At the time, Cathie Haynes, MS, RN, had no idea how the unexplained death of a teenager would influence her and shape her thoughts about health care: the Western system we know vs. Traditional Chinese Medicine and similar models of India and Japan.

At the autopsy, there was no way to pinpoint the cause of the teenager’s death. Haynes, then early in a 25-year career as a critical care nurse, said a physician told her that the girl willed herself to die, that “she didn’t want to be on the planet anymore.” It was then that Haynes began paying attention to critical care patients who were expected to recover but didn’t, and those who, by all rights, should have died but didn’t.

“Being a very curious person, I just started observing more. I didn’t really do much with it until I got sick in the ’90s. One morning, I couldn’t get out of bed,” she said.

This from an RN who typically worked 12-hour days, set up an outpatient cardiac rehabilitation program at Loma Linda University, was an assistant professor at the University of Arizona College of Nursing, was on staff for the study behind Dean Ornish’s book, Stress, Diet & Your Heart, and was head nurse of several intensive care units.

“The Western system couldn’t tell me what was wrong,” Haynes said.

Most physicians regard the chronic fatigue syndrome that stole her career, as well as her personal pursuits—she ran 40 miles a week, tended a garden and cared for two Siberian Huskies—as a catchall for which there is no test for diagnosis and, therefore, no treatment.

“So I started looking for ways of healing myself,” Haynes said.

In thought, that took her back to the teen who willed herself to die. And in practice, it twice took her to China, most recently in October, as she immersed herself in Traditional Chinese Medicine and healing.

In sharing her experience and the dichotomies of West and East, Haynes said she would like to see nurses at least examine their practices, the effects of the care they provide and the possibility that there are alternatives.

Alternative care, however, is not the correct term; it’s integrative care, the fusion of West and East. Integrative care is common in China, with the medical community there adopting Western practices far more readily than Eastern methods are accepted here. Nonetheless, integrative care is taking hold, slowly but surely, in California and elsewhere, Haynes said.

Haynes went on to become a certified Enneagram teacher, which involves the study of personality and spiritual paths, and a habitat restorationist in Sonoma County, where she lives.

Based on overcoming her illness, these are among Haynes’ recommendations for nurses:

• Be open to seeing limitations of the system you know.
  
• Be curious and ask questions.
  
• Try Traditional Chinese Medicine herbal remedies that are innocuous at worst and have proven for ages to be therapeutic: Yin Chiao or Gan Mao Ling at the first sign of a cold. Chinese Curing Pills for upset stomach. Inhaled steam from fresh thyme boiled in water for inflamed or infected sinuses. And fresh garlic in organic olive oil for ear infections.
  
• Listen to patients when they describe their illness because they have the best view of what is happening with them.

Haynes said her road to recovery began with learning qi gong, a body exercise that also moves internal subtle energy or what the Chinese call 'qi' (pronounced chi).

“What it is, is the life force energy. When it leaves, we die,” she said. “The Western system is the only system in the world that doesn’t deal with subtle energy. We’ve excluded it because it can’t be measured. The existence can’t be seen in the physical body.”

Which is why doctors were unable to explain the teenager's death all those years ago, Haynes said.

Feeling a little better each day through qi gong, she was encouraged to further explore diet, Traditional Chinese Medicine, which is herbal remedies, and acupuncture.

On her first trip to China four years ago, Haynes arranged for a physical at a Chinese hospital. It included an abdominal sonogram and blood work, followed by an examination by an internist of her choice, a woman in her 60s who took her pulses at the wrists, looked at her tongue, checked her earlobes and looked at the lines in her hands. She then asked Haynes to speak about what was wrong, listening not for the American words, which she didn’t understand, but for how Haynes breathed and how fast she talked.

"It's another assessment tool," Haynes said.

At the pharmacy, an herbologist filled the internist’s prescription, mixing herbs to be brewed into strong tea.

There are many Traditional Chinese Medicine stores, like this one in Hong Kong, to purchase herbs and ingredients for prescriptions. -Photo courtesy of Cathie Haynes

Most diseases experienced in our culture are related to disrupted, congested [stagnant] or depleted qi or life force energy,” Haynes said.

Qi is but one fundamental difference between West and East, Haynes said.

"Another is the allopathic model of treating symptoms vs. Traditional Chinese Medicine as a healing system, she said. That is closely tied to a third difference: reliance on the patient as the expert in his or her own body instead of the caregiver as expert.

“Doctors who deal with the kidneys, doctors who deal with the stomach, doctors who deal with the brain and the heart. There are very few physicians now who deal with the whole person,” Haynes said. “Other systems see the body as a whole and when one part doesn’t work, it affects the whole.”

She said one reason why Western health care is so expensive is that physicians, fragmented into uncountable specialties, assume a worst-case scenario when they encounter a symptom. They’re as quick to order a CT scan as their Chinese counterparts are to consider a tier of treatments progressing from the most elementary.

In China, she said, "First they will look at how you eat and they’ll alter how you eat. If you have a system that’s inflamed, then you want to have things that are cooling." Next, they recommend qi gong, in which specific movements are prescribed for certain conditions. If symptoms persist, they’ll move on to herbal medicines. As a last resort, there is acupuncture, which is considered as invasive as any Western surgery. Diet, qi gong, herbal remedies and acupuncture are the treatment modalities of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Part and parcel of that fragmentation is that caregivers, be they physicians or nurses with their own specialties, tend to believe they are the experts in what is best for the patient, Haynes said. In China, however, the individual is seen as the expert.

Medical charts are the property of patients, who choose their physicians and the treatment they receive. Haynes was given her chart as it was drafted in a college essay-type book and has it at home with her.

"I'm the person who’s expert in my body," Haynes said. "I know what makes it feel better or makes it feel worse."