Healer Heal Thyself!

How I healed myself from a severe cat allergy with love, determination and Holistic Health.

by Lynne Delaney

I had always wanted a black cat since I was a little girl, but that was not an option for me as I had severe allergies and got asthma attacks from cats, a reaction so strong that it occasionally sent me to the hospital. My symptoms started when I was a child and were confirmed by allergy tests. So I had to settle for a stuffed black cat.

I missed out on birthday parties and play dates with friends who had real cats in their homes. As an adult, I got tired of turning down invitations. I defied my allergies and visited my friends who were cat owners. But I could never stay longer than 20 minutes before my asthma kicked in, and it would take days of medication to recover.

Over time, my desire to have a black cat began to wane. Then one night, my husband Josh and I were finishing dinner when we heard a knock at the door. We were surprised because we'd recently moved in and did not know many of our neighbors. Glancing through the door we saw no one. Then there was another knock and this time we saw a little head peering in the window of the door. A black cat. She had come over from the house across the street to welcome us to the neighborhood.

Jezebel became a regular visitor to our yard. For years, she was the cat I'd always dreamed of. But then one day she stopped coming over. Weeks and months passed until it was apparent that she had disappeared. I was heartbroken. Our neighbor thought that someone had taken Jezebel. My husband Josh and I feared that she had become a victim of the coyotes that prowled our area. I missed her and grieved for her.

About a year later, I looked out the door and saw a black cat sitting on our walkway. I immediately thought Jezebel had returned. I ran out and called her name but she was no were to be found. An apparition, I wondered?

A few minutes later, a tabby cat came strolling down the path to our front door. He was very thin, had black and grey stripes and white paws. He was very cute and hungry looking so I gave him a little treat of tuna fish and cat snacks, just like I used to do with Jezebel. He ate everything up in a flash. He was a little skittish at first, and did not want me to pet him, but I could tell that he appreciated the meal.

He came back, day after day, for a treat, some loving and playtime. Meanwhile, I called all our neighbors and the local shelters but no one reported missing a cat.

I felt on some level that Jezebel had been reborn into this cute kitty. As he became more comfortable with me he would play just like she did, hiding behind a tree or bush only to jump out and scare me, roll onto my feet, follow me around the yard, or come running when I called to him. He even camped out in the same shady spot under the hydrangea bush that Jezebel had liked. The coloring of his fur was different but his eyes were the same pale green color as Jezebel's.

I named him Oscar. We had fun in the summer months and into the fall. He would always be waiting for me in the morning on our front step. I could not wait to see him when I opened the door.

Once in a while, he would get into the house and I would find him curled up in the computer chair. He looked right at home. Other times, he'd stretch out on our kitchen floor. These moments were nice, but limited, because my allergy and asthma symptoms would soon begin with sneezing, wheezing and difficulty breathing. We had to gently and reluctantly usher him back outside.

In late fall, it started to get cold outside and I wondered what this kitty would do, where he would go. One cold and rainy evening in November he started meowing at the door. I felt really guilty, but I told him that I could not let him in because of my asthma. He seemed to understand because he turned tail and left. I didn't see him again after that. I was devastated, fearing that I had sent him away to his death. For the next nine months I again was grieving the loss of my kitty companion. Now I had lost "Jezebel" twice.

One evening the next summer, Josh called to me from the front yard, "There's someone here to see you!" I stepped outside and there was Oscar! Like a scene from a movie, he ran across the lawn and jumped into my lap then rolled on my feet. I cried for joy. I told him how much I missed him and how remorseful I was for letting him go out into the cold night. I pledged that I would never do that again.

But the problem of my asthma remained. I knew he couldn't be in the house so we built a little outdoor shelter using a large plastic clothes bin and blankets to block the chilly wind. We figured that we could move him into the basement when it got really cold and snowy. We'd install a cat door so he could come and go as he pleased. As long as he stayed downstairs, I'd be okay – I hoped…

In October, much to our delight, Oscar settled into his cat shelter. But when the weather started to get bad a few weeks later, we had a particularly crazy night. Loud banging rang on the front door. Then it stopped, only to resume on the side door. Just when we thought things had returned to quiet, there was a wild hammering sound on the slider to the walk-in basement. We soon figured out that it was Oscar, but we were shaken. Had the cat gone mad, we wondered?

That same night something even more extraordinary happened. I felt pressure on my chest, as if something was sitting on me. It was strong enough to wake me from sleep. I opened my eyes and saw the silhouette of a cat. I sat straight up in bed and said out loud, "how did you get in here?" The figure vanished but the experience felt so real.

I truly thought Oscar was sitting on my chest. I'd heard from cat owners that cats are very psychic. I believed that Oscar was projecting himself to me, telling me that eventually he would be inside, with us.

