How to Get Well Faster

Can Your Mind Really Help Your Body to Get Well Faster?

2012-04-02T06:05:45Z

Throughout time, the vast majority of the world’s spiritual traditions and healing systems have viewed the mind and body as one integral unit and considered the mind to be the doorway to a higher consciousness and greater awareness of the Divine, the essence of all things.

The body was believed to reflect the state of mind and acted as an individual unit. Because of our focus on measurement, our belief system has limited the way we view and perceive our physical world. Consequently we are amazed and surprised by the capabilities our minds possess.

For centuries the healing powers of the mind have been harnessed using a variety of techniques, including meditation, visualization, prayers, affirmation, and expressing faith and hope. Throughout the world, engaging the mind was an important aspect of these techniques.

In general the physical changes that occur are a result of the ability to change one’s awareness from its normal state, one that usually includes stress, to a relaxed and altered one. It is believed that these altered states also promote spiritual growth and development.

During the last fifty years, many medical researchers have documented the physiological changes that occur during altered states of awareness.

Since the 1960s when transcendental meditation was introduced to the general public, there has been growing interest and use of meditation for health and healing. Today, a growing number of physicians, psychologists, nurses, and other health professionals are seeking to learn more about the interface and unity of mind/body.

This is reflected by the increasing research interest in this area and he growing acceptance and use of healing techniques that involve the mind. Many are recommending the use of a variety of meditative practices for a number of diseases.

Therapists use it for emotional healing. Even the American Medical Association recommends that meditation be used as the first line of therapy in the case of mild high blood pressure.

Several research studies have also shown how using mind body therapies during hospitalization helps to shorten the length of hospital stay, an average of 1.5 to 2 days, which can save patients a significant amount of money!

In fact, there is a term used to describe the healing power of the mind in medical circles. It is called, the ‘placebo effect.’ Placebo in Latin means, “I shall please.”

When a patient is given a drug or fake treatment with no known curative value, often times the body heals and gets well, in the absence of a therapeutic ingredient! Why? Because the patient believes he or she is taking a powerful drug (or receiving a helpful treatment), the mind literally agrees and stimulates the brain to help the body heal, due merely to the belief in healing.

Please note that I am making a distinction between mind and brain. The mind is located throughout the body.

I remember the attending physician who described to us (during my years in medical school) during a lecture entitled The Placebo Effect, characterized it in a very narrow way, which was generally accepted in medical circles.

It did not take into consideration the holistic role the mind plays, but saw the influence of the mind upon the body in a limited way that interfered with a straight forward and physically oriented approach to medicine.

How You Can Stay Well…While Your Sick Loved One is Getting Well

2012-04-02T06:04:01Z

When a loved one or friend is sick and in the hospital, this is a very challenging time, not only for the patients, but loved ones as well. Many people feel helpless, worried, anxious, frustrated as they watch their loved one face the difficult days in the hospital, sickness. They often exhibit the signs of stress, muscle tension, shallow breathing, rapid heart rates, difficulty sleeping, indigestion, difficulty concentrating and more.

A hospital admission, extended illness, and recuperating at home is a stressful time not only for the patient, but for friends and family members, too. Your daily routine is interrupted, you’re worried about your sick love one, and if she or he is going to get well. You may have to leave your job unexpectedly, you may often have other family members who depend on you. These responsibilities don’t evaporate. And you’re probably eating cafeteria food and not getting enough sleep.

And for the patient, being admitted to the hospital can be even a very stressful and challenging experience. They are sick, in pain, and worried about their health. Often patients don’t know what to do during the hospitalization, and are left with long intervals of time, usually resulting in watching television in between hospital staff interactions, diagnostic tests and receiving visitors.

I’ve been there, too, not only as a physician, but as a wife, daughter, sister, friend, family member and a patient. I learned a lot from being on the other side of the stethoscope.

Here are a few tips that can help you to improve their hospital stay and recovery.

Take good care of yourself. Frequently care givers overlook their own health and well-being while taking care of others. This is a very difficult and stressful time for everyone involved. If you’re not well rested, not getting your sleep, it is virtually impossible for you to be able to provide the assistance and support your loved one needs. Sometimes this requires difficult choices, but the bottom line remains. You must take care of you first!

