“The human heart feels things the eyes cannot see, and knows what the mind cannot understand.” — Robert Valett
My very first solo patient was a red-headed toddler with an earache in a sleepy little clinic in 2002. I remember the excitement as I walked in and the anxiety as I walked out of the room, thinking, “I hope I don’t screw this up.”
Every sacred patient interaction is precious and profound, no matter how brief or seemingly insignificant. No matter if it is a single meeting or a 20-year relationship, their significance cannot be overstated. I have received the gift of many thousands of these meetings, and while many of them are lost to history’s memory, each patient interaction has changed both my personal life and so many others’ lives in significant ways. These have only become clear after many years reflecting upon them.
These are my stories, and they are your stories, and they are worth telling. As I look back on them, I feel their significance more than ever, and I can see the way they have changed me and the little world around me. They have made me laugh and cry and think and wonder and question everything I believe to be true. These stories compel me to wrestle with the complexities of what it means to be human, and I am grateful for every single one.
My story has many beginnings, and I hope to share them with you over the coming years. For this first episode of my very first newsletter, I would like to share the story of how I came to feel and to know the role that “the heart” plays in the art of medicine. It begins with fear and trembling, and it ends with something much better than that.
In the summer of 2002, in the dark hours of a very early morning on some random day, I drove my old Toyota into a large, gray, empty parking garage at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas. Rivers of tears drenched my scrubs as they streamed down my face. I was in my second year of residency training and was feeling overwhelmed. The week before had been a particularly distressing week of long hours and lots of severe illness. Many of my patients had died that week, which was highly unusual. I wept and worried that someone would see me like this. I vividly remembered all the ways that those patients had died. I saw the looks on their faces and the signs of severe illness or injury all over their bodies. I heard again the wailing of their grieving families in the special room where we held private conversations.
I contemplated with dread all the people that would be too difficult to make well and all the potential death that surrounded me and about how poorly prepared I was to help them.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered, and then spoke, and then screamed louder each time, progressing to hyperventilating and shaking. The workload was overwhelming, the patients were too sick, and there was too much to learn and not nearly enough time to learn it. These were REAL PEOPLE–moms and dads and children–with real families and really important lives. I felt the unbearable responsibility for saving them, and for preventing their suffering. I realized I couldn’t carry that burden. I felt the heavy and the certain reality that I was totally incapable.
I CANNOT DO THIS!!!”
I screamed out loud between gasps for breath and the puddle of tears choking me. For the very first time in my life, I noticed my breathing. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, not knowing what I was doing but feeling compelled to just breathe for some unknown reason. I sat there intentionally breathing…very…slowly…in…and…out…blubbering occasionally as I tried to quiet down.
In that moment, my panic attack turned into a prayer, out loud, alone in my car, completely surrounded by gray concrete and empty space. I simply continued right where I had left off. Instead of complaining
into space, I began speaking out loud, directly to the Almighty Creator of the Universe, the Great Physician, and the only healer I have ever met. I remember it like it was this morning.
“I cannot do this on my own. I need you. Please, help me make it through one more day. Help me to listen. Help me to Love. Help them to live and heal them like only You can.”
At that moment, I felt the heart of healing beating in my chest, and peace paid me a visit. Many days led to many months of praying a very similar prayer, and with each passing day, peace and hope would bubble to the surface, growing larger and more palpable despite the very tumultuous waters. A key line in that prayer has formed me. It guides all of my questions, directs all of my actions, and brings purpose to everything that I do, and it comes with me before and during every precious human encounter.
“Help me to Love.”
Love washed over me that day and completely filled me up. Love for everything that physical life offers. Love for the Creator and the created order and for the great purpose given to me–to be an instrument of healing, for people and for the world. Love compelled me to walk back into that hospital in July of 2002, and love drives every. single. decision.
Love brings joy and laughter into the very early mornings and the late evenings studying and praying over the bottomless piles of work. Love makes it easy to make phone calls and write prescriptions and answer emails, and to spend money on new equipment that will help people heal. Love creeps into the middle of the frequent overwhelm and in between all the impossible-to-cure diseases.
Love came with me for the simple procedures—suturing wounds or removing fish hooks and splinters from fingers and toes, or a sticker burr from a little boy’s nose. Love brought laughter and joy in all the amazing recoveries when the joint pain magically went away, or the tumor or the numbness and tingling resolved, or when the impossible, dark sadness finally lifted.
Love comes with me when I hold the hands of people who are dying, and Love was there every time I use a sharp instrument and bloody hands to keep someone alive.
Love always came with me into “the family room” that no one wants to be led into when you’re waiting on news from the doctor. Love was there when I had to tell those parents that their eight-year-old son had drowned at that birthday party and when I had to tell a distraught wife that her husband had died in the CT scanner early that morning after their long plane trip from the other side of the world. Love was there with me, with us, during the making of that other story that no one has heard, the one that is too sad for just about any human to really hear.
Love still comes with me into every one of these sacred meetings. Love sits next to us, hovers over us, and supports us from underneath. Love surrounds us on all sides and holds us close together in all the spaces in between.
“Life” is so much more than a beating physical heart and a breathing chest and the presence of brainwaves. Humans exist as so much more than just a physical body. We share magical minds and an eternal spirit, and Love connects us all, whether we like it or not.
Almost exactly 22 years ago, an overwhelming burden of disease crippled me with fear.
Love showed me the way to peace and brought healing for me. Love still does all the healing for all of us, every-where and in every-way, and in every. possible. outcome.
Love is the heart of healing. It beats inside me and inside every one of you, bringing sight to eyes that could not see, and feeling to hands that could not perceive, and understanding to minds that could not comprehend.
Love is making all things new. Even medicine. Even me. Even you.