I told a good friend of mine about Oscar and she suggested that I heal my cat allergy with a technique called "tapping" or Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). It's a process in which one taps a finger on different acupressure points on the body while stating aspects of life that one wishes to replace with more positive experiences.

I tapped and said, "This asthma makes breathing difficult…" and then overrode that negative thought with a new mantra, "I breathe easier around cats". I repeated other positive sayings, over and over, at each sitting.

At first I was a little skeptical that something so physically severe could be healed by simply changing one's thoughts, beliefs and emotions. Even though I've worked with Spirit and explored metaphysical experiences for decades, when it came to my lifelong allergy condition, I found it a real challenge to believe that I could really create a miracle healing.

But messages from Spirit and my Inner Self urged me to have faith. They assured me that anything can be healed if we believe it can be so. Inspiration welled up in me. It was time to completely heal, I decided, believing Oscar had been sent to me by the Universe to help me with this challenge.

For three weeks I took homeopathic sublingual cat drops for allergies twice a day, gave myself Reiki treatments and tapped five times a day. As I tapped, I released my allergy and all my fears about dying from that allergy. Long dormant memories came to the surface.

The most profound memory was of a visit to my mother's friend in New Hampshire, when I was a little girl, to a house that was old and scary. The owner had about ten cats and cat décor everywhere: cat clocks, cat rugs, everything had a cat on it. When it was time for me to go to bed she put a cat in the room to keep me company. In the middle of the night, the cat jumped on my chest, which terrified me. After that, I started wheezing.

I also remembered that there was a ghost in the room that scared both me and the cat. I was a sensitive child and could see things that others could not, as I still do today. I realized that, energetically, the combination of the cat jumping on me and having a ghost in the room had triggered my severe cat allergy.

It was an intense healing experience, made more so by a looming deadline. Hurricane Sandy was approaching Cape Cod and I had not yet completed my treatments to build up my immunity to the allergy. I had visions of the cat box flying away in the storm. We had to bring Oscar inside.

At first he stayed upstairs during the day, for a few hours, and then we would put him in the basement for the night. The storm lasted for several days and my asthma was kicking in, hard. It got so bad that I had to go on my nebulizer and take prednisone pills to help my lungs stay open. I was having trouble breathing every day. Every night I was afraid I would die in my sleep from an asthma attack.

I started to doubt that I could heal myself. My lungs hurt from trying to breathe and I was shaky from all the albuterol nebulizer treatments, and dizzy from the prednisone. Yet Oscar stuck with me. One night we found him sleeping on my Reiki table, as if trying to send me healing.

The storm passed but the dilemma remained. Sometimes I wanted to give up and get Oscar out of the house. At the same time I wanted to keep him because I loved him so much.

One day I was watching a tapping demonstration on You Tube. The woman in the program said that it helps if what you are allergic to is in front of you as you do the tapping exercise. Right at that moment, Oscar jumped onto the desk and lay down in front of me. "Keep going, you are almost there," he seemed to say. Three weeks later I awoke to find that I could breathe easily. I could even put Oscar in my lap with no negative reaction. At first I kept waiting for my asthma to flare up. This was the final test – to trust in the miracle. Belief must be unwavering if it is belief at all.

Oscar got all of his shots and a clean bill of health from the veterinarian. It was official. He was a fulltime residence of the house. And I finally had my cat.

But there was still some fear. There was more tapping and more homeopathic treatments to be done. Then there was an invitation from the friend who had encouraged me to heal my cat allergy to come to Boston and stay with her, her husband and their two cats. I threw my nebulizer, prednisone and Benadryl into my travel bag. Where is my faith, I asked myself?

As soon as we stepped inside their apartment I started sneezing. I told myself that I was healed now and that this reaction could stop. In that moment - that decision made - I fully accepted that the healing was real. There was no asthma during that trip, even with one of my friend's cats sleeping in the bed with us. Two years later, I have not had any flare up of allergies or asthma, even with Oscar curled up at my side every night.

A month after Oscar had officially moved in and I was finally healed, I awoke from a deep sleep with a feeling of pressure on my chest. I opened my eyes and saw Oscar sitting there. He was really there this time, purring and looking at me as if to say, "You did it, you created a miracle for you and for me!"

What once was merely a projected image was now physical form. In similar fashion, I had learned how to turn an idea, a belief, into a reality.

I had learned that anything is possible.

Lynne Delaney is a Conscious Living Advisor & Reiki Master. Her Reiki treatments combine intuitive energy work and crystals.

She offers private sessions in spiritual guidance, intuitive tarot, and hypnotherapy. Group sessions include table-tipping and transfiguration.

To make an appointment, contact Lynne at (508) 241-3048 or email newconsciousspirit@yahoo.com

Lynne is also the editor of her husband's new novel Pieces of Eight.