Jennifer Reiter

Jennifer's Parents,Christine & Robert Reiter

The easiest way to tell this story is to start at the beginning, so that is what I am going to do.......

In 1984, at the age of 31, my mother Christine, was diagnosed with a Grade 3 Astrocytoma, which is a type of brain tumor. She was given Radiation Therapy as her course of treatment, but was not expected to survive due to the size and location of her tumor. Basically the doctors told her to get her affairs in order before going into the hospital. She received her treatments as an inpatient at the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton, Alberta for a period of 3 months.

By alot of prayers and nothing less then a miracle, the therapy was successful. Other then a permanent limp in her left leg, all was fine until 2000 when Christine started to have trouble falling alot when she was walking and experiencing numbness in her feet. The doctor's diagnosed Radiation Disease as the cause.

Radiation Disease is a long term side effect of being treated with Radiation Therapy. When the brain is treated with Radiation, the tissue that was in the pathway of the Radiation waves slowly begins to atrophy and die. The result is the death of brain and nerve tissue resulting in the brain losing "contact" with the body.

 At first Mom couldn't walk, then she couldn't move her arms and hands, then speech became very slurred and hard if not impossible to understand, we communicated with her through a system of eye blinks. In the end she could not swallow any longer, and because she had decided not having a feeding tube surgically inserted into her esophagus because her quality of life was so poor, she basically died of starvation. Thank goodness for the wonderful staff at the Valleyview Longterm Care Facillity, she was highly medicated and did not suffer. 

During Mom's last 4 years of life she suffered near constant pain caused by muscle cramps. Her muscles would contract on not release sometimes for hours at a time. It was excruciating for her to endure such terrible pain, even with the help of high levels of Morphine.

I felt completely helpless to help her in her time of need so I began to research different alternative pain relief methods. I came across Reiki and my family decided to give it a try and hire a Reiki Master to give Mom treatments to try to ease her pain. We were all skeptical at the start, but Mom said that the treatments acutally helped alot to ease her pain. I witnessed her going from frantic pleading for help to sleeping within the first 30 minutes of her Reiki Session. I decided that this must be the perfect solution to Mom's pain situation; a pain reliever with NO negative side effects. I decided to have the Reiki Master attune me to Reiki 1 so that I could give my Mom treatments whenever she needed them, instead of just on her regularly scheduled sessions. My Mother & Father both wanted to be attuned as well so we did a weekend family attument workshop. Now, not only could Dad and I help mom when she needed it but she could also give herself treatments as well!

Reiki not only helped to relieve Mom's pain but it also helped her on a spiritual level. Most often when people know that they are going to die and have alot of time to think about it they tend to get scared of the process. The progression of Radiation Disease could easily be compared to ALS or Lou Gherig's Disease where many of the sufferers actually die from asphyxiation because their brain isn't telling their lungs to work anymore. Mom was terrified of how she was going to die. Was she just not going to be able to breath and suffocate? Reiki helped Mom to be much more at peace with what was happening to her and of the ultimate reality of her death. Christine's whole family was with her when she passed over peacefully at 1:11am April 22, 2004, like a butterfully leaving it's cocoon.  After Mom passed away, I felt lost without having someone to "help" any longer. I felt drawn to further my education in the Natural and Alternative Health field. I completed the required upgrading of my education for 1 year and then relocated to Kelowna, British Columbia, where I attended the Canadian Institute of Natural Heath and Healing and obtained my Natural Health Practitioner Diploma. I have been offering my services to the residents of Kelowna and area since February 2007.

Many thanks go out to my wonderful mother, Christine, who helped me find my true calling in life. She is now my guardian angel, helping to guide me from heaven, until we meet again.

 In Loving Memory Of My MotherChristine Reiter1953 - 2004