I have been thinking about people who defy the outcomes that health care professionals predict for them. People who surmount supposedly 'insurmountable' odds. These are very inspiring people and they exist in all walks of physical and mental health conditions, illnesses, disabilities etc.
I feel so much could be learned from these people!
Dr. Bernie Siegel has written a lot about how attitude, expectations, outlook and approach can dramatically alter the outcome of patients with terminal illnesses.
In one brief article here, he says, "Physicians call the most dramatic healings "spontaneous remissions." Once we have labeled them, we learn nothing from the people in whom those remissions take place. We cannot afford to ignore these remarkable successes. We are all at risk for a great many diseases, and as the world gets smaller the list of things we are exposed to grows larger. We need to learn from people who recover and people who stay healthy."
You can read the full article here:
http://www.shareguide.com/Siegel.html
Although MCS is generally not a terminal diagnosis, it is often thought to be a 'life sentence' and I feel we can learn a lot from people who defy 'death sentences'.
Many people I have spoken with know of someone who had a 'terminal' diagnosis and went on to live many years beyond the date they were 'supposed' to die.
In hindsight, I notice that my more dramatic improvements from MCS began happening shortly after I decided that I could be one of the people who recovered with MCS, who defied the 'life sentence'.
I believe that wanting to be one of those people wasn't enough for me. I had been wanting that for years. At some point, somehow, that wanting transformed into almost a knowing - a confidence that I would be able to recover. I do not have a knowing about how long this recovery will take. Perhaps that will come in time.
Since I came to have this 'knowing' about my healing, my symptoms have improved faster than I had dreamed might be possible. That confidence alone seems to have really sped up my healing which, I suppose, makes sense if I consider how stress itself is proven to negatively effect the body.
Feeling hopeless, trapped and doomed causes a massive amount of stress. It's almost like a vicious circle: One is sick and feels no hope of getting better which stresses the body so much that it truly makes it less able to get better and so it can become almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.
To an outsider, my life still looks (and is) extremely limited by MCS. But I am aware, almost every day, of how I am doing things that used to be non-options... or that I am having mild or no reactions to things that used to put me out of commission for days.
I find that the more I notice the ways in which I am much better than I used to be, the better I feel - the more hopeful, positive and confident of my body's amazing powers of healing.
I believe this state of mind actually effects my body in a positive way.
At the very least, it lessens stress. Which frees up energy for the body to put towards healing.
Stress is a big energy drain.
