what happens in the aftermath of illness

 





Here are a few things I've learned from my own experience with illness when I was a child:

• The aftermath of childhood illness can linger for a lifetime. You think you're over it when, out of nowhere, the sight of blood, or the thought of getting a shot catapults you back in time to a place you'd rather forget. One moment you're a fully functioning adult. The next, you're a sobbing three-year old. Like a stain you can't get out, like a fog that never lifts, it stays with you.

"You can spend a lifetime

trying to forget a few minutes

of your childhood."

~unknown~

• It comes back in snatches. In trivial details. In isolated moments. The sound of a call bell from somewhere down the hall. The Little Golden Books stacked on your night stand. The smell of stale urine.

• Distant memories continue to surface uninvited. Your mother in tears, your father's arm around her waist. The way you cried yourself to sleep at night. The exact moment, years later, when you made up your mind about becoming a doctor. At least, I did.

"Sometimes superheroes reside

in the hearts of small children

fighting big battles."

~unknown~

• The lasting effects of a childhood illness can send you down a path you never intended to follow.

• Illness has the power to transform you into someone you never wanted to be. It can leave you with a permanent limp or an ugly scar. A weak heart or a chronic cough. Fear. Anger. Shame.

• If you were sick as a child, or if you have a child who is ill, or if you care for sick children, it teaches you how mindful you must be when you care for them. You may not discover until it is too late that something you said, or something you did, or that something you failed to say or do, had a lasting impact on your young patient...a sometimes devastating impact.

"Caregiving often calls us to lean

into love we didn't know was possible."

~Tia Walker~

 

If you were sick as a child, what did you learn from the experience? Will you share it with us? Will you tell us your story?

 

jan

 



 

the greatest mystery

If you work in health care as a doctor, or a nurse, or a therapist in any field, it's probably safe to assume you understand how the human body functions. How the heart maintains its steady beat without any effort or awareness on your part. How the lungs manage to deliver just the right percentage of oxygen to your tissues, and how they eliminate the carbon dioxide you exhale. How an open wound closes, or a broken bone heals.

"Your body's ability to heal is greater 

than anyone has permitted you to believe."

~Roger Ford~

If the way the heart and lungs operate is something that amazes you, the way the brain works should mystify you. How it oversees and regulates every bodily function. The way it controls movement, maintains our sense of balance, orchestrates vision and hearing, enables our senses of taste, touch, and smell, and modulates the neuroendocrine system. And on and on...

If you're in health care, you studied human anatomy and physiology for years. You learned about the anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, and cellular biology that life, as we know it, depends upon, and illness disrupts. You are familiar with the functions and processes that make healing possible. Except one.

"Your body hears everything 

your mind says."

~Naomi Judd~ 

The one thing we don't study, or dissect, or measure in preparation for patient care, which is our calling, is the nature and essence of thought. We don't examine memory under the microscope, or trace the course of creativity and imagination. We don't fully grasp the location or power of human consciousness, and we don't come close to understanding the function of the unconscious. Because no one understands it.

The hardest thing we can do is to think about our own thoughts.

"Consciousness poses the most baffling problems 

in the science of the mind.

There is nothing that we know more intimately

than conscious experience,

but there is nothing that is harder to explain."

~David Chalmers~

Interestingly, it is not so much the biologists, physiologists, pathologists, or psychiatrists who are making headway in the quest to understand consciousness, but the quantum physicists, contemporary incarnations of the likes of Einstein, Bohr, Planck, Bohm, Heisenberg, John Wheeler, and Paul Levy who are compelled to define reality without any proof of it. To understand consciousness without any image of it.

If, like me, you are in awe of the complexity, precision, and perfect timing that mark the biology and physiology of the human body, you can't help but be mystified by the brain. Sooner or later you will be led to contemplate the role of consciousness in health and disease. The benefits of meditation. The influence of mood and emotion on wellbeing, all of which should amaze you. Humble you. And naturally spiritualize you.

"Attempting to understand consciousness

with your mind

is like trying to illuminate the sun

with a candle."

