Cardiac tracing: phenomenon or biofield?
Teresa Frisch, RN, RMT, IARP 3.22.09
I think it would be safe to say that my interest in biofields began around 1995 when I was working night shifts in a small ER. I’ve forgotten the actual date but I will never forget the night.
Susan and I were the two RN’s on duty that night. As usual, we were busy until two o’clock and by three the place was deserted. We finally had a minute to look up from our respective piles of unfinished charts to catch our breath and grab some dinner. The physical plant was typical: open, with a glassed in central nursing station. The glass partitions over the counter-desks allowed us to look out and observe our patients while providing an acoustic shield for privacy. The cubicles were divided by curtains, but since the place was empty all of the curtains between the carts were pushed back. Everything was clearly visible from inside the station, and we had been commenting that the hard wire cardiac monitor in Room 3 was still turned on. Eight hours into our twelve hour shift, we were taking our first break, but eventually somebody needed to get up and go turn the thing off.
We finished eating and were groaning, looking at the piles of charts, waiting for notes to be completed, charges to be checked, and copies torn apart. I looked at Susan and told her that before I dug into my stack I might as well get up and go power the thing down so I could forget about it and concentrate on the charts.
I stood up and began moving out of the station toward it, a distance of about thirty feet. The cables and leads were loosely coiled and suspended from the shelf mounting as usual, waiting for the next patient. When I was about 10-12 feet away and still walking toward it, an electrical complex began to show on the screen. Susan was still sitting in the station and she could see it too. We both laughed nervously, and I said something about a “ghost,” and that the ghost could just keep the monitor, it was fine by me, but while I said that I had an idea but I would have to be quick. Cardiac monitors have a delay feature but it only lasts a few seconds. I hoped I could make it back into the station fast enough to hit the record button on the central monitor..
I made it.
We held our breaths and as the green graphic thermal paper began to slowly unfurl out of the machine. There it was. We were looking at two or three clearly defined electrical complexes, not artifact, and there was nobody attached to that monitor. Still nervous, we didn’t know what to make of it, but over the years we would talk about it. I saved that strip and taped it inside my locker.
After some time that ER was closed down and while we were cleaning out our lockers Susan saw the strip. Laughing, she commented that she didn’t know that I had “saved that thing.” That “thing” had become a defining moment in my life. I noticed and I remembered. I didn’t blow it off.
Years passed and this scenario was to repeat itself, time and again when I was alone in rooms with monitors; hardwire or portable. This was weird; I neither liked it nor talked about it. Eventually I had to accept that this phenomenon was directly related to me and my person. And as always, I had begun to read.
Over the years other things began to happen, and not just in my house or at work, everyplace, and so I couldn’t blame it on the place, it still had to be me. Sometimes the events were witnessed. I set off racks of pagers in the ER when I bent over next to them, I backed up, leaned over, and it happened again. By the third time, my co-workers were laughing and asking if I could wear a watch. A friend and I finished dinner, and when I walked behind her car the tail lights flickered. I backed up and it happened again. I questioned her, saying that she surely had her fingers on the key remote and accidently cued it. She denied it, and I backed up and did it again. I could tell you stories all day.
My life was moving on, and this part of me was only a fraction of it. I need to provide you with some information leading to my cardiac workup, and my sincere apologies if this seems too personal. My menstrual cycles had been accelerating in frequency and amount, and I was becoming anemic. My marriage wasn’t a happy one, but I had vowed to stay with it until my children made it out of high school. Work, marriage, civic duties, friends in crisis, it all mounted and eventually took its toll. I crumped. The day before I was to see a divorce attorney my chest began to ache. It persisted all day and by evening I accepted the inevitable. Cardiac muscle tissue needs to be able expand and contract, not sit there like a piece of leather. Oxygen deprivation translates into tissue death. Time is muscle, and by the strictest standards I had already waited too long.
“Chest pain” is a fairly generic term. Aching, pressure, heaviness, sharp, or dull are also descriptions used in further assessing and defining cardiac symptoms. Mine was definitely an “ache.” Round-eyed, worried family in tow, I checked myself into an ER. My cardiac enzymes were normal but I was anemic and under stress. I spent the night in CCU on a nitroglycerin drip and was transfused with two units of packed red blood cells. The transfusion would bring my oxygen-carrying hemoglobin back to within normal range. If my cardiac muscle was deprived of oxygen, it could be the cause of my chest pain. Stress and anxiety could be the cause of my chest pain. Narrowed cardiac arteries, restricting the blood flow and oxygen to my cardiac muscle could be the cause of my chest pain.
