The Tears They Shed Daily Is Unimaginable. Please Say A Prayer For Them. A Nigerian Doctor who contracted Ebola won her battle when she prayed. This was her testimony: I kept encouraging myself. This could not be the end for me. Five days after I was admitted, the vomiting stopped. A day after that, the diarrhoea ceased. I was overwhelmed with joy. It happened at a time I thought I could no longer stand the ORS. Drinking that fluid had stretched my endurance greatly. I knew countless numbers of people were praying for me. Prayer meetings were being held on my behalf. My family was praying day and night. Text messages of prayers flooded my phones from family members and friends. I was encouraged to press on. With the encouragement I was receiving, I began to encourage the others in the ward. We decided to speak life and focus on the positive. I then graduated from drinking only the ORS fluid to eating only bananas, to drinking pap and then bland foods. Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul . Serving patients may involve spending time with them, holding their hands, and talking about what is important to them. Patients value these experiences with their physicians. Spiritual commitment tends to enhance recovery from illness and surgery. For example, a study of heart transplant patients showed that those who participated in religious activities and said their beliefs were important complied better with follow-up treatment, had improved physical functioning at the 12-month follow-up visit, had higher levels of self-esteem, and had less anxiety and fewer health worries . In general, people who dont worry as much tend to have better health outcomes. Maybe spirituality enables people to worry less, to let go and live in the present moment. The word compassion means “to suffer with.” Compassionate care calls physicians to walk with people in the midst of their pain, to be partners with patients rather than experts dictating information to them. Victor Frank, a psychiatrist who wrote of his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp, wrote: “Man is not destroyed by suffering; he is destroyed by suffering without meaning” . One of the challenges physicians face is to help people find meaning and acceptance in the midst of suffering and chronic illness. Medical ethicists have reminded us that religion and spirituality form the basis of meaning and purpose for many people . At the same time, while patients struggle with the physical aspects of their disease, they have other pain as well: pain related to mental and spiritual suffering, to an inability to engage the deepest questions of life. Patients may be asking questions such as the following: Why is this happening to me now? What will happen to me after I die? Will my family survive my loss? Will I be missed? Will I be remembered? Is there a God? If so, will he be there for me? Will I have time to finish my lifes work? One physician who worked in the pediatric intensive care unit told me about his panic when his patients parents posed such questions. It is difficult to know what to say; there are no real answers. Nevertheless, people long for their physicians as well as their families and friends to sit with them and support them in their struggle. True healing requires answers to these questions . Cure is not possible for many illnesses, but I firmly believe that there is always room for healing. Healing can be experienced as acceptance of illness and peace with ones life. This healing, I believe, is at its core spiritual.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 23:27:32 +0000
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