~Mooji~

I just finished a book about quantum theory. It opened with an introduction, foreword, and preface, and it ended with 896 footnotes. It suggests that there is a precise, elegant, and exact parallel, down to the most minute detail, between the laws of subatomic physics and the workings of the human mind. That would be hard enough to comprehend if we understood the mathematics that proves it. The problem is we don't have a language to express it yet. And, until we do, the nature of consciousness will remain a mystery, and an untapped resource for patients and healers alike.

"If you think you understand

quantum mechanics,

you don't understand quantum mechanics."

~Dr. Richard Feynman~

jan

the myths we embrace, the mystery that continues to unfold, and the masterpiece it reveals

I started medical school in 1970. I studied traditional Western medicine for seven years, and I practiced according to its principles for thirty years. I memorized the structure and function of every organ system, and the signs and symtoms of the diseases that affect them. I learned how to examine patients, which diagnostic tests to run, and how to treat the patient's problem.

It turns out, that was the easy part. Most of it made sense. How oxygen gets into the bloodstream. How the kidneys know what to excrete and what to conserve. How food is broken down and absorbed, and what we are left to deal with. In the healthy state, every process is carried out with precision, perfect timing, and uncanny coordination. And, for the most part, it all happens without any effort, attention, or awareness on our part. The fact that the body body knows what to do to keep us healthy is incomprehensible. The fact that it knows how to heal itself is beyond imagination.

1970 was also just about the time the mind-body-spirit connection was catching on among forward thinking healers and energy workers. Timothy Leary and Ram Dass were experimenting with hallucinogenic mushrooms in their quest for enlightenment. Quantum physicists were eyeing the nature of consciousness. We started to hear about the therapeutic applications of acupuncture, hypnosis, meditation, massage and therapeutic touch, Reiki, and yoga...all dismissed by the medical elite as malarky for lack of randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies that proved their worth. All of it dismissed by "real" doctors as so much hocus-pocus. Snake oil. Those of us who were curious about it were belittled for our naivete, and shamed for our gullibility.

Nevertheless, these so-called "alternative" therapies intrigued me. The scientific community rejected the concept of the mind-body-spirit connection, but I knew better. I'd seen it work.

When I was a medical student, I shadowed an orthopedic resident who had earned a reputation as something of a maverick when he underwent an inguinal hernia repair under self-hypnosis. No anesthesia, thank you very much. When I worked with him in the Emergency Room, he reduced a patient's dislocated elbow after nothing more than a brief hypnotic induction, sparing her a dose of anesthesia with its lingering after effects, and a night in the hospital. I was sold. I studied self-hypnosis, and submitted to surgery under its spell myself. I squandered my vacations on meditation and yoga retreats. I connected with energy healers. I learned to chant, to visualize auras, to breathe. I understood energy. It all made sense to me.

The quest to connect with my own mind, body, and spirit led me to a mysterious, theoretical, and fantastical world of untold potential. Of waves and particles, of infinitesimal smidgeons of time, and never-ending stretches of space. I learned that our genes express themselves differently depending on our environment and experience. That we have the ability to modify the traits we pass on to future generations. That ultimately, the mind is in charge of that transpires within, and even around us. All because of the incomprehensible complexity, interconnectedness, and precision of all that sustains life.

In the meantime, I continued to see patients in my office every fifteen minutes. I whittled their medical histories and examinations down to a few bullet points in a new-fangled electronic medical record system, and sent most of them off with a prescription ot two, in keeping with my training.

To be fair, not everyone believes that cell biology is affected by our thoughts, emotions, and experiences. Not every biologist supports the idea that the brain affects the biochemistry of cells down to their molecular structure and function. But then, not that long ago, many scientists dismissed the idea that blood pressure, heart rate, and even body temperature could be modulated by meditation. They had to transport groups of Tibetan monks to research laboratories in the US, and hook them up to monitors to record the very phenomena they so vigorously questioned. They were mind-boggled by what they observed. The monks were able to lower their heart rates and blood pressure, and to raise their body temperature even in sub-freezing conditions. Just by thinking about it...

...which is jaw-dropping because it touches on the greatest mystery of all: the origin, nature, and function of consciousness, including thought, memory, and imagination. Science has fully explored the anatomy, molecular structure, electrophysiology, and biochemistry of the brain, but we haven't quite figured out how it works. We don't know how thought is generated in the first place, or how it is translated into something as easily experienced and observed as tears, or laughter, or fear. We don't exactly understand how a thought can raise the heart rate, or make us sweat, or leave us shaking. How a remote memory resurfaces, and where it has been hiding.

