“My intuition came through when medical testing failed”
One Woman's Story
First For Women
The morning air was frosty when Lynne Dooley and her husband, Bill, left her ob-gyn’s office. It was fitting for the chilling news they had just received: The child that Lynne had been carrying for the past 13 weeks had an 80 percent chance of being born with Down syndrome. But as the couple walked back to their car, something odd happened—Lynne felt a comforting warmth radiate through her body. Instantly she knew: My baby is fine.
It was welcome reassurance for Lynne, who had been warned six weeks into her term that the baby’s risk of Down syndrome was elevated due to Lynne’s age and other factors. In those early weeks, Lynne had found it difficult to think about anything else. She would scan the aisles of the grocery store, her mind jumping from that night’s dinner menu to How can I care for a special-needs child with four other kids at home?
But even though Lynne felt at ease about the baby’s health, Bill wasn’t convinced. Overwhelmed by doubt and fear, he pulled away. “A cold distance grew between us,” Lynn recalls. “There was no connection, no offer to rub my feet.”
To ensure her instincts were right—that her baby would be born without Down syndrome—Lynne reached out to intuition specialist Karen Grace Kassy. After speaking with Lynne on the phone, Karen used her own intuition to do a reading on the unborn child. Karen’s findings were negative for Down syndrome. But all Bill could muster was a doubtful “We’ll see.”
My heart filtered what the doctor was saying
The stakes were higher when, at 19 weeks along, the Dooleys went for a second ultrasound. It was a major blow when the test uncovered new troubling signs: The fetus had an underdeveloped nasal bone, urine in the kidneys and a very high measure of fluid in the back of the neck. With that, the risk of Down syndrome climbed to 90 percent.
The couple also learned that Lynne was carrying a girl—and that”s when she felt the comforting warmth return. Filled with joy, Lynne asked Bill to stop at Babies “R’ Us on the way home, where she purchased a tiny bib embroidered with “Little Sister.” Lynne says, ”I was hearing what the doctor was telling me, but my heart was filtering it.”
Still, for Bill”s sake, Lynne agreed to undergo an amniocentesis, a more definitive diagnostic procedure that carries a small risk of miscarriage. But on the day of the appointment, the doctor was performing an ultrasound to guide the insertion of the needle when Lynne and Bill saw something miraculous: The baby turned toward the screen and waved. More sure of herself than ever, Lynne ordered the doctor to stop—and Bill agreed. “Seeing that wave gave him the same feeling that I had been experiencing for weeks,” explains Lynne.
The Dooleys had reason to believe. A few months later Lynne gave birth to a beautiful healthy girl, Molly. Now Lynne can hardly hold back the tears of joy when she thinks of Molly’s first word: happy. Says Lynne, “It describes our family to a tee.”
THE SECRET TO HEARING YOUR INNER VOICE
“Numerous studies have shown that intuition about health is accurate up to 85 percent of the time,” says Jerome Groopman, M.D., a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and author of How Doctors Think (Mariner Books, 2008). “It can offer important clues and serve as an invaluable springboard for patients to ask their doctors the right questions.”
For women with a health concern, Karen Grace Kassy, author of Health Intuition: A Simple Guide to Greater Well-Being (Hazelden), suggests silently asking an open-ended question like How can I stop feeling tired all the time? “Take note of what comes to you, whether you see it, feel it, hear it or simply know it,” she advises. You may hear something as simple as No coffee after dinner, or you may envision the answer, like a supportive pillow.
Another type of intuition is a recurring thought—for example, whenever you’re showering you think, I’m losing more hair than usual. Even dreams can be conduits of intuition. “I’ve worked with women who went for a mammogram after having a ‘breast dream” and got a life-saving diagnosis of early-stage cancer,” says Kassy.
The real trick is distinguishing an intuitive thought from an intellectual one. “Most people feel it as a calm certainty,” Kassy explains. “The key is to trust yourself.”
