I recently attended a touch skills training with Kathy Kain and a fellow colleague asked how we can help a client that is receiving life-saving chemo treatment that also attacks healthy cells and tissue. She quickly answered and emphatically stressed how important it is to support this pro-survival choice. When we are faced with a life-threatening illness, we make a decision to take a fix that may also make us sick. We’re making the choice to take a poison in order to survive.
Kathy went on to say that every time a chemical comes in, we expect the tissue to contract (like being burned), and chemotherapy drugs need to stay in the system long enough to work.
She went on to discuss timing of treatment and how it’s helpful to have touch sessions some time away from treatment, that can be helpful to experience less nausea because it helps with the trauma response.
In other words, can we be open to the chemo to do it’s job? This is your pro-survival self coming in to make this decision and we’re here to support that.