Earthquake Relief Fund: Rebuild Chanaute's Clinic

On April 25^th, 2015, approximately 9,000 people were killed, several thousand injured and more than 600,000 buildings were destroyed in Nepal and neighboring villages. The Nepal earthquake, also known as the Gorkha earthquake, continued with three aftershocks and triggered an avalanche on Mount Everest killing another 21 people. It became one of the deadliest earthquakes in history.
 
Chanuate, Nepal, a small town of approximately 2,500 people, received much devastation. Already an area with extremely limited access to healthcare, the earthquake caused even greater hardship including tearing down one of the area’s most prized acupuncture clinics.
 
In 2008, Grainne McKeown embarked on a journey to Nepal with the intent of taking her skills in acupuncture and Chinese Medicine to a place that really needed it. Having previously studied Buddhism, meditation and Buddhist philosophy in Nepal from 2003-2004, “I said to myself, I want to work here. I want to go back to school for natural medicine and come back and volunteer. So that’s what I did.”
 
It was during her very first year in Kathmandu in 2003, prior to acupuncture school, that Grainne noticed the blend of all medicinal modalities being used in a free clinic. They had the practices of Tibetan, homeopathic, western medicine, Ayurveda and others, before the notion of integrative care had become more mainstream in the US. “I wanted something that was a whole system of medicine that I could get really good at,” she says. So she decided to go back to school for Oriental Medicine in 2005.
 
After graduating from the Seattle Institute for Oriental Medicine for Chinese Medicine, she went back to Nepal to volunteer in that same integrative clinic. Her continued volunteering efforts in Nepal at that time also led her to Bali where she served in a midwifery clinic treating women with prenatal and postpartum acupuncture. She realized the vital importance of caring for women during this special time and how acupuncture could help them deliver naturally and in a comfortable village birthing center, without having to go through a C-section at a hospital.
 
But it was on a yoga retreat with her brother in Thailand, when she realized everything she’d experienced in Nepal--studying Buddhism for a year, coming back to volunteer, discovering the benefits of integrative care with acupuncture, and giving her services to those who needed it--would lead to something far more transformative.
 
“I have all these patients in Nepal and they need care, and I have all these acupuncturist friends in the States who want to do this work. So, I thought, I’m going to start a non-profit,” she said.  Immediately Grainne began writing a mission statement. With the help of her brother who was also living in Nepal, she built a website and it was done in a matter of weeks. “It was just so clear and so obvious to me, and people were interested right away.” And so, Mindful Medicine Worldwide (MMW) was created.

Excerpts from Rosanna's blog

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Monday, another work week begins. It was a big day. I saw 10 patients this morning, and then another 7 after lunch. Word seems to have gotten out that I’m here doing acupuncture. Patients are feeling better and bringing their friends. And I think the doctors at Shechen now feel confident in my skills because I am getting many more referrals. The hardest part is that I don’t have my own interpreter, and I have to keep finding someone to help me talk to my patients. I have a few cases that are very difficult, but mostly people are doing better. No one is cured, except maybe a patient with shoulder pain, [...] but then she came back with pain in her other elbow. And I treat her for her grief. It’s interesting, I now see where the term ‘widow’s peak’ comes from, as Tibetan women seem to shave a large triangle of hair from their foreheads, I think when their husbands die. But after 17 patients, I’m starving. Off to dinner with Isabelle and Josien.

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47 patient treatments this week. That number now feels very manageable and I can imagine doing more. Some did return, some were new. Things seem steady. I wish I could help them more. I am no longer dead-tired after a workday, which I attribute to daily yoga and meditation practice. And settling in. Think I’m going to try to contact Chapagoan clinic this week (HIV/AIDS). I also met a man, James, who works in the Beggar’s Camp, and I might go practice there perhaps. I’ll find out more tomorrow about his project (quilt-making with/for the poorest of poor) when we travel back to Pharping together to go experience some important lama named Thinle Norbu. Matthew came today, bearing gifts and thanks for helping [a local man] (who is much improved this week, stronger pulse, no more diarrhea or black marks on his tongue, he’s feeling good--transitioned him from Wen Dan Tang to Bu Zhong Yi Qi Tang). He told me about ThinleNorbu first, said he’s some superlama uberguru, kind of like the Dalai Lama in importance and just being in his presence is transformative. He recommended I come. Then when James mentioned he was going, it seemed like fate. So, I’m going to check it out, I could use more transformation. I guess it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, although sometimes it seems like those happen every day here.

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Instant success story: [A man] came in yesterday limping with sudden left foot pain if he put all his weight on it. It had started in the morning. It was clearly on the stomach channel, right under the ball of the foot where the toe joined the metatarsals. Stomach pulse was full, but pulse in general was slow. Tongue typical thick white/yellow coat from the diet. Feet felt cold to him. So I needled [him]. Then I did about 50 cones of direct moxa on the bottom of his foot behind the second toe--Japanese point for digestion. Result: No more pain! Yay!

Links:

• Mindful Medicine Worldwide NFP website