STOPPING A HEART ATTACK in the ER with TKM
Dr. William Lee Cowden. MD met Glenn T. King in the late 1980s. King asked Dr. Cowden, in that first meeting, what was his specialty? Dr. Cowden responded cardiology. King then asked permission to show him how to stop a heart attack using TKM®. He had not yet acquired his Ph.D., but felt an obligation to share what he knew worked, especially with someone who medically specialized in that field and would see many more people needing that help than King would. Dr. Cowden found it interesting but thought that it was not possible, as King explained the single simple step to stop a heart attack in progress.
Dr. Cowden said he was open-minded that day as he conversed with Glenn T. King appearing confident of the procedure’s effectiveness and took note of the emergency step presented. Within two weeks Dr. Cowden received a call in his office from an emergency room doctor requesting he come and tend to a patient who entered the emergency room with a heart attack. The reason for the phone call included the fact the emergency room had been inundated with many other admissions and this lady, age 45, was Dr. Cowden’s patient. Dr. Cowden had helped her with fibromyalgia, but she was in the middle of a very stressful divorce. The resulting heart attack placed her in the emergency room and the severe chest pains had been underway for about an hour.
By the time Dr. Cowden arrived the emergency room personnel had already established a full court press. They had given her oxygen, and nitroglycerine under the tongue, plus morphine intravenously. An electrocardiogram clearly indicated a heart attack was in process and the heart monitor showed it was still progressing.
There really was not anything more that could be done by the cardiologist, Dr. Cowden—
except for one thing.
Dr. Cowden spoke with the lady while reaching to hold her entire left little finger with a relatively firm grip with his left hand. His right hand slid under her back to touch her fifth thoracic vertebra on the spinous process, as King had previously described. Later he described his thought process as, everything medically has already been done and we are not seeing any change, so what harm could it do to try what King described on this suffering patient. Dr. Cowden provided no explanation whatsoever; he just applied the single TKM step. In less than four minutes the chest pain stopped. Dr. Cowden, as trained to do, observed that she looked better, breathing relaxed, she stopped perspiring, and her color improved. He asked her if she still had any pain. She replied, “No, I have no pain at all.”
A quick look at the bedside electrocardiographic monitor also indicated things normalized.
A few minutes later an electrocardiogram was done on her after the pain had ceased. It indicated everything was almost normal. His initial thoughts deduced that the medicines and medical treatments had finally kicked in. He did not attribute the results to TKM. However, present in his mind was the fact that TKM was the last thing added after everything had already been tried. It was the final ingredient added to the mix after every cutting-edge medical treatment had been applied inside the expert focus of a modern medical facility (Medical City) in one of the largest cities of the nation (Dallas).
Dr. Cowden then went to the nurses’ station and began to write admission orders and accompanying notations on the patient’s medical record. About twenty minutes had gone by when the nurse came to retrieve him because the chest pains recurred. Upon arrival he took another look at the electrocardiographic monitor. It showed ST-segment elevation and T-wave inversion again, which was consistent with a heart attack redeveloping. The first thing he did, no different than when he had arrived previously, was to apply the TKM protocol—nothing else. This second application was also provided with no commentary or explanation to the patient. Dr. Cowden simply reached to repeat the modality and, again, after less than four minutes the pain completely stopped. He is now thinking a different thought, “There must be something to this.”
His intention is to return to the nurses’ station, but first, he asks if this patient has any relatives present. Yes, the son in the waiting room. The nurse located him and introduced Dr. Cowden to the young man (early twenties). Dr. Cowden announced he was going to admit the young man’s mother to the hospital, and also wanted to know from the young man if he was willing to stay the night at the hospital and avail himself to provide help in the event his mother had any more chest pains. The son was more than willing. Dr. Cowden then gave him some instructions on how to apply the one step that worked twice (TKM). Instructions included that if a nurse comes to get him, he is to come instantly to his mother’s bedside and his left hand is to hold his mother’s left little finger and his right hand to touch the T5 vertebra.
This is all the TKM Dr. Cowden knew. And he taught it to a young person who was asked to do what he was told by his mother’s doctor. It was important to bring the son into the mix at this point because TKM was not the standard of care established by official hospital protocol. This made it precarious for Dr. Cowden to ask the hospital nurse on duty to apply TKM as part of cardiac care. But what seemed equally precarious for the patient was not allowing its application, when TKM had proven effective in two different instances and which was verified by monitors and cardiac testing. And in both instances, the patient not only knew nothing about TKM but was not informed of its application in the middle of her chest pains. So, asking the son to apply the TKM seemed a wise choice. The son’s only obligation in this scenario was to the welfare of his mother. Under the directives of his mother’s heart doctor, he would apply a simple one step therapy (TKM) at the appropriate time, not knowing the name or any other information other than the position of each hand and to simply remain there until the nurse says his mother is ok.
Dr. Cowden wrote the orders for the night, which included that in the event chest pains return the nurse is to apply nitroglycerin sublingually (under the tongue) where absorption is the most effective. If nothing changes in five minutes, she is to call the patient's son to the bedside, then he would apply the one step procedure (TKM). If after five minutes nothing changes the nurse is to call Dr. Cowden.
Dr. Cowden slept uninterrupted that night, not because there was no chest pain in his patient—as there were four additional episodes dealt with by the nurse on duty. In each of the four cases the nurse applied the nitroglycerin and each time, after five minutes, nothing changed. And each time she called the patient's son, who each time used his two hands like he was instructed to do, and each time within less than five minutes the chest pains subsided, consistently like clockwork.
The next morning the patient had a cardiac catheterization, which showed a tight blockage (95%) of her left circumflex coronary artery. From the test results Dr. Cowden concluded that the patient would have had a massive heart attack if the TKM had not been applied to the patient the previous night.
They proceeded with angioplasty to improve the blood flow through that narrowed area and kept her in the hospital for about twenty-four hours. No stints were inserted. The lady had a follow up with Dr. Cowden in his office where she took on the responsibility to apply his protocols to help reverse arterial plaque buildup naturally. There were no more chest pain episodes.
It was not long before Dr. Cowden asked Glenn T. King to come into his medical office once a week, across from the hospital, and work on some patients. Dr. Cowden would schedule certain patients on the same day King was there. This provided them additional support toward recovery, especially for those who needed it most.