healing

Being sick sucks.  Everybody knows that.  Or do they?

I know that quite often, when I used to work in the allopathic health care industry (which is still regrettably suspicious of alternative therapies), there were times when I and my colleagues would wonder if some people didn't enjoy being sick, a phenomenon we even have a term for.  We call it "secondary gains".  In simple terms, that means that being sick still sucks, but we might be willing to do it for the things we get as a result of being sick: sympathy, attention, a way to get out of work, a sense of belonging in a community of like-minded sick people....You could probably come up with quite a list yourself.

Many years ago, I was dumbfounded when a patient specifically asked me to advise him on how to change his diet.  He had heard that I was a vegetarian.  Perhaps he had also heard that among vegetarians, generally, bowel cancers occur less frequently than they do among those who eat the usual North American diet.  A complete meat-and-potatoes guy up until his diagnosis and consequent surgery for bowel cancer, suddenly he wanted to do a complete about face!

Two possible reactions to illness. There are countless others.

And then Healing itself is truly a mystery.  Scientists can describe for you a whole host of events that cascade one upon the other in the process of healing, but cannot explain why it happens at all, why sometimes it doesn't happen or does happen and takes so long, or does happen to some extent and isn't quite enough. 

People will tout one treatment or another, within traditional medicine and outside it, swearing by its efficacy.   There is scientific evidence. Then there is scientific evidence that contradicts the previous studies!  And then there is anecdotal evidence that seems to point in this direction or that, or even flouts all common sense or understanding.

There is lots of information out there, much of it confusing, much of it not to be trusted.  How to navigate your way if you are seeking healing?  How to cope? 

And on top of that are the existential questions.  Why me?  Why now?  Is there any meaning in my suffering?  Do I have a part to play or is this an act of God, or fate, or bad luck?

In my years in the health care field, I became convinced that healing is a holistic endeavor.  In the course of my training, I was taught that medicine is, or should be, concerned with all aspects of a patient's needs, psychological, physical, mental and social.  In practice, I usually saw patients' needs ignored or fragmented and referred to a whole host of differing specialists. 

In other words, like going through an assembly line, even the patients themselves chose to view their illness through a lens that analyzed, dissected and treated their bodies as parts.  This diseased part was to be repaired or removed and then a patient expected to be well.  Move along the conveyer belt.

This is understandably easier in some ways than it is to consider treating all the body systems as a unified, interdependent whole. Just fix the broken part, like a machine, and then the patient can get back to living their life.  But being a whole, consisting of interdependent systems, it is dangerous, sometimes even irresponsible, to treat a human being as a collection of parts.  What if a patient's whole life is broken, not just a part that shows the symptoms?

Then, confusion would set in. The conveyor belt didn't move along as it should have. Complications arose, seemingly out of nowhere.  Sometimes it was another body system, also not functioning in a healthy way.  Sometimes there were emotional or social issues.  Sometimes there were issues of addiction or even psychoses.  The ripple effect brought more problems into play. There were obfuscations and blurry hints of things under the observable surface.  Often nurses could sense another layer of reality below the facts, a watery world of emotional, social and spiritual agony.

What to do, what to do?  The more systems that seemed to be falling apart, the more experts became involved, and invariably, nurses were frustrated in trying to bring all those disparate points of view together, to even talk to each other!  Nurses would often say, in utter frustration, "too many cooks..."!

And where was the patient in all this?  Or the family?  Trying to cope, trying to find answers, grasping at this or that straw.  Hopeful, frustrated, angry, supportive, trusting, not trusting, blaming, passive, aggressive, participating, opting out.... confused.

One day I said to a surgeon I respected greatly, that many of his patients would do better if there was also a witch doctor on the team, the old fashioned kind, the guy who rattles shells and bones in your face, mumbles and chants mysteriously, burns evil smelling herbs to smoke up the room, tells you the gods or your ancestors are angry and asks you for your best chicken as a propiatory sacrifice!

As crazy as it sounds, I aim to tell you why.

It occurred to me that not just in the hospitals where I worked, but everywhere around us, people are hurting.  It is rare these days to encounter anybody who does not have one ache, one pain, one sorrow that they want to tell you about.

And, it occurred to me that we often know exactly what is wrong.  How often did I encounter a patient who knew something was wrong and had to fight and fight and fight to have somebody take her seriously?

We know ourselves, our bodies, but we don't have experts back us up.  We know but feel shame or guilt.  We know but feel inadequate and lost.  We know but sometimes it's just easier to ignore things, hope they will go away.  We think we should be stoic.  We think we should be strong.  We think we need to be good patients, compliant. We think the experts know the answers.

Often, although we know deep down what is wrong, we lack the vocabularity or even the authority to diagnose and find healing by, or rather, for ourselves.  (I don't aim to step on the toes of the medical profession here, as will become obvious if you stick with me.)

Bold idea?  Maybe.  But I aim to explore it with you in a few blog posts to follow.