Make yourself a priority, if at all possible to get adequate sleep, and eat your meals regularly. Plus there will be times you’ll need to take a break from your loved one. That’s perfectly normal and is very helpful.

Pay attention to your feelings and emotions, honestly allow yourself to experience them. Sometimes you’re frightened, anxious, distressed. Also, loneliness, pain, and fatigue are very common. That’s very normal. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t! Acknowledge them.

Stay informed. With the patient’s permission, ask the treating physician pertinent questions. Ask about options, second and even third opinions, if the patient isn’t comfortable with the doctor’s recommendations. Write the patient’s questions down, and act as an advocate. The internet has great health information resources. Use them!

Fill your loved one’s room with positive things. First and foremost, one of the healthiest things you can do for your loved one during their hospitalization and recuperation is to turn off the news (any type, unless you just watch the weather)! Encourage them not to watch violent, depressing television programs. This causes unnecessary and potentially damaging stress.

If possible, bring photos, blankets, small tokens from home that will help the patient to feel more comfortable. Also, encourage him or her to watch inspiring comedy and educational programs. Use the resources that are available to you via the Internet, books, CDs, DVDs, and other formats.

Encourage and support their decision to get well. While many people focus on wanting to get over their illness, it is crucial to encourage your loved one to focus on what’s working. During a hospital stay, many patients tend to focus on not wanting to be sick, rather than getting well. While the difference between the two may seem subtle but it is very important. Shifting one’s focus from the disease to health, essentially stimulates the body to improve and to heal. An intention to get well, in very important and measurable ways helps the body.

Help them to ignore all dire predictions. Use them as a catalyst, as a challenge to overcome whatever disease you are facing. Despite the odds, others have survived, your special one can, too! Unfortunately, doctors are trained not to give “false hope,” and often give patients dire predictions that appear to be credible predictions based on statistics involving other patients. Of course such bleak predictions will have a very negative impact on recovery and health.

Many patients have proven over the years that we all possess the ability to survive, thrive and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. Regardless of the diagnosis and prognosis you are facing, please know all is not lost. Men and women like your loved one have faced the challenges of living with and overcoming serious and potentially fatal diseases. These experiences led me to believe that you, too, can get well, too!

Usually predictions are based on statistics that reflect the experience of other people. The will to live, the desire to get well, has a tremendous impact on our bodies and can mean the difference, literally between recovery and illness, health and disease and life and death. They can’t accurately predict how long you will live. Remember: Medical statistics reflect other people’s experiences! And may not necessarily predict yours unless you allow them to by putting faith in them.

Help them to become more self-aware, through exploring their secret thoughts and emotions. How do you and your loved one feel about this experience called “disease”? Does it create fear, anxiety, denial, and constant thoughts? That’s normal. All of these emotions are a part of the disease process. You can work your way through all of them, with awareness and patience.

Provide your loved one with a good, listening ear, allowing a space to share their thoughts with a kind person. It doesn’t matter who the person is. A health professional, family member, spouse, friend or someone else can be a great well-being coach, a valuable asset.

Help cultivate optimism. Medical research demonstrates optimists are healthier and recover faster than pessimists. Every crisis can be viewed as an opportunity, because it is! Your encouraging words can have a tremendous impact. Help your loved one to see that their cup isn’t necessarily half empty, it’s half full. A pessimistic view can be transformed into one that is more optimistic.

Help the your loved one to relax. This is a very important thing to do. Most illnesses are stress related. When your body is relaxed it has the opportunity to regenerate and heal.

Laughter in the Hospital

2012-04-02T05:59:08Z

A hospital admission is a very stressful experience. It’s easy to imagine the fear and trauma not only brought about by the illness itself but because of factors that involve separation from family and daily routines that engender anxiety, despair, and depression in a patient.

Our emotional response to stressful events, can have the ability to seriously suppress the immune system through the chronic stimulation of the “flight-or-fight” response.

Chronic ongoing stress depletes and weakens the body’s defenses—especially the immune system’s ability to fight infections and destroy cancer cells.

Several stress hormones released into the blood stream trigger the heart to beat faster and also raises the blood pressure, while they decrease the depth of breathing, causing panting and lowering the level of oxygen in the blood

The connection between stress, high blood pressure, muscle tension, weakened immunity, and other detrimental changes has been well documented in medical research. The changes in the body that happen with the perception of stress provide the body with the immediate biochemical response needed to help it respond to a dangerous situation.

