Family MattersPractical Parenting Blog

On the third week of my parents’ visit, after the withdrawal from her pain killer patches, my mom came back to life. When we played “3 things that made me happy today”, she cooperated.

We still avoided long trips, but she was willing to walk in the shopping center for 4 hours to buy some gifts she wanted to take home with her. She also walked with Eden and Ayla around the neighborhood.

When we asked her about sweating at night, it dropped to once a night or none at all and she cooked a lot more, because her arm was stronger. For her, cooking is part of her identity. Not being able to cook made her feel useless. The results of her blood sugar were excellent, and she was in pain, but rated it much lower.

Read From Sickness to Health: Happy Ending »

When I was studying special education, we used to say that if you hang around kids, it keeps you young. I always believed it was true. Kids are born clean and pure and their energy is only corrupted by the presences of the anxious, angry, frustrated and sad people in their life.

Only later on, I discovered that this is actually done through mirroring. When we hang around other people, we sense what they are feeling and our mind “lights up” in the same way they do.

Babies laugh a lot and trust fully. They love physical touch, enjoy every second and, although they can’t do many things, it never stops them from trying again, and again, and again. There is a lot we can learn from babies.

My mom always loved babies. I first discovered this when my eldest daughter, Eden, was born. I was in the hospital for 10 days and my mom offered to come and stay with us for a week after I got out and help me.

Read From Sickness to Health: Baby Ayla »

I’m a strong believer in the power of the mind. Recently, I had a chat with a friend, who told me that her mom had died at a relatively young age. She’d had cancer for a while, and then, her doctors told her she had 3 months to live. She died exactly 3 months later. I think that what we believe manifests itself in our life.

For years, I have been using the placebo effect on some of my child coaching clients. I give them “special pills” that make them smart, happy, healthy and friendly (I can only use it on children, because I get consent from their parents, while they don’t know the real deal). The success rate of my placebo treatment is 100%.

Why?

Because when I install in those kids the belief that they are smart, happy, healthy and friendly, they can’t get it out of their system. Their subconscious mind makes it true.

The idea to use the placebo effect on my mother came up after we saw John the Wizard. He said it would take 6-12 months to get the painkillers out of her system and I read somewhere that we needed to go through all the seasons in order for the body to replace all its cells. At first, that freaked me out. My time was limited, and I knew that as soon as she went home, things would be out of my control.

Read From Sickness to Health: The Placebo Effect »

My mom was a very hard-working woman all her life. She started working when she was 12 years old. Since she was the oldest sister in a family where girls and women were “service providers”, she was convinced that it was her job to cook, clean and serve the men in her family.

She couldn’t afford to take time off or do things for fun. Everything she did was work. She either worked at home or worked somewhere else to bring money home. There were 9 people in her family. In our family, there we were 7. So, there was never an end to the work.

The only breaks she could ever get were when she was sick!

Read From Sickness to Health: Miserable Discount »

This post is part of a series of blog posts about my mom’s journey from sickness to health. My mom is a 78-year-old woman who was sick and whose doctors could not help her. Everyone was just waiting for her to die. She came over for a visit in Australia for 5 weeks and healed. The posts I share here are the ways we helped her. I hope they will encourage you to never give up, so read the whole series.

It was the third week of my mom’s journey from sickness to health. This time, when I suggested we go to see “John the Wizard” again, my mom was very happy. John was extremely impressed by her choice to stop taking Lyrica “cold turkey”. He said to me in English, which she didn’t understand, it takes months to get people off this medication and the withdrawal symptoms are horrible.

My mom did it in one day!

Read From Sickness to Health: New Diet and The Drug Dealer »

In the first week of my parents’ visit, we played a game. Everyone around the table talked about a good memory they had. Martin Seligman, the founder of Positive Psychology, said that if we focus on 3 happy things that happened to us throughout the day, our happiness level will increase.

We decided to do it as a family, so that my mom would be able to focus on good things in her life and learn to appreciate them and be grateful for what she had.

In our family, we play this game a lot in different versions. I also use it with my clients when I notice that their mind is full of fear of the unknown future, or when they only talk about bad things, doom and gloom. It works very well, and it is easy to see how their body language changes from the change of focus.

Read From Sickness to Health: John the Wizard »

My parents landed in Brisbane, Australia, on a Friday evening. Only a week before, we started discussing what we wanted to achieve during their visit. The incentive was the new addition to our family – their new great-granddaughter. Our oldest daughter Eden did not work, Tsoof was on a school break from teaching, Noff was on a break from studying and we had many plans for them.

My siblings said, “You can’t take them anywhere. She can’t walk for 5 minutes”. The meeting at the airport was very exciting. I had seen them a year before and Eden had seen them a year and a half before, but the rest of the family had not seen them for 9 years. For me, my mom looked 10 years older than she did the previous year, so I worried.

Much like in coaching, every journey has 2 main points – where we stand now and where we are going. I told myself that for couple of days, I must gather all the information I could to know where we stood.

My mom’s legs were swollen. One leg was worse than the other, so she had to wear different size shoes. She could not bend to tie her shoelaces. She took a long time putting on her underwear and she needed help putting on her bra.

Read From Sickness to Health: The Pharmacist »

During the 4 months before my mom came to Australia on her healing trip, I was very busy. I travelled the world with my work and only thought about my mom’s visit during gaps in the busyness. When I did spend time thinking about it, I mostly had doubt.

I had seen her the year before on my solo visit to be with my youngest sister during the birth of her son, and my mom was “not all there”. I didn’t know if I could do what my siblings said I should. For 4 months, I even doubted my parents would come.

Every time I talked to my parents, my mom was sick and in pain. She was taking a strong painkiller in a patch that lasted for 2 days had to get the prescription signed every two days. I didn’t know if my healing plan could work within a five-week visit. I imagined her here spending all her days in hospitals and I felt scared.

Read From Sickness to Health: Doubt Before Healing »

In previous posts, I shared with you how my mom, who is 78 years old, was sick, depressed and in pain and how we, her children, tried to help her in different ways. One of my mom’s biggest challenges was her attitude towards doctors, especially her GP (General Practitioner or Family Doctor).

My mom was addicted to her GP. This man has been her doctor for over 20 years. When she went to see him, she did not leave his clinic until he prescribed something for her or sent her to a specialist. When she saw a new drug on TV, she went to him and asked for it. The problem was not that she asked. The problem was that he often gave it to her!

At one stage, we asked my dad to go with my mom to the doctor and read to us what was written on her medication labels. Half of them had side effects that included kidney, liver, heart, joint, muscle and/or brain damage, and even death. We asked my dad to read her the labels, but she said that if her doctor prescribed it, it was good for her.

Read From Sickness to Health: Doctors are Not Gods »