I practiced medicine for over three decades without giving either the body or the mind credit for its genius. It's a shame to have spent so many years memorizing, studying, and analyzing information that has since been proven to be inaccurate, or incomplete, or totally untrue. It unnerves me to realize how much time and effort I devoted to learning what has already become obsolete, or been proven wrong, or been questioned anew. It is amazing to contemplate the myths we embraced, the mystery that continues to unfold, and the masterpiece it reveals.

You may not understand the science of cell division and differentiation, or what drives it. It may be hard to grasp how it affects your health and well-being, and it might seem absurd that you have any control over it at all. It's weird to contemplate one's own thoughts, and to speculate on their origins, nature, and power. 

Physicists, biologists, physicians, philosophers, and quantum theorists are hard at work trying to figure out exactly what it is that makes us who we are...while our bodies are mysteriously, silently, and predictably doing what they do best: making us who we are.

If this doesn't astound you, try this: study the sky at night. Watch for the first signs of spring. Feel the pulse beating in your own wrist.

"Imagination is more important

than knowledge."

~Albert Einstein~

jan

                                                                                          

                                                           

the difference between permanent scars and invisible scars

 

1. the gash in my right eyebrow

2. the sprained ankle

3. the incident with the pitchfork

These are a few of the inconsequential injuries I survived as a child, the kind of bumps and bruises, scratches and scrapes, sprains and strains we all experience at one time or another. None is a big deal, until you know the stories behind them.

"Injuries are our best teachers."

~Scott Jurek~

I was four years old when I sustained the gash in my right eyebrow that took five stitches to close, and left me with a scar that is still visible today. But that's not the story. The story belongs to my brother who was recuperating from a near-fatal case of rheumatic fever at the time. When he came home from the hospital, he was ordered to bed for a year to rest his weakened heart. We moved his bed into the living room where he could be with the rest of the family even though he was bed-ridden. I took on the task of making him smile, not an easy thing to do. On the day in question, I was spinning around, making myself dizzy so I couldn't walk a straight line. Which he found hilarious...until I lost my balance, and fell against the corner of the coffee table. Bam! A permanent scar.

The sprained ankle happened when I was skiing in Vermont and took a tumble that caused my skiis to fly off while I slid to the end of a very steep slope on my back. My friend followed me down and managed to pick up my hat, poles, and gloves en route. Rather than make a visit to the first aid shed for an ACE and crutches, I simply tightened my ski boots...which kept the swelling down, acted as a perfect splint, and lent a whole new meaning to the word "stubborn."

The pitchfork incident occurred during an attempt to be helpful at home by digging a weed out of one of my mother's flower beds...except that the weed I was after turned out to be her most prized plant. No problem. The pitchfork slipped and impaled my foot before I could do any damage. Voila! Another enduring scar. And another reprimand...

"The pain of recovery
is sometimes worse than
the pain of the injury."

~Christine Caine~

None of these incidents was unusual, dramatic, or serious, but each of them supports a story. Yours will be different. Perhaps it was the time you had a black eye, and you lied to your teacher when she asked about it. You told her you slipped and fell in the backyard when, in truth, your father hit you in a fit of rage.

Or maybe you tell people that you always wear a tee shirt at the beach because you're prone to sunburn when you're really trying to conceal the scar that runs the full length of your chest...from the heart surgery you required to close the congenital defect that was missed at birth.

Maybe it doesn't show anymore, but your heart still races, your chest aches, and your hands shake whenever you have to cross a bridge because your best friend fell off the train trestle you were crossing when you were both just ten years old. And he didn't make it. And you had been warned to stay away from the railroad tracks...

The field of narrative medicine/healing embraces more than the technical side of illness and injury. It explores more than the biochemical, electrophysiological, and neuroendocrinological aspects of disease and trauma. It serves as a vehicle for understanding the context and meaning of illness and injury, which has everything to do with healing and recovery.

"The most important part of a story

is the piece of it you don't know."

~Barbara Kingsolver~

jan