Laughter can stop this continuous and harmful response, essentially, rescuing the body, and providing relief. Studies show that humor has an immediate impact on the body to counter the effects of stress. The stimulation of laughter increases our circulation. It also enhances the lungs’ ability to efficiently exchange gases and accelerates the metabolism and activity of our muscles, improving muscular tone and conditioning of the heart muscle.

This is the major reason why many hospitals and medical institutions around the world now have laughter programs for their patients. The approaches include humor rooms, humor wagons (a wagon is wheeled from room to room with humor items available), in-house humor TV channels, and clowns.

In New York City, the Big Apple Circus since 1987 has sent clowns into hospitals, primarily to visit children and help ease their fears. The Children’s Hospital of Michigan allows doctors to write orders for laughter therapy and the American Association for Therapeutic Humor (AAHT), a group of physicians, nurses, psychologists, and other health-care professionals, promotes the use of laughter in disease management and treatment.

The Laugh Mobile, a nationally distributed product, is a rolling display cart with a circus motif delivering a wide variety of humorous media, including books, audio and videotapes, games, and clowning props.

Interestingly, laughter is also therapeutic to the caregiver. I have found it to be beneficial personally and professionally. I often use humor with my patients and encourage them to look at the lighter side of any situation they’re facing.

I have even wistfully imagined leaving the “professional” world of medicine to become a doctor-clown enchanting sick hospitalized children!

How To Get Well Faster During Your Hospitalization: 4 Powerful Strategies

2012-04-02T05:57:12Z

While the purpose of your hospital stay is to help you get well, your time in the hospital, where you’re removed from your normal daily life, can be very stressful.

Most patients don’t know what to do with your time or how to spend it improving your health.

As a doctor whose treated patients for many years, I’ve often witnessed the disruption illness can bring to the lives of my patients. Frequently patients are afraid, worried, depressed, anxious, in pain and don’t what to do to help your body get well.

Frequently patients don’t know what to do during the hospitalization, and are left with long intervals of time, often resulting in watching television in between hospital staff interactions, diagnostic tests and receiving visitors.

While the focus of modern medicine remains on treating symptoms with medications and surgery, there are powerful way to help your body get well.

Here are four important strategies that can help you to improve your hospital stay and recovery:

Decide you want to get well! Choose your health over your illness. Make the critical decision that you truly want to get well and recover. This is extremely important.
Usually patients focus on not wanting to be sick, rather than getting well. And there’s an important difference. If you shift your focus to your health, while you are ill, you are literally triggering the release of chemicals in your cells and organs that will help your body to get well faster. Your intention to get well, assists your body in ways that modern medicine is finally beginning to acknowledge.
Overlook and ignore all dire predictions. Tragically, I believe doctors often give patients bad news that only makes people get sicker. Physicians are trained to use statistics—the experiences of others as predictors of how a patient will or will not improve. But those statistics don’t have to be your statistic!
Doctors are trained not to give patients a sense of “false hope.” However, I’ve witnessed many patients who’ve defied those dire predictions and survived. Of course, such bleak predictions will have a very negative impact on recovery and health.

Use them as a catalyst, as a challenge to overcome whatever disease you are facing. Despite the odds, others have lived and you can, too! I’ve witnessed many patients defy their doctor’s predictions.

Regardless of the diagnosis and prognosis you are facing, please know all is not lost. Men and women like you have faced the challenges of living with and overcoming serious and potentially fatal diseases. These experiences led me to believe that you, too, can get well, too!
Pay to attention and honor your emotions. Truthfully and honestly evaluate your thoughts, feelings, and allow them. We cause ourselves much suffering when we resist our true emotional indicators.
How do you really feel about your illness? Has it caused you to become fearful, anxious, depressed, upset, and wanting to deny its presence? That’s completely normal and understandable.

All of these emotions can be a part of your journey to health. Acknowledge them. Most people can work your way through all of them, with gentle awareness and patience.
Fill your environment with positive things. Turn off the news (any type, unless you just watch the weather)! Don’t watch violent, depressing television programs. Watch inspiring comedy and educational programs Use the resources that are available to you via the Internet, books, CDs, DVDs, and other formats.

What Are the Keys to Health and Well-being?

