Then again, maybe it’s
the dog.
Lorena is sweet and golden. She’ll greet you with a head
nudge and a tail wag and, if you’re lucky, she’ll let you
pet her belly. But the real reason Dr. Christina Cooke is
beloved by so many patients probably has something to do
with the fact that Cooke, 41, was meant to be a healer. When
this naturopathic physician asks you how you’re doing, you
know she really cares about the answer.
“I think she’s
wonderful,” says Jan Hatcher, a Beaverton woman who decided
to give Cooke a call after hearing her speak at the
independent living facility where Hatcher, who is legally
blind, lives. “This is my first visit, but I’m going to give
it a try.”
For Hatcher, the appeal
isn’t solely the naturopathic approach to healing; it’s also
in knowing that Cooke truly understands her disability.
That’s because Cooke, who decided to switch from being a
music teacher to a doctor after a naturopath set her on the
road to health several years ago, is also blind. She is, as
far as she or any of her colleagues knows, the only totally
blind naturopathic physician in the United States.
It’s a trait that sets
her apart from her peers, but that helps her relate to her
patients on a whole new level.
‘A daunting road’
“For me, personally,
I’ve always been excited about doing things that have never
been done before,” Cooke says. “And being in the medical
profession is so rewarding.”
Making a career switch
in her late 30s and getting through medical school, she
says, “was a daunting road to be at” but that becoming a
naturopath is the ultimate reward.
“I love helping people
heal,” Cooke says. “About 10 years ago I fell and broke the
cartilage in the right side of my face. My health went
downhill. I lost 20 pounds and became depressed.”
The traditional,
allopathic medical model prescribed antidepressants, but
Cooke’s health continued to worsen so she turned to
“alternative” medicine.
“Through prayer and
natural medicine, I was able to heal,” Cooke says. “Then I
fell in love with homeopathy.”
Based on the idea that
like cures like, homeopathic practitioners take all of the
various parts of a person’s ailments into account when
trying to find the correct remedy. A typical intake exam for
a homeopathic remedy, which is really just a very long
question-and-answer session regarding a person’s ailments
and lifestyle, typically takes more than an hour. But the
results of homeopathy, says Cooke, can be life altering.
And helping people find
balance, helping them truly feel healthy is what Cooke’s
life is all about. The former music teacher was used to
working with families and young children, so she tends to
gravitate back to those age groups in her natural medicine
practice.
Many of the children she
sees as patients are having behavioral problems, Cooke says,
which tends to affect every family member in different ways.
“I see kids who have
been diagnosed as having ADD, autism, oppositional defiance
disorder,” Cooke says. “And these are labels that set them
apart.”
Helping families find a
natural remedy to their child’s behavioral issues can cause
“profound changes” Cooke says. “That’s what I love – I love
connecting with my patients and helping them make profound
changes.”
Her mind and her heart
Before patients come to
Cooke for the first time, she likes to disclose her
blindness.
“I don’t want anyone to
think ‘Oh, what have I gotten myself into?’ when they meet
me,” Cooke says. “I don’t want to surprise them.”
Once people understand
that Cooke’s blindness causes few limitations – she can’t
ever do minor surgery or gynecology exams like other
naturopathic physicians – and that, for some things, like
looking inside a child’s ear canal, she has sighted
assistants to describe what they see, patients look past
Cooke’s eyes to see her mind and her heart.
“I want people to treat
me like a normal human being,” Cooke says. “I’ve had bad
experiences, with people treating me like I’m lower in
intelligence just because I was born blind.”
But going through those
experiences has made Cooke a more sensitive doctor. She says
she loves to listen to her patients and will ask many
questions to get to the heart of the problem. She is writing
a book on how the doctor-patient relationship affects people
with disabilities and says she wants to empower her patients
so they can take a more active role in healing themselves
and staying healthy.
“I just love putting the
pieces together,” Cooke says. “It’s like detective work,
figuring out what other organs are contributing to the
(ailment).”
A good fit for her
Technology is a big part of Cooke’s world,
and it makes being a blind doctor much easier.
A computer program reads her e-mails to her,
and a gadget attached to her computer scans reference books
and then reads them aloud. An old-school braille labeling
machine allows Cooke to mark all of her remedies, but she
also asks a sighted person to read the bottle’s label to
make sure she’s doling out the proper cure. Cooke also uses
a talking blood pressure cuff and a talking blood glucose
reader.
In her Sherwood
practice, which she just recently opened inside the Sherwood
Naturopathic Medicine office owned by Dr. Margaret Rose
Havlik at 22808 S.W. Forest Creek Drive, Suite 102, Cooke
offers a full range of naturopathic services and treats
everyone from young children to the elderly.
She says the Sherwood
clinic was a good fit for her, even though she must take
public transportation from her home in Southwest Portland to
get there every day because the small city “is a growing
community with lots of kids – and the people (in Sherwood)
are getting more receptive to alternative medicine.”
Cooke also operates a
sliding-scale clinic twice a month in Southeast Portland for
people who are on low or fixed incomes and may not be able
to afford to see a naturopathic physician. That clinic is
open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. every second and fourth Saturday
of the month out of a church near 55th and Rhone streets in
Southeast Portland.
For more information:
To learn more about
Cooke’s clinic or about her Sherwood practice, call her at
503-984-5652, visit her Web site at www.healing4you.net, or
e-mail her at drclcooke@comcast.net.
Cooke works with other
holistic practitioners inside the Sherwood Naturopathic
Medicine clinic at 22808 S.W. Forest Creek Drive, Suite 102,
in Sherwood.
Dr. Margaret Rose Havlik,
also a naturopathic physician, opened the practice in the
fall of 2007 and has added several other providers,
including Cooke and massage therapist Andrea Ortiz, who
offers a variety of massage including relaxation,
therapeutic, pregnancy and in-home massage.
Dr. Havlik is a provider
for Oregon’s Breast and Cervical Cancer Program, which
offers free screenings to women who are older than 40;
underinsured or uninsured; not eligible for Medicare B; and
of limited income.
The statewide program
offers such things as free doctor’s office visit; pap test;
mammogram; physical exam; follow-up tests as needed; and, if
needed, treatment for breast or cervical cancer to eligible
women.
Since it
started in 1995, the program has provided free breast and
cervical cancer testing to more than 33,000 women. Dr.
Havlik is the only naturopathic physician in the Sherwood
region to offer this service.
