Читать книгу The Mind-Body Cure - Bal Pawa - Страница 6

I GLANCED IN THE rearview mirror just in time to see a large black truck hurtling toward my car at full speed. I automatically braced for the impact, which it turned out I had grossly underestimated. The driver was looking sideways, oblivious to the little car stopped in front of him waiting for another car to turn left.

I was on my way home from the hospital obstetrical ward after an extra-long day delivering a baby whose mom had endured a difficult labor. The birth had ended happily, and I was recalling how that big, beautiful baby boy had cried at the top of his lungs to signal his healthy entry into the world. This is the most satisfying sound for both new mothers and their medical practitioners. Watching the parents bond with their baby and being privileged to be a part of that milestone were rewarding aspects of my career.

I loved managing my role as a busy physician with my other role as the mother of two young, beautiful children and looking forward to another one on the way. As my thoughts turned to the squeals of delight I’d hear from my children when I got home, the loud squeal of tires abruptly interrupted and I heard a sickening crunch. The truck had lunged up over my car, shattering the back window and landing threateningly close to my head before coming to a stop. The impact happened so suddenly and so powerfully that my little white Honda lurched forward, hitting the car in front of me before being pushed into oncoming traffic in the other lane. With screeching tires, scraping metal, and blaring horns all around me, I felt searing pain in my right arm as I grasped at the stick shift to gain some control. My body had become a human missile: I must have hit my head on the side window and my chest on the steering wheel. I could barely breathe. Fortunately, the seat belt restrained me and saved me from going through the windshield.

I struggled to regain focus and understand what had just happened. Many onlookers were staring in horror at my car, now folded like an accordion. My body was wedged in the front seat between the mangled metal pieces in the front and back. I felt nauseous—my head was spinning and I retched from intense pain. I heard sirens in the distance, the all-too-familiar sound of an ambulance, which was being sent to help me. I could not get out of my car and I vaguely recall emergency responders asking me, “Do you know where you are? What is your name? Do you know what day it is? Are you in pain?” A large crowd was gathering, and all traffic on the busy street had come to a standstill. My head was spinning. And then, total blackout!

The next thing I recall, I was being wheeled into the emergency room of the same hospital I had left an hour before as a physician. The neck brace prevented me from turning sideways to see the familiar surroundings. I could only gaze at the ceiling, and I realized that while working as a physician I had never looked up there. Lying on a stretcher as a helpless patient, I had a whole new perspective. The role reversal was scary and sobering.

“Does it hurt to breathe? Do you know where you are? Were you wearing a seat belt?” A young ER doctor fired questions at me while efficiently checking my vitals. Confused and dizzy from the pain, my mind floated back and forth between panic and denial. I knew I was alive: hands were poking and prodding me and placing cold stethoscopes on my chest and abdomen. I felt the sharp jab of a needle as they started an IV in my arm and I made a mental note of all the patients I’d had to poke repeatedly when I was an inexperienced medical student.

Various technicians prepared me for X-rays and fired more questions at me: “When was your last period? Is there a possibility you could be pregnant?” I was pregnant! Fear and panic ran through me about the well-being of my unborn child. I cringed at the thought of radiation penetrating my uterus. The hospital notified my husband who rushed to my side, but it seemed like several hours before I could speak coherently or organize my thoughts to piece together what had just happened. Within a few hours, our lives were turned upside down, and we had to face a brand new future that fate had decided for us.

That night was the start of a dark chapter in my life, but it ultimately shaped who I am today, both personally and professionally. The next seven years brought constant pain, grief, sadness, sleepless nights, and drastic changes to my life as I had known it. The pain from fractured ribs, a dislocated shoulder, torn rotator cuff, multiple soft-tissue injuries, and whiplash penetrated to my core, and over-the-counter medications rarely relieved it. In the ordeal, I lost my baby and I felt terribly sad and depressed for our loss, which only added to the emotional and physical anguish of the accident. On top of that, I would wake up with terrifying nightmares, as my nervous system relived the horrific accident over and over. The unstable shoulder meant I could not lift my two-year-old daughter out of her crib or pick her up when she fell, and I could not play ball with my son; I longed to be a hands-on, fun-loving mom again. I could no longer do what I loved professionally: deliver babies and look after my patients. My wholesome life as I had known it was over. The person I knew was gone.

Over the next few years, I had multiple injections of steroids and anesthetics into my shoulder and trigger points in my neck, none of which offered long-lasting benefits. The scar tissue that built up—after the initial fractures healed—compressed the nerves and blood vessels in my right arm, and my arm became numb and painful with activity. I eventually required more surgery. I woke up the day after my third surgery in severe pain, with a chest tube in place, only to find out that my lung had punctured and collapsed during the delicate operation. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I lay on a hospital bed feeling hopeless and defeated.

