I just finished my upcoming book Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself (Hay House, 2013), but I’m still researching the topic that has fascinated me for the past four years. I just started reading Consciousness & Healing: Integral Approaches To Mind-Body Medicine, by my friend and IONS president Marilyn Schlitz and Tina Amorok.

Awhile back I wrote an article about how medicine is a spiritual practice, and in response, I received an email from a surgery resident at Columbia University that left me in tears and inspired me to share it.

Lissa's Note: I sobbed when I read this post because I was once one of those non-listening doctors, and I too have been one of those patients who felt dismissed by her physicians. Dr. Nicola Holmes tells her story below about being the patient, feeling dismissed, and being left to chart her own course. I couldn't help remembering being eight hours post-op from my C-section, after nonstop vomiting and severe dehydration that was leaving me without any urine in my catheter. I finally called my doctor at home - we're friends - so she could rescue me. It was midnight. I knew she was tired. And I know she thought she was helping when she told the nurses I had her permission to write my own orders. So I spent my first post-op/postpartum night (while my father was dying, incidentally), writing the orders for my IV fluids, my nausea and pain meds, and how often my vital signs needed to be checked, all while trying to breast feed for the first time. I felt totally alone, completely abandoned to chart my own course, and I left the hospital the next day, figuring I might as well take care of myself at home. I'm getting choked up just thinking about it, and I know I'm not alone. 

It's up to us to change this. Seeing the doctor should ease suffering, not incite it.