IT’S MAGIC!

Patient Anne Wise considers what makes Park Attwood Clinic so unique.

I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma (a bone marrow cancer) in September 2005, something that came completely out of the blue and shook my existence to its very core. I first heard of Park Attwood in January 2006 via a complementary health centre that I had regularly attended for Reiki since my diagnosis, where they suggested that it would be a good place for me to recuperate after my bone marrow transplant, scheduled for March 2006.

I sent for information from the Clinic and it arrived promptly, but reading through it at the time I felt little connection with what the Clinic was able to offer and so I left the envelope until September 2006, when I felt drawn to read it again. This time I felt a resonance with what I read, especially the mistletoe treatment, as I was keen to keep my new immune system as operational as possible. Attending the open-afternoon at the end of September and listening to each of the therapists, I was convinced that a stay at Park Attwood was right for me and that I might as well give all the different therapies a go whilst I was there, but still my main attention was focussed on the mistletoe therapy.

From the moment I arrived in early November 2006, I felt I was in the right place. Every aspect: the admissions procedure, staff (whether catering, nursing, administration or housekeeping), the ambiance, the environment, even the interactions with the other patients, spoke of acceptance and peace; difficult concepts when one is facing a life-threatening illness.

It felt that up to my stay at Park Attwood, my health care had been compartmentalised with different professionals separately attending to my needs (physical, emotional and spiritual). At Park Attwood I found an approach that really included the whole of me in its consideration and which can truly be called ‘holistic’, a term that is so freely, but perhaps so often inaccurately used. It took two days for me to adjust to the rhythm of living at Park Attwood, during which I naturally allowed myself to submit and trust to the process and to ease back on my normal incessant need to rationalise and understand. By doing so, this increased my sense of acceptance that I was in the right place and that at a deep level I was exposing myself to something positive and healing, in its fullest sense.

Individually each of the therapies was powerful in its own way (this was particularly true for the art therapy, which I found to be a most moving and self-expressive mode, allowing a new type of expression formerly closed to my conscious mind). The wholeness of my experience was also emphasised in the sense of unity and co-ordinated direction of the different therapies: counselling, massage, eurythmy, art therapy, each individually had something unique to offer and yet each offered something to the whole healing experience; so often I was struck by overlap between each of the therapies, either through words or gestures. Interestingly I began to realise that the mistletoe treatment was not the major feature of my experience of Park Attwood but co-existed equally alongside all the other therapies. This realisation of the synergy of the different therapies was helped along following some excellent conversations with Dr Lace, who gently supported my thinking and enabled me to accept the processes that had been triggered, even if part of that acceptance was to trust to the unknowing.

During my stay at Park Attwood I kept a journal and I have referred often to it when attempting to find the words that capture the essence of my two-week stay. Before leaving Park Attwood, I suggested to a fellow patient, who had stayed at Park Attwood on several occasions, that perhaps I could prepare a ‘script’ to use on my return home to explain what happened at Park Attwood; knowingly he nodded his head and with his beautiful Glaswegian accent replied:

“Just say it’s magic!”

So that’s my parting line: to experience Park Attwood is to know the magic of it.