The mysteries of hope and healing
What can doctors do to bolster the spirit?
A doctor's words are like a scalpel. If they are applied precisely at the right time and in the right place, they can be amazingly beneficial. But if they are misdirected and misapplied, they can be terribly harmful. I've learned this the hard way because I've said things to patients that were not said right or shouldn't have been said at all. So I think it's very important for physicians to understand the power of their words and how to communicate in a way that most helps their patients.
You yourself despaired after a failed back surgery, and a doctor helped you find hope. How?
At that point, I couldn't walk more than four or five blocks. But he said no, it didn't have to be that way. He shook me up. He was brash and forceful, but he was smart. He realized that I had bought into others' incorrect assumptions. He told me that the narrative I had been living for nearly two decades--that there was no hope for me and that I would be constrained to live in a very debilitated state--was wrong. It was tough love.
Is hope more or less important than it was a hundred years ago?
I think hope has been, is, and always will be the heart of medicine and healing. The ancient Greeks realized that human beings could not live without hope. It's central to the Pandora myth. It's the one gift from the gods that's not lost, because without hope mortals could not endure. I think it's easy to lose sight of that in a time when there's so much technology--the genome, the MRI scan, the PET scan, and all of the euphoria of science. But we still come back to this profound human need to believe that there is a possibility to reach a future that is better than the one in the present.
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