• Tag Archives healing

  • More Art Than Science

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Mid-Summer                                                                              Waxing Honey Flow Moon

    Gotta get back to those core exercises.  Back went ouch again today.  Sympathy for the Doctor?

    Healing is much less science and much more art.  Most of us see medicine covered in the glittering wrap of science, tested hypotheses, proven procedures, well-understood drugs, but in fact the science is often in deep background during a patient-physician encounter; where the most important work, diagnoses, is done often without the patient’s awareness.  Diagnoses, taking a given person with a particular list of symptoms and identifying what’s actually causing a problem, begins a this/not that path that then includes various treatment protocols.

    Will they work?  No certainty.  My former internist, Charlie Petersen, used to say, “We’re all  a bit of a black box inside.”  The difficulty faced by the physician is not only the variability in human bodies, but the inexact reporting of patients.  We often don’t know how to express ourselves to the doctor, aren’t always aware of what’s important and what’s not.  Ask anyone who thought that headache and funny vision would pass, then ended up in an ER getting treated for a stroke.

    I experienced this dilemma with Kona.  She presented with a right front leg held gingerly and a real grimacing when it moved.  I checked her front leg, feeling up and down its length, pressing at each point to see if there was a sprain or a break.  Nothing.  I felt no scars, found no blood.  I wasn’t sure what had happened but could find nothing wrong.  I never looked up and under her right shoulder where the wound was obvious.  I took her lead, followed the symptom she presented.  Doctors, of course, look beyond the first symptoms we present, but if we don’t mention something, they’ll not know to check.

    It occurred to me, given all this, that practicing medicine is an incredibly brave thing to do.  No one knows the limitations of western medicine more than physicians, yet they show up in exam rooms anyway, willing to use what they know to benefit the rest of us.  They work with us as knowledgeable experts, of course, but also as skilled listeners, both to our stories and our bodies.  The older I get the more respect I have for this, one of the oldest professions.


    📂This entry was posted in Health Humanities 📎and tagged

  • Gospel

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                                          Waning Moon of the Cold Month    3 degrees

    In all the hoopla and aftermath of the party I forgot to mention the gospel.  The good news.  The friend’s wife I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, the one diagnosed with cancer?  She came to the party.  Not only that she said her energy was better than it had been for a while.  She looked good, too.  Both she and her husband looked still vulnerable, the residue of concern, fear lingering.  She has a hormone treatment, recommended by her oncologist, that may keep the cancer at bay.  Not cure it, but keep it from getting a firm grasp on her.

    As Leni said, another party goer that same night, about his throat cancer, “Well, you know, the goal now is to make cancer a chronic disease.  Something you can manage.”  He’s living proof, having survived in apparent good health for several years now.  He and the friend’s wife were not alone, either.  Hank, another party goer, has leukemia, a disease kept in check now for many years, so much so that it almost recedes into the background.

    These are the three I know about.  There were probably others.  Cancer no longer has the skull and cross-bones attached to its every appearance.  Think of it.  Cancer is not a new disease.  It killed people relentlessly in all centuries before the last one.  Now, it begins to look, at least in many cases, like the caged tiger, pacing back and forth within its chemical compound, its lethality imprisoned, though not rendered harmless.

    Kate has retired from the practice of medicine as others graduate each year to take up the responsibility, this tricky act we call healing.  It has more parts than chemistry and technology and knives, we know this, yet those parts themselves, the fruits of engineering and science, have a great deal to offer.  Perhaps this next century is the one where the enlightenment driven side of medicine will meet the ageless truths of the human spirit, joining together in a medicine, a healing for the whole person.   It may be that the last years of the baby boom generation, now upon us, will provide the impetus for this fusion.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Faith and Spirituality Family Friends Health Retirement 📎and tagged