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News
Cancer survivor offering practical help
Thursday, 02 November 2006
By CANDICE REED
• Howick and Pakuranga Times
BREAST cancer survivor Beverley Scarll is warming up her hands to help other breast cancer patients.
Reiki master teacher Beverley Scarll will help metastatic breast cancer patients with a personal touch. Times photo Michelle Hyslop.
Some 20 years ago — a few years before her 40th birthday — Mrs Scarll was diagnosed with breast cancer. Fortunately she survived.
A subsequent interest in natural healing led the Farm Cove grandmother to learn reiki and she has now joined forces with the Louise Perkins Foundation’s ‘Sweet Louise’ services.
Sweet Louise was launched on Monday (
Times
, October 30) and offers metastatic breast cancer patients in Auckland practical help, counselling and other well being therapies for free.
The foundation was inspired by the life of Louise Perkins who died of breast cancer, but found many alternative ways that helped her deal with the day-to-day experiences of breast cancer.
Her husband, Scott, established the foundation to help other women find similar positive experiences.
Mrs Scarll, who only discovered the benefits of reiki after her cancer treatment, says the Japanese technique based therapy helps balance the body and mind through touch.
“Reiki does support the body’s own innate ability to heal itself,” she says. “But I don’t have healing hands, I can’t give people false hope of being healed. It just helps you relax and retune yourself.”
Mrs Scarll has been involved with reiki since 1992 and is now a master teacher and founder of the Reiki Academy Incorporated.
It is the academy that will provide “the insurance for all the reiki people who are in Sweet Louise foundation”.
Mrs Scarll says while her breast cancer did not return like the Sweet Louise patients, an understanding of what the patients have been through helps find common ground.
“I know what they are going through, it helps me to help them. Sweet Louise is wonderful and its personal touch is very important,” she says.
“There’s a high risk they (the patients) won’t be alive forever, so whatever we can do to help them is wonderful.
“For some women they may just want to have make-up put on, or relax for half an hour or an hour and have a beauty treatment and that’s fine too.”
From November eligible patients can access services using a points based voucher system, which allows them to choose services meeting key areas of need.
These services reflect the foundation philosophy of improving the quality of life for women with metastatic breast cancer.
Visit
www.sweetlouise.co.nz
for more details.
