How my sick son helped me to discover my healing hands
When Angie Buxton-King’s son Sam was diagnosed with leukaemia. She trained as a healer to ease his pain. After his death, Angie vowed to pass on the benefits of her gift to others and became the first paid healer in the NHS. She tells Laura Milne her story.
The following article appeared in the Daily Express Tuesday 27 July 2001
The young boy with cancer was screaming when Angie arrived on the ward. The doctor was trying to insert an intravenous needle and the child was terrified. Angie, aware of a strong energy running through her, laid her hands on his head. His vein erupted up and the needle went in without him even noticing. It left the doctor stunned but Angie says, “there’s actually a very simple explanation. The energy relaxes the body and the veins that constrict through fear dilate with the relaxation response.”
For the past four years, Angie has worked alongside the staff of the haematology unit of University College London Hospitals. She is the only paid healer in the NHS.
Most of Angies’ patients are adults undergoing transplants, chemotherapy or suffering from sickie cell anaemia or other blood disorders. But she gets most satisfaction from working with children because she is reminded of her own son Sam.
He died six years ago at the age of 10 after a long battle with acute myeloid leukaemia. Angie, who has an older son Nick, now 21 investigated every complimentary therapy available including healing, and as a result Sam suffered far less than other children undergoing the same treatment. He had fewer side effects, less pain and a more positive outlook.
Angie says: my main aim was to give Sam the strength to cope with the treatment he received. After three courses of chemotherapy Sam still wasn’t in remission. It doesn’t matter how pushy you are, if he hadn’t been well enough the doctors wouldn’t have given him any more treatment. He had to be well enough and that’s why the healing did its job.
Stephen Rowley, Angie’s manager at UCLH who also cared for Sam during his treatment says, “It was extraordinary. Sam shouldn’t have had more than a few months but he had lived for three years. He should have had a lot more symptoms than he did and died a lot earlier. We started to think there might be something in it.”
Angie’s interest in healing began when her mother was diagnosed with inoperable ovarian cancer in 1988 and began having treatment at the Bristol Cancer Centre, which specialises in alternative therapies. “Mum enjoyed the healing so much that I arranged for her to have a healer at home.” It was during one of these treatments that Angie felt very hot and her hands began to tingle.
When I asked the healer what it meant he said it was very common for people who had the ability to channel energy to have this experience. After her mother died 8 months later, Angie read up on the subject and took courses run by the National Federation of Spiritual Healers. Later she also trained as a master in reiki, the ancient Japanese philosophy of hands on healing.
When Sam was first diagnosed in 1995, Angie and her then husband David were told he might have only a few months to live. After the initial shock of the diagnosis, Angie began to feel more positive. “I knew from my mums experience it was going to be very difficult. We couldn’t just rely on conventional medicine. We had to use complementary therapies as well.”
Sam was well enough to spend most of the 3 years at home. The family were even able to enjoy holidays together, including a trip to Florida where Sam swam with dolphins. He died peacefully at home on August 4, 1998, in the arms of his parents.
Afterwards Angie who lives in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, continued to heal, at first working mainly with animals. “I wanted to convince myself that if animals who, couldn’t understand what I was saying about positive thoughts were healed, then it must be working,” she says. Almost a year after Sam’s death she approached the haematology department at UCLH to offer her services as a healer to patients. She was told they could not afford to pay her but she was given a month’s trial. It proved so successful that she was hired and now works 4 days a week.
Although there was initially a lot of staff scepticism, many have since received treatments themselves and changed their views. Angie says, “Sometimes nurses come in with emotional distress. They might be holding a lot of grief inside from either something in their personal lives or because a patient they have been treating has passed away, and it sometimes helps to give them an emotional release.” Angie, who has now written a book about her experience of healing, wants healing therapy to be extended to every cancer hospital and clinic throughout the country, with practitioners treated as valued members of an integrated team.
But is it difficult to watch other children get better when her own son died? “I can honestly say no,” says Angie. “I am just so delighted when anybody gets well and stays well – it makes what I do as a healer worthwhile.”
Daily Express Tuesday27 July 2001