2012-04-02T05:54:22Z

Beyond what you already know about health and how to improve it, here’s a list of helpful things you can do to improve your health. Please consider including them as activities that will help you to improve your health.

Get adequate sleep
A good night’s rest is essential to maintaining and improving your health. Many people are unaware that they are chronically sleep deprived. Estimates are that more than fifty per cent of Americans and Europeans are sleep deprived, which is a risk factor for diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
Exercise
Eat a healthy diet
Find ways to relax often
Laugh frequently
Resolving anger and fear daily
Cultivating meaning relationships with self, family and friends
Spending quiet time with yourself each day, at least 10-15 minutes focusing on the day and your feelings.
Being honest with yourself. The ancient saying, “To thine own self be true,” is very important. We often are our own worse critic. What does your inner voice tell you?
Be gentle with yourself. Treat yourself and others with kindness and consideration
Find ways to accommodate the needs of your spirit.
Exercise regularly

Part 2 How to Ease Your Disease During Your Hospital Stay

2012-04-02T05:50:51Z

One of the easiest way to ease your disease is to relax!

Relaxation is critical to getting well faster. I know that may be challenging, especially when you’re sick and in the hospital. It’s important to find ways to relax. This is a very important thing to do. Most illnesses are stress related. When your body is relaxed, it has the opportunity to regenerate and heal.

You’re chronically releasing stress hormones that over the long run contribute to the development of your illness.
Here’s the good news—you can reverse that process, by relaxing! When you’re in a state of relaxation, your body can heal itself. More about that later.

The deepest relaxation is being at peace with yourself and at home in your body.

Easy Relaxation Tips:

Pay very close attention to your body and your thoughts. Acknowledge your thoughts instead of suppressing or ignoring them.
Reverse negative thoughts through choosing more positive ones.
Breathe properly—most people breathe using their rib-cage muscles, which is a sign of stress—diaphragmatic breathing relaxes the body.
Listen to soothing music.
Do something creative—expression is good for your soul and body.
Eat healthy food.
Focus on beauty—nature has a very positive effect on relieving stress. If you can’t get outside, look at something living, perhaps, a plant, a flower, or even a photograph of one is helpful.

How to Ease Your Disease During Your Hospital Stay

2012-04-02T05:48:12Z

During my years of practicing medicine, I’ve often asked my patients, “What’s making you sick?” At least 95% know and give an answer. The answer is usually a stressful personal situation.

Most importantly, the stress is not caused per se by the situation, it’s how you perceive it that is the source of your distress and the foundation of your disease.

Even if you have a family history, or if you have lifestyle issues, or if you have all of the other risk factors for disease! It is still the personal stressful situation that is making you sick.

Medical research clearly demonstrates that chronic stress leads to all kinds of physical illness. The next chapter on thoughts, feelings, and emotions, covers this topic in great detail.

Most of us know when they are stressed, but they continue to worry and worry more, causing the chronic release of hormones, which if released occasionally play a protective role in preparing our bodies to run or fight.

However, the chronic release of stress-related hormones causes the deterioration of the body and increased susceptibility to a host of illnesses, including heart disease, hypertension, asthma, diabetes mellitus, cancer, infections, including influenza and tuberculosis. You can help your body to get well by improving the way you respond to stress.

Many people think they have no control over the way that they respond to stress.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Usually that means we’re not paying attention to how we react, and have developed a knee jerk response that’s occurring over a long period of time.

Your perceptions that caused your distress led to your disease!

Easing your disease will help your body to do what it does naturally. As most illnesses come from distress, easing your disease through relaxation is a proven key to getting well faster!

Part 2: Why Medical Statistics Don’t Matter When You’re the Patient!

2012-04-02T05:43:13Z

Did you know that doctors can’t accurately predict how long you will live.

That’s very profound information, but I can hear someone saying in response, “I hear you, but my doctor says my condition is too far gone. I’m terminal.”

It is important for you to believe that you can get well!

Your faith in yourself and your body’s ability to heal is the most important ingredient. Don’t listen to or accept any dire predictions doctors and statistics might give you. They can’t accurately predict how long you will live.

Unfortunately, doctors often give patients dire predictions—diagnoses that sound like “death sentences” and predictions of their demise, based on statistics, and the limited outcomes of conventional treatments. Of course, such bleak medical diagnoses are going to have negative impacts on recovery and health.

