Determined to Succeed
“How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty. But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed under for compost. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.” – Henry David Thoreau
Focusing our attention on health and preventing disease through better lifestyle choices is central to my book Self-Referral/Maximum Health. That is, it is wonderful to have the miracle medications, surgery, and other aspects of Modern Medicine - when they are truly needed. Finding better ways to promote health and prevent disease will pay enormous dividends – both reducing suffering and saving money. Surely it is far better to prevent health problems before they occur than to solely rely on medication and surgery for what could easily be prevented.
Forty-Two Years in Medicine
Forty plus years in medicine have taught me a lot. I mainly practice Family Medicine, but I also care for Industrial Medicine and Emergency Room patients. My patients are people of all ages - from newborn to senior citizens. My experience also includes several years as City Medical Director of our local Emergency Medical Service.
While my main practice is Family Medicine, I also have rendered care in patients' homes, inside rolling ambulances, at the Nursing Home, and in the Emergency Room and hospital. Because medicine is not always practiced in the daytime, I have seen patients at all hours of the day and night.
I carried out an ongoing education program for senior medical students to teach them practical skills as a part of their training. Many medical students gained instruction and experience as they rotated through my practice for clinical instruction. These young doctors in training taught me as much as I have taught them. That is how, in the last forty plus years, I rendered medical care to thousands of people and taught medicine to scores of medical students in training.
All this experience has taught me a lot about people, health, and disease. As a husband and father, I know the experience of having loved ones sick or injured. As a caring human being, I have never chosen to grow calluses over my feelings. Being a physician has not made me immune to the suffering of others; it has made me more sensitive to them.
The wear and tear of life causes many physical and mental health problems. Today's fast moving, high-tech lifestyle piles on stress - more than any other time in history. My experience has taught me that stress is a major cause of disease. Doctors need better ways to help patients combat stress. The result will be vastly improved medical care.
Many people working in healthcare today are stressed-out. The result is they often reach and pass the burnout stage. Why does this happen? They are under pressure from government regulations, managed care, and keeping up with the Electronic Health Record in our over-regulated, hyper-technological age of medical practice.
Doctors, patients, and all health professionals desperately need to get back in touch with positive spiritual ideas, values, and practices. These are the great positive principles that have taught and inspired human beings throughout time. Healthcare personnel and patients alike will benefit from a dip in those healing spiritual waters.
Toward a New Synthesis
I have not been alone in contemplating these matters. My wife, Bonnie, is a wonderful best friend, loving wife, and excellent intellectual sparring partner. Much of this book came into being during discussions with her. As ideas came, we winnowed them to separate the wheat from the chaff. Our most important exchange was when she told me, "Boil your ideas down. What do you have to say?" Without hesitation, I knew; I was creating a new synthesis of ideas to improve our knowledge of health and disease. My goal was to improve the practice of medicine – and all of this in a spiritual context.
The dictionary defines synthesis as "the combination of parts or elements into a whole." This definition exactly captures what this newsletter is to accomplish. Many parts of seemingly disparate knowledge must be brought together to make a new, more complete knowledge – a new whole instead of parts scattered all over the place, unconnected and without purpose. Stay with me as we explore in detail the new synthesis of ideas found in the book Self-Referral/Maximum Health.