Tap Into Empowerment

A little over two weeks ago, a family member went into the hospital to have her second child, a healthy baby girl, a planned delivery by C-section. Now, I had my son the regular way, no complications, and I’ve been lucky to have never had any surgery besides oral (an awful fall smashed some teeth), so I don’t have experience with some of the effects of anesthesia I’m always learning 😉

As I spent the afternoon in the hospital room with my son’s newest cousin and her mother, I noticed she was itching every once in a while. Soon she was complaining about how the nurse needed to come in and give her something for the itching so of course, I had to ask what was going on. 

She explained that an after-effect of the anesthesia used during her C-section was that it was causing her to itch. She also said that earlier the nurse had given her something for the itching, couldn’t remember what it was, but something like a Benadryl, and it was wearing off. 

The itching was clearly miserable for her. She described it itching all over, distracting her and causing such discomfort. To make it worse, she was looking all over to find something – the call button to get the nurse to give her something more to help with it.

The controversy rages out there in the world, should we be all natural or used drugs, should pregnant (nursing women), take anything at all? I’m not in that fight, it’s not my passion or my business to tell someone else what they’re doing or not doing is right or wrong. I simply believe we should try as many natural techniques as we can before using drugs, and as always, as recommended by a licensed physician. 

But as the nurse couldn’t be reached right then, I asked her if she wanted to try EFT on it. As she knows about tapping from our discussions, she was eager to give it a try. So we spent a few moments getting a clear idea of what the itch felt like in her own words, where it was, the frustrations involved with it, and where she knew it came from before we started our tapping rounds.

One round, and about 30 seconds later, we checked back in. It was gone from her legs and she only felt itchy on her back now! She was happy and appreciative, ready to focus more tapping energy on her back. The intensity of the itching decreased on her back the more we tapped.

Before completely relieved, our new dad came to the rescue to lotion her back and the nurse came in to check on her and the baby – and more family showed up too! Our brief session was cut even shorter than she needed, but she felt much better, and could now use EFT for those itchy feelings as they came up, before reaching for the call button to get another dose of medication.

A note about anesthesia and injury:

In recent articles about using EFT for pain and injury, it has been suggested that EFT is used on the anesthesia that is used for surgeries because the effects can be lasting, and they can interfere with progress as we would like it to go. It’s interesting to me that we can seem to handle things easily and without negative effects, but our bodies can hold onto it. Anesthesia forces us to relinquish control over our entire body, and our minds, going to sleep until someone else decides it’s time to wake us up. And when we do wake up, we’re groggy and out of it, feeling loopy and still not ourselves. It makes perfect sense to tackle the anesthesia effects to move forward without taking them with us!