Patients who have the “will to live” experience a difference in the expression and terminality of their disease, especially cancer, compared to those who have given up.

I once heard Dr. Ernesto Contreras, medical director of the world-famous Oasis of Hope Hospital in Tijuana, Mexico, say, “When a patient comes to us, one of the first things we say is, ‘Only God knows when you’re going to die.’ So let’s work together on healing your body.”

The modern medical model, though powerful, does not explain everything about disease processes. A broader framework is needed that includes how psychological factors affect disease outcome. We would all benefit from better understanding the mind-body connection.
But the link between positive coping styles and favorable disease outcome is still under-researched. The delineation, measurement, and psychophysiology of positive states of mind are sorely neglected.

We, allopathically-trained physicians (doctors who treat illnesses with drugs and surgery), have been taught not to engage our emotions with our patients—to be distant and objective; to palpate, not touch; to hear symptoms, not to listen; to remain uninvolved with our patients.

I disagree with this approach. I believe that love and compassion are key ingredients to healing and life in general. The stance that modern medicine holds is detrimental because it denies our patients these key ingredients.

I recall a study conducted at a Massachusetts hospital. Patients were divided into two groups, a control group that was treated as most patients are pre-operatively, and a group that received a pre-operative visit from an anesthesiologist.

The anesthesiologist would share information about the anesthesia process, and what to expect before and after surgery. Patients in the control group only met the anesthesiologist moments before surgery and weren’t given any additional information.

When you are facing a serious illness…

Many patients have proven to me over the years that we all possess the ability to survive and thrive, and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. Regardless of the diagnosis and prognosis you are facing, please remember all is not lost.

Men and women like you have faced the challenges of living with and overcoming serious and potentially fatal diseases. These experiences and my spiritual understanding inform me that you, too, can be healed—especially when you unleash the will to live that already resides within you!

While the patients in both groups were similar in terms of age and procedures, the patients to whom the anesthesiologist had spoken prior to surgery had significantly fewer complications and much shorter hospital stays. This study and others I have read confirm my belief that the more communicative, humane, and compassionate we doctors are, the more positive our effect on patient outcomes.
I was taught in medical school that the mind and body are independent of each other, except in the case of “psychosomatic” illness. At the same time, I was taught that the mind could exert a significant influence on the body, as in the placebo effect, when a person is given an inert substance like a sugar pill and told it’s a drug.

(Interestingly, the statistical difference between the “real thing” and the placebo is rarely more than 15%.) A placebo can also exert a negative effect if patients are told that a sugar pill can have a negative effect. This is called a “nocebo” effect. The mind complies to one’s belief and produces a negative, sometimes harmful response.

I believe physicians can induce a “nocebo” effect with pessimistic predictions and “death sentences.” Patients internalize the hopelessness and make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fortunately, growing numbers of doctors are being trained today in the role the mind plays in health and disease.

Part 1: Why Medical Statistics Don’t Matter When You’re the Patient!

2012-04-02T05:38:21Z

“You’ve got terminal cancer.”

“There’s nothing more we can do.”

“You have no options.”

Scary words indeed. Especially, when it’s your doctor telling you that you’re going to die.
I strongly recommend that if you are on the receiving end of any of these dire predictions, ignore them. But you can use them as a catalyst, as a challenge to overcome whatever disease you are facing. Despite the odds, others have lived, and you can too! I’ve witnessed many patients defy their doctor’s predictions.

What about statistics? Usually predictions are based on statistics that reflect the experience of other people. The will to live and the desire to get well has a tremendous impact on your body and can mean the difference, literally, between recovery and illness, health and disease, and life and death.

Doctors often tell their patients information you would consider unhealthy and unhelpful. Please allow me the privilege to explain.

Unfortunately, doctors are trained not to give “false hope,” and often give patients dire predictions—which appear to be credible predictions based on statistics involving other patients. Of course, such bleak predictions will have a very negative impact on recovery and health.

Let me explain why.

They can’t accurately predict how long you will live. Remember: all statistics reflect the experience of others and may not necessarily predict yours.

Research studies now indicate when a doctor expects his patient to get sicker, and the patient does become sicker, even if the doctor hasn’t stated his or her expectation to the patient!
Yes, people do get sicker and some pass away. But it is extremely difficult to make that prediction accurately.

