty; recreation areas, road-rage incidence; sunny days; and traffic.
Sources: American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CHSR, FBI Crime Statistics, National Center for Charitable Statistics, Places Rated Almanac (IDG, 2000), Reference USA (database), STPP, US Bureas of the Census, www.bestplaces.net
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Soothing Hands, Healing Touch
Honolulu Advertiser, Island Life, September 28, 2000
By Beverly Creamer, Advertiser Staff Writer
Under a white flannel blanket in a room at Queen's Medical Center, Jill Kajikawa-Kent breathes more and more slowly, her mouth falling open as she slips into a deep, meditative sleep. An inch above Kajikawa-Kent's body, Lynn Muneno's hands hover in slow-mo. At times, they rest lightly on the shoulders, a knee, the abdomen. At others, they are in the air, as if smoothing and fluffing an imaginary cloud. The room is cool, the lights low, and the ethereal flute, piano and harp music from Muneno's boom-box spreads a sea of calm for what has become a lifeline in Kajikawa-Kent's recovery from breast cancer. For more than a year, the two women have come together once a week for a treatment of "healing touch." They are part of "Bosom Buddies", a free program that has already paired 39 breast cancer patients with healing touch practitioners for a year of weekly follow-up treatments that ease symptoms and may speed recovery.
We're seeing people tolerate chemotherapy and radiation better than without healing touch," said Hob Osterlund, clinical coordinator of pain management services at Queen's, and one of the lightning rods for the program's creation. "Our hope is it will also help nausea and fatigue that are very common after chemo and radiation. "We don't know what the long-run outcome will be, but we do know that if we provide profound relaxation it helps the body do its own balancing."
At Queen's, where the use of healing touch in the pain management program is now almost a decade old, many patients are enthusiastic about the benefits. But Osterlund is careful to point out that healing touch is not a cure for cancer, but rather a therapy aimed at relieving stress as well as unpleasant side effects of treatment. Though many indications are positive, not everyone is convinced of its usefulness; studies are underway both at Queen's and in other centers across the country to try and document its effects.
At Queen's, patients with pain are generally offered healing touch as a matter of course, but breast cancer patients have been some of the most enthusiastic about its benefits, and many want to continue treatment when they leave the hospital, said Osterlund.
Breast cancer is also the second leading cause of death among women in Hawai'i, with mortality highest among women of Hawaiian ancestry. While healing touch many not be able to change those statistics, it offers another kind of comfort and support for those facing life-threatening disease. Studies at Stanford University Medical School in California by Dr. David Spiegel have already documented the power of support groups for patients with recurring breast cancer. Those who participate live longer, Spiegel found. "There is a power behind social support," agrees clinical psychologist Charlene Bell, who runs a support group at Pali Momi Medical Center. "It not only enhances quality of life, it can extend life. "It was the support of other women that was helping," said Bell. "In this case it's the support of your buddy. You develop a friendship. Especially for women who don't have social support, this can be very valuable."
Support also helps reduce stress, which can inhibit healing. "A cancer patient can be so preoccupied with having this illness that it's all they think about," said Bell. "It's been found that negative thoughts can actually create stress hormones—cortisols—that go to every cell in your body. "And when anxiety, depression and fear traumatize a patient, the stress can affect healing. So there's a definite connection between how we think and how we physically feel."
It's been almost two years since that January dawn when Kajikawa-Kent lay on a mobile surgical bed and waited with deepening anxiety for the team that would remove a lump growing in her left breast. "I felt grave fear, probably at the anticipation of the results," she remembers. "You have to recover. You're not comfortable. I just didn't want to go in and have surgery."
That's the day she met Muneno. Half an hour before Kajikawa-Kent was wheeled away, the nurse suddenly appeared, with a radio and magical hands. When Muneno was finished with a healing touch treatment, Kajikawa-Kent headed into surgery calm and relaxed, as if the pain medicine and anesthesia had already taken effect. "That was really a blessing," she said.
Immediately after surgery Muneno was there again, and soon it became a regular routine through follow-up chemo and radiation treatments, even after Kajikawa-Kent was back at her job at the University of Hawai'i. Now every Tuesday afternoon Kajikawa-Kent leaves work a little early, stops to pick up her youngest daughter, 7-year old Angela, from school and drives to Queen's for an hour of the utmost relaxation. On those nights she sleeps better than usual, and awakens with the same lightness she feels coming out of the treatment.
"It's like having a massage, but it's not a hands-on thing," she said. "Sometimes my body will be sore, but you don't feel sore coming out. After one of my chemos my hands and feet would get numb, and it would last weeks. With this I feel as though that disappeared faster."
Patients who have been paired with healing touch practitioners choose when they want treatments. Before surgery. Afterward. For as long as they need it.
Robin Tanner asked for hers throughout each of five surgeries that took a tiny slice, a lump, and then her entire left breast. "My physicians are real open," said Tanner. "And they were really impressed with how rapidly I healed." Now she gives back, providing healing touch once a week to a buddy of her own.
"We provide the support that a lot of women feel is lacking," said Tanner. "There's no one to talk to, no one to share how it feels, and we're there to listen. The idea is to create some kind of bond. Most women need the one-on-one. That's how we communicate."
Muneno said helping someone else has deeply affected her own life. As she watches Kajikawa-Kent find time to pay attention to the needs of her three children, it has helped change her priorities, too. "She has allowed me to stop and see what's important. Just the little things," Muneno. "I was always one of these people who was just too busy to see these things."
A new peace has spilled into Muneno's life. With her husband still asleep most mornings, she gets up and pads barefoot into her home office to sit quietly, close her eyes, and prepare for the day. Listening to the same soothing music she uses for treatment, she gains a new perspective. "If I get myself balanced," she said, "the day just goes better."
Those who have been introduced to healing touch are often so enthusiastic they don't wait for official channels. In a Kane'ohe neighborhood Miyoko Shimoda overheard the husband of her next door neighbor talking about his wife's breast surgery. Without waiting for an invitation, Shimoda knocked on their door and offered help. In the next two days, she gave her neighbor two treatments, though the woman was skeptical. "She just had surgery a week ago so everything is very fresh," said Shimoda, referring to the raw emotions that often accompany surgery. Shimoda's neighbor feels vulnerable, and asked that her name not be mentioned. She hasn't yet told all of her family and friends what she's facing.
"I'm not somebody who really believes in all that kind of stuff, but...I don't know," the woman said. "When she does it, it feels good, and I'm happy. At the beginning I was thinking, 'This is weird,' but it seems to help, so why not?"
Although most of the major benefits from healing touch occur in the first year after diagnosis of breast cancer, buddies work out their own schedules, said Osterlund. All practitioners are volunteers, leading busy lives of their own, and that isn't lost on the patients who have come to count on them.
"They're like little angels," said Kajikawa-Kent. "They just give. That was the part that touched me. These people are willing to do this to total strangers. They're really a special group of people."
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