My repeat, “serial” cardiac enzymes were normal the next day and so was my heart cath. The cardiologist said I had the cleanest arteries in town and sent me home with instructions for periodic follow up.
Years passed, and my electrical “phenomena” and events didn’t just persist, they became more frequent and more defined. Eventually, I could actually feel a change in my chest wall, like an “exiting” sensation and right after it happened a light in the parking garage would dim, or a computer reboot, or a set of streetlights snap off. I paid attention, and it didn’t matter which emotion I was feeling, or to what extent or degree. Happy, sad, subtle or intense, the only common denominator seemed to be thought and emotion.
Again, for the medical types who may be reading this, the leftover aching in my chest would sometimes be severe, and if it was a “bigger” event, it would last for days. By all definitions it was and still feels like anterior chest wall pain, relieved with moist heat, and not angina. Being a night shifter I also know what caffeine-related PVC’s (premature ventricular contractions) feel like and that wasn’t it either.
None of those fit my personal pattern, but it made sense to me that the more it happened, the easier it might be for the cardiac electrical energy to exit from me and somehow be transmitted to the monitor. The American Heart Association teaches us that transthoracic resistance decreases with successive defibrillations (Kerber et al, Abstract) (Sirna et al, Abstract), so if electricity conducts through the chest wall more easily with successive shocks, over time could the reverse be true with me? If this “exiting” cardiac energy from my chest happened repeatedly, would it be easier in my case, and could I replicate it?
I persisted in my quest to learn about mind-body medicine and maybe discover a reason for it all. From mid 1995 to 2006, I had moved into the world of studying energy medicine, the energy body, Reiki, anomalous perturbation /psychokinesis (mind over matter), non locality and remote viewing. I found no scientific answers, only listings of studies and first person discussions. I was Point A. Something electrical was Point C. I wanted to know what was happening in Point B, the distance between A and C. All of the discussions offered up by people who knew they had “PK” seemed to have the same recurring theme: emotion always seemed to preclude an event.
By 2007, I had studied remote viewing with Lyn Buchanan, completing training courses in Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced methodology and a post graduate course in Medical Applications. By mid 2008 I found CardioMag and Magnetocardiography and began to wonder if I could volunteer as a research subject somewhere. I attended a seminar at the Rhine Research Center and met Joe McMoneagle. After discussing my difficulty finding research about PK with Joe, I followed up and joined The International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM). The fall of 2008 found me reading about research in Neurocardiology at HeartMath, and I was overjoyed when found that Dr. William Tiller, Professor Emeritus in Physics at Stanford University is part of their team. I had already read his article, Subtle Energies, published in Science and Medicine, and his book, Science and Human Transformation like they were manna from heaven.
It is now February, 2009 and I’m telling my stories and showing physicians and nurses in the ER what happens when I turn on a portable cardiac monitor-defibrillator and walk up to it. Some of those dated, timed strips are mounted for you below, and in case you’re wondering, I’ve included my heart cath report and my latest EKG.
Last week, two other nurses, my manager, and I took turns moving around the monitor and watched what appeared to be wide ventricular complexes on the screen. Mostly they were wide and couplets were frequent. Occasionally the complexes were narrow, and the R wave was above the isometric line instead of below it. We all agreed that they appeared to have a structure and didn’t appear to be what we would normally call artifact. Andrea looked at me, eyes big and with a bewildered expression asked, “I see it, but what does this mean?” I explained that the person is Point A, the monitor is Point C, and I would very much like to know what is happening in the space between: Point B.
“B” for Biofield.
So many sciences, so much technology and so little time. Tiller and Dibble have made a start, but it would not surprise me to learn that human bioelectromagnetics and the transmission of human cardiac electrical energy across several feet of space have already been documented. If anyone finds any peer-reviewed articles relating to the study of subtle energy, please send them to me through “Contact Us”. If you include complete sources and citations, I will make every effort to see that they are posted here so we can all keep up. If anyone knows of any project calling for research subjects I would like to know that as well, because after all this time I’m ready to raise my hand. It seems to me that there is a lot about us that we still don’t know.
|
