Writing from the heart elicits responses from the heart, and here is one particularly moving response to my recent posting.
"From my personal experience (I have a history of Hodgkin's) the reference point is the key to healing. It not only heals the heart, it actually gives the power to heal the cause.
The doctor, who guided me through one of the most difficult years of my life, when I met her at the emergency unit (more than 20 years ago) held my hand, hugged me, smiled and said "we are going to get through this together". She wouldn't let me sink into despair - she demanded (yes, demanded) that I continue with my studies (I didn't allow myself to skip studies the day after treatment...not even once), bring reading assignments with me to every (awful) chemo treatment. She is my savior angel- she knows my name to this date, even though it has been over 20 years since we first met... She was just a slightly older then I was when she met me all those years ago. Her personal and caring attitude made me decide that I can do it.
You touched the trigger for self-powered healing."
While the person, the woman, wife, daughter, friend and mother in me embraces that, the researcher in me seeks the scientific evidence so that no one will dismiss emotional patient support as mush. Well, guess what, the scientific evidence is there.
In ‘A General Theory of Love' three psychiatrists, no less, Lewis, Amini and Lannon, elaborate on the limbic brain, the part of us that is neither primitive and automatic, nor sophisticated and, for want of a better word, cerebral. The limbic system with its chemicals - serotonin, opiates and oxytocin is in charge of bonding, but its effects extend far beyond the mother-child connection. This is not about dissecting animals or pointing to brain parts. As the authors put it "The brain's ancient emotional architecture is not a bothersome animal encumbrance. Instead, it is nothing less than the key to our lives. We live immersed in unseen forces and silent messages that shape our destinies. As individuals and as a culture, our chance for happiness depends on our ability to decipher a hidden world that revolves-invisibly, improbably, inexorably-around love." Because if love is engrained in our brains, if we are programmed to seek it, then why should we puzzle that we do not respond well to messages that ignore this emotion or are devoid of it? Why should we have faith in pharmacy-packaged opiates, and neglect the immense power of the opiates our own brain is capable of generating? Call it the power of love.
Most likely, what happened to the Hodgkin's patient who was kind enough to share her experience above, and what happened to Becky (see previous posting ‘Holding Becky's Hand') occurred at a limbic emotional level rather than at the neocortical rational level. What if the doctor had not hugged her? What if she had coldly cited statistics on recovery rates, and suggested a course of treatment, leaving the patient emotionally alone? No one can take away the physical pain, the distress, the panic. But empathy and trust are critical part of healing, and loneliness is an ailment that needs not to be added to malady. Our numerical, cerebral, rational culture forgets the major place of emotion in our human makeup.
Dr. Mayer Brezis of the Hebrew University alerted me to A General Theory of Love. He and his colleagues will be teaching a new course on the humanistic aspect of medicine. Hopefully others will follow.
