I started to learn about research and grant writing on the job so to speak. While I was living on the Big Island of Hawaii. I wasn't really interested in working at a Hospital, but my sister told me that the hospital in Waimea was looking for Licenced Massage Therapists(LMT). At first I was hesitant since I was able to do massage just fine without the hospital, but part of me knew that this would be a great opprotunity learn new things in a very special environment.
North Hawaii Community Hospital(NHCH) is situated in beautiful Waimaea on the Big Island. This area was once a sandelwood forest that is now one of the biggest cattle ranches in the USA (aka Kamuela, Parker Ranch). The Hospital was in part designed by Dr. Earl Bakken. Dr. Bakken is well known for inventing the first portable pacemaker and co-founding Medtronics. He is a strong supporter of alternative healing and probably because of him there was a strong element of integrating alternative medicine into the hospital. At that time the hospital was still only a few years old, and going through what a young hospital goes through. So it took about a year to get on the Consulting Medical Staff, then I moved up to my cousin Randy's hunting shack on Mud Lane, and started to see what I could do at NHCH.
All of a suddden I was in a totally new world, which, let me just say it, a massage therapy training does not ready you for. I soon learned that if massage was ever going to be accepted in the hospital there would need to be clinical research done, and critical pathways would need to be established that lead to massage. So I joined the hospitals research comity and started to learn about medical research. Well, at that time I could barely use the computer, I had to learn how to use Pub-med, and email(I don't think that I had much clue what the internet was back then), which I was able to do thanks to Tutu's House ( thanks Jane:). Before I knew it I was doing literature searching for about 4 or 5 different research projects. While I was doing this research I was starting to get the feeling that I could do alot more and help alot more people than what I was doing with massage(which is just one person at a time). The biggest project that I was interested in was one dealing with behavior modification. I had studied Neuro Linguistic Programing(NLP) at Integrative Therapy School and on my own, so I found this to be my "biggest bang for my buck", as I remember Angie Honjo saying. This was a "back burner" sort of project, so the project that I put together(which was more within reasonable reach) was one I thought up to give massage to the family home care givers of terminally ill patients.
I had some experience with hospice care and had worked with the Sacramento Aids Foundations Hand to Hand project. My research had shown that home hospice care was much less expencive than hospital care and caregiver burnout was a main cause for people going into managed care facilities. The statistical analysis part was designed by Dr. Jim Pool who was the cheif cardiologist at the hospital and he also gave me a quick breakdown of statistics. I had looked over a bunch of quality of life measurement tools and picked 2 of them. Betsy Cole also helped me with structuring the grant application and taught me alot about the process. The final typing was done by Alexis Kestler(I hope i spelt it right)on a real typewriter with swinging things. I got this research grant application through all of the hospital commities with revisions and in the mail on time. I didn't however get the grant, at which point I was spent. I left the hospital scene but life in paridise wasn't the same, I remember swimming with wild dophins and thinking "oh you guys again", in a sacrastic tone, and upon hearing myself think that I knew it was time to leave Hawaii.
A few years later I was living in Placerville and I deceded to try to get the abstracts that I had left with Dr. Sharon Vitousec so that I could look up the full articles at the Sacramento State Univercity Library. Back then I didn't know how to use a floppy disc, so when I left the hospital I handed Dr. Vitousec (who was chief of staff at the time) a huge stack of abtracts realated to healthy behavior modification and also studies of the problems of indiginous peoples of the US and different countries and studies on behavior modification with children, and asked her to keep them for me. Dr. Vitousec had suggested modifying behavior as it was being developed in children and that made alot of sense to me and seemed to be the most efficient approch to behavior modification, so I went in that direction. When I called the NHCH, Dr. Vitousec wasn't working there any more but they let me know how to get in touch with her, and a few days later I was very happy to see that stack of abtracts show up in the mail. Then I looked up and read all of the articles that they had at the Sac. State library(which was all but a few from Austrailia and New Zealand). All of the while I had been thinking about how lush and green Hawaii is and how much fun it is to eat fruit right off of the tree. So I knew that the project would involve gardening. Since Hawaiian culture is a farming culture, I suggest teaching farming as a cultural sharing. This gives a wonderful platform to discuss nutrition and lifecycles.
Behavior modification of 4 types of behavior that contribute to 7 of the top 10 causes of premature morbidity:lack of excercise, poor diet, smoking, and alcohol consumtion.
ICU sleep disorders
lymphatic drainage
One of my regular hurdles with doing research at NHCH was my limited computer access. There were 3 computers that I was using the one in the Dr.s lounge at NHCH, the library(limitied to 1 hour), and TUTU's house.
Another big problem that I was having was not being albe to get full articles of the abstracts that I was finding. At that time I think Pub med was charging like $15 or $5 per article, and I simply didn't have the budget to buy the hundreds of articles that I wanted to investigate. I don't remember why I didn't get them from the UH Hilo Library.
I was very lucky that my cousin Randy let me stay at his hunting shack in Waimea. I was also very lucky that I had a 4 wheel drive vehicle or I wouldn't have been able to get home on many rainy nights. By this time I had gotten used to living with very little electricity. Water was caught off of the roof and held in a tank next to the house(Water catchment system common on the Big Island). To get water into the shack one had to turn on a generator and pump it in. After a while Randy got a single solar panel and a battery which was good for about 2 toilet flushes after a full days charging. Oh ya, this shack had an indoor toilet, which made it one of the most technologically advanced places that I lived in on the Big island. The shack is situated just Hilo side of the top of Waipio Valley, which means it is rainy and windy there.
football, skiing, track(shotput & discus), wrestling, tennis, volleyball, softball, Hawaiian Outrigger Canoe Paddling
Studied: Lindy hop, Jitterbug, Hula, Jazz dance, Sundance
Traveled with Azteca Dancers and Sundancers.
Aikido, American kempo karate, Tai Chi Cuan, Chi Gung, and Kung Fu excersizes
weapon proficiency: Kenjitsu, duel wield Katanas, Jojitsu(short staff), nunchaka(limited duel wield), 3 sectional staff,
Lomi Lomi
Wu Qing/accupressure
Polarity
Neuro Linguistic Programing(NLP)
Gamma World, Bushido, Magic, AD&D,
Go, Chess,
my favorite arcade games were centapede, gallga, qbert, fighting knights (at the roller rink), tank game