Today I’m inspired to write about hope. For the past three months I’ve been working with a young man, Ryan, age 39, who is diagnosed with glioblastoma, a later stage brain cancer. Our work started with a phone call from his father, who I knew well back when I was working with the cancer centers as Director of Mind-Body Medicine. He had just talked with his brother-in-law, Ryan’s uncle, Dr. Colkitt, who had been the president of this physician management group of cancer centers.
Dr. Colkitt is a retired radiation oncologist, and smart as can be. I don’t think he ever really understood or appreciated my role more than as giving psychological support to patients and families. However, there was one incident in particular that clearly got his attention about mind-body medicine as a complementary treatment for cancer.
I had been working closely for months with one of his patients (Bob) and his wife (Marie) when I got a rather desperate call from Marie saying that Bob had been hospitalized and could I come see him. I discovered that he was expected to live only a day or two longer.
Bob had become fairly proficient at developing his intuition for guidance and support, which I taught in my wellness classes. Fortunately, even though his prognosis was so dire, we were able to talk with his “inner guide” about his condition. As our session ended, he sat straight up in his bed and said, “I know what it is!” We then talked about his insight and dramatic emotional release, and I was certain this was going to make a difference in his health.
I phoned the hospital the next day, and to my pleasant surprise, Bob had been released to home. Please understand that from a medical perspective this simply couldn’t have happened. Yet now he was at home feeling much better.
Two days later I ran into Dr. Colkitt and told him that I had been speaking with Bob and that he was at home doing pretty well. Dr. Colkitt gave me the strangest look and said, “He’s dead”.
I then asked Dr. Colkitt when he had died because I had seen Bob on Friday and that I had spoken with him at home on Saturday and Sunday. You could see that Dr. Colkitt thought this was incredulous and had a nurse call the hospital, which then confirmed Bob’s discharge.
I know that what I’m now about to say is going to sound awful, but Dr. Colkitt wanted to bet me $100 that Bob would still die within the next 30 days. I decided I wanted to make a point, and God forgive me, I took the bet in front of several hospital staff who couldn’t quite believe what we were doing.
Fortunately, for lots of reasons, Bob continued to do well. He even went on a couple of fishing trips with his buddies. On the 30th day, Dr. Colkitt came to me with a 100-dollar bill and had one of the radiation therapists photograph him handing me the money (I’ve kept the photo to this day).
I then explained to bob and Marie about the bet and gave them the 100 dollars. I’m certain that Bob’s emotional issues affected his symptoms and recovery – and the quality of his life and death.
In my book, Doctor’s Orders: Go Fishing I have a chapter titled, “Uses of Intuition in Medicine”, where I discuss the uses and evidence of the effective practice of intuition and meditation in medicine today. I have since co-authored chapters in the textbooks, Transformative Imagery: Cultivating the Imagination for Healing, Change, and Growth and “Mind-Body Medicine in Integrative Cancer Care” in Integrative Oncology.
I’ve come to learn a great deal about the importance of reprioritizing your life: that there needs to be a much better balance between doing all the things you think you should be doing and what you really want to do. I also learned the healing value of joy, peace of mind, stress management, love, spirituality, and meditation. I discuss these at length in my book Why Love Heals.
So, back to the present, I now felt I was that much better prepared to help when Ryan’s father asked if I would work with Ryan. I was flattered and surprised when Doctor Colkitt told Ryan, “You do whatever Dean Shrock tells you to do.” Of course, I was/am glad to help, and found Ryan to be very open to my mind-body-spirit approach to complementing his medical care, which was now being supervised by Dr. Colkitt. Ryan is usually a very private person, but he has asked me to share his/our story. He wants so much now to help others and to redefine how to handle adversity.
In his first session with me, Ryan cried throughout. He had fallen into the trap of having to always win and be on top. He had to be successful, competitive, and make lots of money, which he happened to be very good at. It had become exhausting. Now he just wanted to be happy, and indeed, he’s on a really good path to reprioritizing his life, especially regarding his wife and three young children.
In that same first session, we did an inner awareness exercise where he connected with his brain tumors (he saw them as a grayish-brown blob). I advised that he see them as benevolent messengers, which are there to get his attention and let him know his life is out of balance. He asked them if they would make him a deal: If I truly reprioritize my life, will you go away? (The idea is that they were there just to get his attention, and if he made this major life change, then there’d be no reason for them any longer). The tumors made the deal, which they continue to hold to.
In the next session we did another inner exercise where he met his “inner advisor,” a spiritual intelligence that resides within everyone. She (the advisor “felt maternal, like trusting my own mother”) appeared as a perfect white circle with no imperfections, like a pearl. Pure. Tough. Hard. Ryan now calls her Pearl, who is glad to answer all of his many questions, such as what could he do to get better. What caused this? Pearl told him that it was nothing that he did, and that he can get better.
We’ve met three times a week for the past three months. We check in with Pearl every session. And to Ryan’s absolute credit, he meditates and talks with Pearl daily! While he can still become anxious, angry, frustrated, and scared, he has become convinced that “we can do this.” Pearl regularly reminds him he’s on the right path and not alone. My favorite was when Pearl confirmed, “We’re going to do some incredible things. Let’s go. We can change the world. We can do anything.” Ryan now claims to “live in a space of perpetual hope.”
You can follow Ryan’s story on his new blog, www.my-grey-matters.com.