Every patient is unique. That includes you!

No one knows, including your doctor with 100 percent accuracy what’s going to happen to you!

Doctors often forget that in the world of statistics, each one of us is a human being and not a number. We’ve never learned how to truly consider our patient as an individual.

We really don’t know what’s going on with that person’s will to live—and that is key.

Everyone is different, every patient is unique. You are a precious individual. There’s only one of you! There never has and never will be another exactly like you!

Medical research has done a marvelous job, but in reality, the statistics that doctors often quote have to do with other patients and their treatment outcomes.

You are the most important ingredient, and you have the ability through your own will “to live” to overcome unbelievable obstacles and predictions.

Even more so, research studies found that when doctors expect negative outcomes, patients have them too!

One research study determined that while the patients in both groups were similar in terms of age and procedures to be performed, the patients to whom the anesthesiologist had spoken prior to surgery had significantly fewer complications and much shorter hospital stays. This study and others I have read confirm my belief that the more communicative, humane, and compassionate we doctors are, the more positive is our effect on patient outcomes.

Many patients have proven to me over the years that we all possess the ability to survive, to thrive, and to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. Regardless of the diagnosis and prognosis you are facing, please know all is not lost.

Men and women like you have faced the challenges of living with and overcoming serious and potentially fatal diseases. These experiences led me to believe that you, too, can get well!

Realize that we all possess the ability to survive, thrive and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. Regardless of the diagnosis and prognosis you are facing, please know all is not lost.

Men and women just like you have faced the challenges of living with and overcoming serious and potentially fatal diseases.
Understand that usually predictions are based on statistics that reflect the experience of other people.

The will to live and the desire to get well has a tremendous impact on our bodies and can mean the difference, literally, between recovery and illness, health and disease, and life and death.

Remember: All statistics are about the experience of other people and may not necessarily predict yours, unless you put your faith in them!

Part 2 Are You Inspired to Get Well? How the Will to Live Can Heal You

2012-04-02T05:33:12Z

You must believe you can survive and prosper. Your faith in yourself and your body’s ability to heal is the most important ingredient.

Inspiration

I will always remember David (name changed), a patient during my final weeks of residency.

He was a likable 13-year-old with a fatal kidney disease. He’d just undergone his third kidney transplant. His two previous transplants had functioned for a while, but his body later rejected them, despite powerful anti-rejection drugs.

His new transplant looked great until early one morning, when I was suddenly paged to his room, after a long night on call. He’d had a cardiac arrest, and no one knew exactly how long his heart hadn’t been beating.

As I entered the room, I saw a swirl of nurses, a respiratory technician, and my intern desperately rushing about David’s lifeless body. His eye were fixed and dilated. He was clinically dead.

We tried resuscitating David for about 45 minutes. Nothing happened. We couldn’t get a heartbeat and he wouldn’t breathe.

He was unresponsive to any type of painful stimulation; his eyes remained fixed and dilated. Everyone’s face was beginning to reflect the grim reality that David had left us.

As our eyes met, without anyone having to say a word, we knew that we weren’t getting anywhere. I slipped out of David’s room, and went to the nurses’ station to call his attending physician. “I’m sorry. We’ve worked on David for almost 45 minutes and haven’t had any response. May I stop the code?” My attending physician, who had known David since birth, reluctantly said “yes” in a voice wrapped in heavy sadness.

As I walked back to the room, I heard a nurse scream, “I’ve got a pulse!” I cringed. My first thought was that it would’ve been better for him to die. He was probably brain dead.

We rushed him down to the Intensive Care Unit, where we hooked him up to life support. He remained in a deep coma, unresponsive to any stimulation. We all suspected he’d had an acute rejection of the kidney that triggered a cardiac arrest. But no. His new kidney was fine. Yet his EEG (brain wave pattern measurement) showed very little brain activity, and we expected the worse.

He shared with us that he’d died and gone to the most beautiful world, but got a little homesick and decided to return to earth. Miraculously, David had no brain damage. He was discharged about a week later in excellent condition.

I’ve retold this story and similar ones many times. But the most important thing I can say to people who seek explanation for stories like David’s is that to achieve a “miraculous” recovery, you must have faith that you can overcome the disease.

