Mad Science, Woo-Woo, or Alternative Healing (Part 2)

With the rest of the family out running errands, I could focus my full attention on getting everything I needed to get done finished.

I pulled the hand-me-down cookie sheet from the bottom drawer of the oven and surveyed it.

Decades of incredible-tasting meals and desserts had left a patina on the exterior of the 18 x 12 in. tin and uneven heat had caused one corner of the sheet to buckle. I laid it on top of the oven next to the bowl of hamburger I was preparing for meatballs.

The cookie sheet would be used to broil the burger in the oven before adding them to the sauce in the crock pot; something I’d learned from one of my mother’s friends. It was faster and safer than browning the meatballs on the burner (I was told). I rolled the meat into balls and crammed as many as I could onto the cookie sheet then placed them under the broiler.

It was the 4th of July weekend, and what was a party without meatballs?

I heard the air conditioner humming in the living room and wished I could feel the cool breeze against my humidity-drenched skin. I wore shorts and a tank I’d just received as a gift for my birthday, but the early morning heat was still unbearable. I couldn’t wait for the food preparation to be done and to hit the shower, although it would take mere seconds before Pennsylvania’s heat and humidity would have me dripping with the sweat of the summer’s day again.

My thoughts returned to the popping of the grease hitting the top heating element of the oven and then the hissing of it as it exploded into tiny bursts of fire. I looked through the five-inch gap left by the opened door and grew a bit concerned at the pool of liquid grease that was gathering at the buckled end of the sheet in the far corner of the oven. The meat, however, was browning nicely. I opened the door and pulled the rack out to turn the meat. Fine splatters of melted fat caused by the movement of the rack flew in droplets onto my unshielded arms, and I jumped both from surprise and pain. Acting more carefully, I returned the rack to the broiler and waited a little longer.

Glancing at the clock, I noticed the time that was saved from having to stand over the oven to turn and shake a pan full of meat and grease. I would have to remember to thank my mother’s friend. Feeling satisfied, I reached over and pierced the simmering potatoes with a fork to test for doneness. With the meatballs soon out of the way, I could focus all my efforts on making the potato salad and with the hubby and kids out of the way, that would be easier. I started to sing and dance to the tunes coming from the radio. It felt like I had something to dance about--so happy was I to be closer to finishing!

Reaching for the oven mitt, I pulled open the oven door carefully, this time, and pulled the rack out as far as it would go. The pool of liquid moved from one end of the sheet to the other like the colored oil in a lava lamp. Treating the situation as if it was the same as removing a tray of cookies, I wrapped my left, mitted hand around the far edge of the sheet lifting it from the rack and just as I was closing the door of the oven with my right hand, the cookie sheet with the buckled corner popped--the warped end reversing--sending a fountain of liquid fire pouring down the front of my left thigh.

There are no words to describe.

I dropped the pan of meatballs onto the oven while I bit back tears of pain. Quickly, I grabbed the dish towel that was nearby and wiped the molten grease from my legs hoping I was not wiping away too many layers of skin with it. It felt like it, though. At first, I imagine I reacted the way most people would have in the same situation. I know a flurry of expletives flew from my mouth as my hand flew to my thigh. I watched as it turned several shades of red and purple while my mind searched for past words of wisdom.

What was it you were supposed to do for burns? Do I use butter? Should I make an ice pack and place it on the injured tissue?

I couldn’t remember!

At least half a dozen conversations raced through my mind and then suddenly, I saw images of the pictures in the book I’d just read about a Doctor who used his hands to feel for injured or diseased areas of his patient’s body and then use energy to heal them. I recalled the sensations I felt when I practiced the exercises in the book and without thinking, I placed my own hands over the affected area on my thigh. Within seconds, I felt heat hotter than the liquid mass that streamed down my leg earlier. In fact, the pain I was feeling only seemed to intensify; yet, something told me to hold it there.

I focused on seeing white light pouring from the palm of my hand that hung several inches from my thigh, and I could feel the sensation of static pulse in the space between. Moving my hand in a circular motion above the burned skin, I could feel what felt like fine strings being pulled from the center of my palm in the direction my hand moved, and even though the pain had increased, I couldn’t help myself.

The pain continued to deepen for a moment, and then I noticed something. At some point, it reached an apex and leveled off. A moment later, the pain started to decrease until, eventually, all I felt was the normal sensation of the heat that came from my hand—the non-painful heat that was at all times separate from the heat that consumed and then escaped from the injured portion of my thigh. I moved my hand to get a look and saw only a slightly reddened area. I pressed my whole hand against my thigh and felt only tenderness similar to sunburn.

I blinked in stunned amazement even as I was letting go a sigh of relief. I looked up at the clock and realized the whole process had taken less than ten minutes.

“What just happened?” I couldn’t help but ask myself. Had I performed and become witness to my own healing?

After thinking more about what happened, I decided it wasn’t a healing as much as it was a speeding up of the healing process. I can’t fully explain it… even today. All I can say is, I get the impression that my body went through all the pain it would have in only a fraction of the time. In terms of the severity of the burn, it is something that I cannot answer for this instance. There was no blistering, which leads me to believe that the severity of the burn was less than what would have required immediate medical attention; but that doesn’t mean the burn would not have caused considerable pain that should have lasted well into the week.

Think about the multiple times we can all recall burning just a finger on a frying pan and feeling intense pain for days then later having that area become callused before finally peeling away. My skin did none of that. The only thing I noticed some time later was that the area where I received the burn refused to tan. The pigment around the area would become dark, but the area in which the burn occurred would not. This was similar to areas on the other thigh, when years earlier, I'd contracted poison ivy. That thigh remained scarred white in the affected area, too.

That being said, if my mind wrestled with the belief that energy work helped heal my injury, I would soon have an opportunity to squelch those doubts…

But that is a story for another time.