by Dr. Bernie Siegel
http://berniesiegelmd.com/
(I give Kathleen O’Keefe-Kanavos permission to use
and post my blog on her sites. Dr. Bernie Siegel.)
Dr, Bernie Siegel, Bernie by preference, is my guest blogger today for October's Breast Caner Awareness Month, which has been received so well, that we are extending it into November. His words of wisdom concerning healing and medical prognosis, are profound. Read, remember and live a fulfilled life....
In his latest book, his 12th, published in September
2011, entitled A BOOK OF MIRACLES—Inspiring True Stories of Healing, Gratitude,
and Love, Bernie is described in the Foreword written by Deepak Chopra who
tells us, “Bernie Siegel began his writing career twenty-five years ago, and
from the outset he didn’t shy away from miracles. The title of his first
book—LOVE, MEDICINE & MIRACLES (1986)—flaunted his disagreement with
mainstream medicine. An MD who advised more love as a path to healing would
have been in enough trouble. Opening the possibility of miracles was grounds
for dismissal. In his new book, Bernie reaffirms his original beliefs, and with
a lifetime’s wisdom and experience, he trusts in miracles more than ever.”
The reason that medicine has not explored the issue of
self-healing and patients who exceed survival expectations is that we either
give the treatment the credit or refer to them as miracles or spontaneous
remissions. Medicine does not study success because one cannot learn from
spontaneous events but when one thinks of these cases as unique to the patient
and self-induced you are more likely to ask the patient for their story and
learn about survival behavior.
Psychologist Bruno Klopfer, back in the 1940’s, was
given 24 personality profiles of cancer patients and correctly predicted 19
times who would have a fast or slow growing cancer. In one case he couldn’t
decide and his predictions were wrong four times. Yet when a patient enters a
doctor’s office and is given a diagnosis they are not handed a list which tells
them how to behave and act like a survivor or a list of questions to determine
their personality profile and find who is more likely to become a long term
survivor and who needs psychotherapy. Doctors are not trained to communicate
with patients and so our words can kill or cure. I have found that
“wordswordswords” can literally become swords.
Let me share two cases of remarkable recoveries in
which I was personally involved. One was a woman who lived in North Carolina
and was told by her doctor that going to Duke for chemotherapy was a waste of
time and energy as she was going to die anyway of cancer. Her niece was caring
for my father-in-law at the time and without asking me told her aunt, “Doctor
Siegel helps people to get well all the time, come up here to Connecticut.”
When she arrived and I was called, I admitted her to
the hospital and found she had leukemia. As a surgeon I had nothing to offer
her, so I called an oncologist to see her. He basically said what her doctor
had said but started chemotherapy to give her some hope. She responded
dramatically and went into complete remission. His last letter to me, with a
smile said, “Isn’t chemotherapy wonderful.” Her niece later told me she went
home and was driving her doctor crazy and that she knew she would get well when
I sat on her bed and hugged her.
Another case involved Jordan Fieldman, a Harvard
medical student who developed visual problems many years ago and was diagnosed
with an aggressive brain tumor. He underwent surgery and woke up blind and was
told he would be blind for the few months he has left to live. A week later his
sight returned and he went to the medical library to research his disease.
Every book he read said recurrence is invariable and death occurs within a
year. Now a good student would have gone home and died, but Jordan was not a
good student. He said, “How dare they say invariable!”
Jordan also suffered from ulcerative colitis and
noticed that when he decided to change his life style and not die of a brain
tumor that his colitis also responded. He combined traditional medical therapy
with other modalities and his tumor never recurred.
Butterfly
The essence of the story behind remarkable
recoveries can be symbolized by the image of a rainbow colored butterfly. It is
the symbol of transformation and every color symbolizes an emotion; when your
life is in order you are transformed and heal. It is about being born again;
religions and myths show us the benefit of that act. Picking a new name for
yourself and changing who you are by giving up the untrue self-imposed upon us
by others is life-saving. He who seeks to save his life will lose it, while he
who is willing to lose his life will save it.
As a three time breast cancer survivor whose dreams
found cancer my doctors and the tests on which they relied missed, Bernie’s
words ring true on so many levels. My recurrent cancer was stage 4. In order to
ensure I lived, I had to embrace death as a friend who would one day come for
all of us. This gave me the peace of mind to live my life to the fullest, and I
am still here to encourage others to do the same. We all have an expiration date
stamped on our body by our Higher Power, and only she can read it. Thank you Bernie for being my guest blogger today.
Guest Bio: About Dr. Bernie Siegel: Bernie, as he
prefers to be called, was born in Brooklyn, NY, and attended Colgate University
and Cornell University Medical College. He graduated with honors and holds
membership in two scholastic honor societies, Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega
Alpha. He trained to become a surgeon at Yale New Haven Hospital, West Haven
Veteran’s Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. In 1989, Bernie
retired from Yale as an Assistant Clinical Professor of General and Pediatric
Surgery to speak to patients, their families and caregivers.
Bio: Kathleen O’Keefe-Kanavos, Intuitive Life Coach,
survived three breast cancers missed by the medical community, wrote SURVIVING
CANCERLAND: Intuitive Aspects of Healing (Cypress House, Jan 2014) websites:
Surviving Cancerland & Access Your Inner Guide, Hosts Living Well Talk Radio
, Cancer Q&A columnist CapeWomenOnlineMagazine, Dream Queen columnist-
Wellness Woman 40 & Beyond, Your Dream Interpretation
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