He Returned Because He Missed His Friends

I will always remember David, a patient I had while finishing my residency. David was a likable 13-year-old who’d been born with a deadly kidney disease, and he had just undergone his third kidney transplant. His two previous transplants had functioned for a while, but his body later rejected them, despite powerful anti-rejection drugs. His new transplant looked great until early one morning, when I was suddenly paged to his room.

He was in cardiac arrest, and no one knew exactly how long his heart hadn’t been beating. As I entered the room, I saw nurses, a respiratory technician, and my intern all scurrying about David’s lifeless body. His eyes were fixed and dilated. He was clinically dead.
We tried resuscitating David for about 45 minutes. Nothing happened. We couldn’t get a heartbeat, and he wouldn’t breathe. He was unresponsive to any type of painful stimulation, his eyes remained fixed and dilated. Everyone’s face was beginning to reflect the grim reality that David had left us.

As our eyes met, without anyone having to say a word, we knew we weren’t getting anywhere. I slipped out of David’s room and went to the nurses’ station to call his attending physician. “I’m sorry,” I said, “We’ve worked on David for almost 45 minutes and haven’t had any response. May I stop the code?” The physician, who had known David since birth, reluctantly said “yes” in a voice that had become wrapped in heavy sadness.

As I walked back to the room, I heard a nurse scream, “I’ve got a pulse!” I cringed. My first thought was that it would’ve been better for him to die. He was probably brain dead.

We rushed him down to intensive care and where we hooked him up to life support. He remained in a deep coma, unresponsive to any stimulation. We all suspected he’d had an acute rejection of the kidney, which had triggered a cardiac arrest. But no. His new kidney was fine. Yet his EEG showed very little brain activity, and we expected the worse.

We couldn’t identify the cause of David’s cardiac arrest. Seven days later, David sat up in his bed and pulled the tube from his throat that connected him to the respirator. “I’m back!” he said. He shared with us that he had died and gone to the most beautiful world, but had gotten a little homesick and decided to return to Earth. Miraculously, David had no brain damage. He was discharged about a week later in excellent condition.

The will to live is sometimes called “a fighting spirit.” According to Dee Russell, M.A., a psychotherapist in Bozeman, Montana, she experienced this firsthand. During the course of one year, her sister and parents died unexpectedly within a four-month period, and at the end of the same year, she fractured lower back bones in an auto accident.

“In my personal experience and from working with others, I see two unique manifestations of ‘finding the will to live.’ There is living from sheer will-power, force, and determination, often as a result of a sense of obligation or responsibility.

“In this situation, a person of strong will can overcome great odds and continue to move forward in their lives. This was my approach for much of my life. However, a gentler, fuller, more rewarding manifestation is developing the will to live by finding compassion, beauty, and purpose in one’s life.”

Since time immemorial, healers around the world have recognized the importance of “the fighting spirit” and its gentler form—hope, faith, and compassion.

Almost fifty years ago, during the early 1960s, the psychologist, Abraham Maslow, published Toward a Psychology of Being, in which he said that for human beings to live fulfilling lives once we have attained our basic needs, we must have something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Similarly, I’ve seen patients who were expected to die live for many years, and those who were expected to live pass on.
Medical research studies have found that patients who are encouraged to have an optimistic coping style or fighting spirit using psychotherapeutic intervention can augment their immune-system responses.

The ability to stimulate Natural Killer cell activity (a very important part of the immune system) and lymphokine-activated Killer Cell activity has been found in studies of patients with malignant melanoma and with local, advanced, non-metastatic breast cancer.
I truly believe there’s no terminal diseases, only terminal patients, those who’ve given up, believe these predictions, and are unaware of the power they possess. I’ve seen too many miracles to give up on anyone.

A few months ago, a dear family member was very ill. His daughter called me, because his doctor told her he was dying and should be moved to a hospice. The next day the family was informed that he was too sick to move to a hospice and would be dead within two days. He has several severe medical issues. I told her that doctors cannot predict with certainty the timing of his death.

To that end—three weeks later, he’s was still alive and showing signs of improvement. I don’t know how much longer he will be here, but he proved his doctors wrong. And they can’t explain why he’s still alive or how he improved, since his treatment didn’t change.
My mother-in-law told me last year a story about her sister’s experience. After being in hospice for two years, she was finally released because she was still alive!

Even people in hospice can recover! It’s amazing how wonderful and resilient the human body is.