What had happened to Superwoman? That was the name my mother had fondly called me when she saw me in action. I was the one who came to the rescue, the one who took care of everyone else. I was the one who fixed things. I had never needed to be rescued or fixed. Everything I had previously taken for granted—my health, my career, my contagious energy—was gone.

My nightstand became my personal pharmacy, filled with painkillers, sleeping pills, anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxants and ointments for pain, ice packs, and heating pads. My children couldn’t understand why Mommy couldn’t play with them anymore. My husband supported me tremendously, but he had to witness me trying to pick up the pieces of my “super” life as he struggled to look after his patients, care for me, and look after the children. I saw so many specialists over the next few years—including a neurologist, rheumatologist, orthopedic surgeon, vascular surgeon, and even a rehab specialist. Each one offered well-intentioned therapies aimed at getting rid of the pain. Despite their efforts and interventions, I was left with intractable pain and nerve compression.

Years of physical therapy and emotional recovery opened my eyes to the reality of our medical system from a patient’s perspective. As physicians, we simply take care of symptoms as they come up: painkillers for pain, sleeping pills for insomnia, anti-inflammatories for joint inflammation, and pills for the heartburn caused by the anti-inflammatory drugs. Surgical intervention comes with a myriad of risks and unforeseen side effects, such as my collapsed lung. Each action has a reaction. Some actions save lives, and I would not be here today without those necessary interventions. However, some others have far-reaching consequences that can be prevented. During my years of recovery, my symptoms were treated in isolation, but no one was there to integrate the symptoms or connect the dots.

Pain and terrifying dreams in which I relived the accident disrupted my nights. I woke up gasping for air in “fight-flight” reaction. The sleepless nights meant I overslept in the morning and woke too late to take my children to school. The medication made me feel drowsy, disconnected, and “foggy,” and yet I needed pain relief. I struggled to control my symptoms so I could function as a mother and physician. I was caught in a vicious cycle of pain, insomnia, and fatigue, and being a physician did not help me break the cycle.

The reality of this situation came to a head when my then six-year-old daughter brought home a scrapbook called “Mommy and Me” for Mother’s Day. The pictures she’d drawn were all of Mommy lying in bed with ice packs or heating pads, and the captions read, “My mommy is always tired” and “My mommy’s neck hurts.” I was shocked as I realized that this was how my daughter would remember me. I couldn’t continue to watch passively from my bed with an exhausted body full of drugs, barely coping with the daily routine, as my children grew up. I had to break the vicious cycle of pain. That day, I decided to push back and find my way out: I had to reclaim my power, my health, and my personal and professional lives!

Delivering babies was no longer an option with my crushed shoulder. As a career transition, I enrolled in a mind-body course with Dr. Herbert Benson at Harvard University. He was at the cutting edge of research on the autonomic nervous system, the automatic “gas” and “brakes” in the body. Chronic exposure to stress hormones affects almost every system in our body and plays a key role in inflammation and illness. Through Dr. Benson’s teachings, I realized that one of the most important factors for healing is learning to harness the immense potential of the mind and the nervous system. I learned I could get them working in unison to repair my body. And I did. What was supposed to be a career transition turned out to be the most radical transformation of my life!

I returned to Vancouver with renewed hope and determination. I researched and studied voraciously. I explored the role of chronic pain, anxiety, and trauma in healing. I learned that persistent pain and anxiety release a constant supply of stress hormones into the body and that nearly 75 percent of all visits to a doctor’s office can be traced to the destructive effects of these hormones, which can disrupt sleep, cause fatigue, cause anxiety, and wreak havoc with the gut.¹ I had both chronic pain and anxiety from the mental trauma of the accident, and they continued to create major surges of stress hormones day and night.

Although the actual car accident had occurred only once, my brain replayed the memory like a broken tape, creating the same stress chemicals as it had at the moment of impact. I had lost so much ground, both physically and emotionally. The grief, fear, sadness, and loss were huge contributors to my stress response and were impeding my physical healing. I began to meditate, practice yoga, and heal both my mind and my gut, which had been wrecked by anti-inflammatory medications and painkillers.

Today, I help others to heal through principles of integrative medicine, which treats the body as a whole unit rather than as the sum of its parts. I knew other people could benefit from all I had learned and implemented in my life. The Mind-Body Cure is the culmination of my personal healing journey, my thirty years as a medical practitioner, and my research. It explains how and why chronic stress overwhelms and damages the body, and it reveals the practical tools I used to heal myself and the thousands of patients I have seen in my practice since that accident. Most importantly, the book highlights the profound role of our nervous system and its inextricable links to how and what we think. Therein lies the infinite and often untapped mine of possibilities for our health.