Magic and Healing

There are days when modern medicine takes the breath away and replaces doubt and fear with wonder and magic. Those days of watching the skilled neurosurgeon resect a tumor with breathtaking precision, seeing a pH of 6.9 correct on Diabetic Ketoacidosis Protocol in the ICU, watching immobile myasthenia gravis patients walk after pyridostigmine. In all literalities the blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame walk. And people wonder why so many doctors have God complexes.

As enchanting as modern medicine appears, there lies the incredible danger in tying your identity as a physician, nurse, or healthcare provider to the magic of good outcomes. Wonderful and thrilling as it is to see a nearly dead patient walk out of the hospital, it is equally as crushing to lose a patient. As human beings standing in the doorway of life and death it becomes so easy to forget our own mortality and assign our value to saving lives. When we as human beings must face the reality of losing a patient, the magic is gone, our value is gone, and there are only feelings of loss and failure. Modern Medicine will not survive as magic, it is not the skillful creation of potions and concoctions, or the practiced movements of blades and sutures. Magic is cold and impersonal and brings no healing to the patient or the provider. Magic is a lightning bolt from the sky, flippant and unloving. Whereas real healing is a deeply human process.

While technical prowess and knowledge are fundamental to the practice of medicine, healing involves relationships and connection. For me, there is a connection to other people through a connection with the transcendent. For those of the not spiritual variety, it is a connection between two people simply experiencing humanity together. In whatever way one chooses it is imperative to look eye to eye (or soul to soul) with a person and understand the pain and suffering that illness brings, and acknowledge that regardless of the outcome, I am present with you. Only then does the healer heal with the patient.

Physicians and healthcare workers find themselves in a dangerous place when they become magicians. One of my favorite quotes comes from The Healer’s Calling by Daniel Sulmasy, O.F.M., MD which sums up this theme nicely, he says:

“Healing requires a recognition of the human face of each person one sets out to heal and a communication of the message that both the healer and the healed share a bond that ties them to each other through their humanity, their morality, and the God-given spark of grace that lives in each of them.”