BERNIE By Bernie Siegel, MD


s doctors we are not trained to communicate and understand the power of our words as they relate to a patient’s ability and desire to survive. It is also not only doctors but all the authority figures in our patients’ lives that affect the outcome of their disease and their ability to survive. Parents, teachers, clergy and physicians change lives with their words. It is hypnotic for a child or


Of Words, The Power A


patient to hear an authority figure’s words. Up to the age of six a child’s brain wave pattern is similar to that


of a hypnotized individual. To quote a woman, whose mother only gave her failure messages and dressed her in dark colors, and who as an adult has more trouble with her mother’s words than she does with cancer, “My mother’s words were eating away at me and maybe gave me cancer.” We know from recent studies that loneliness affects the genes that control the immune system. So as doctors we need to ask the right questions and know what a patient has experienced and is experiencing in their lives.


I recently received two emails; one from a woman who had a re- currence of her cancer and has decided to not undergo chemotherapy again. Her doctor said, “Then you might as well go home and commit suicide.” The other email came from a woman who asked her doctor if they could become a team as she had just finished reading my book. He told her no and that he was the doctor and in charge of her care. She packed her belongings and walked out of the hospital and has found a caring oncologist to work with. She is a survivor and not a submissive sufferer, or from the doctor’s perspective, a so called good patient.


We need to listen to our patients’ words and treat their experi-


ences. Helen Keller said it very well when she said, “Deafness is darker by far than blindness.” We also need to understand that patients do not live a disease, they live an experience. We should ask how a patient would describe their experience and then treat them accordingly. The words they use, like draining, failure, denial, pressure, gift and wake up call are always about what is happening in their life. So we can help them to heal their lives and improve the chances of curing their disease.


I did a great deal of children’s surgery. I meet many of these chil-


dren today, as young adults, and am amazed at how vivid their memo- ries are. It is obvious how important this event was to them and the de- tails they recall. I learned how powerful my words were when I began


42 Natural Nutmeg - March 2017


to notice children falling asleep as we wheeled them into the operating room. One boy turned onto his stomach and fell asleep as we entered the O.R. I turned him over on the operating table and he said, “What are you doing? You told me I would go to sleep in the operating room and I sleep on my stomach.” I told him I needed to operate on his stomach to get to his appendix, so we reached a compromise.


I would rub an alcohol sponge on a child’s arm and tell them it


would numb their skin. A third of the children would not feel the needle and ask why other doctors didn’t do that. I called it deceiving people into health. Give someone who has faith in you a placebo and call it a hair growing pill, anti-nausea pill or whatever and you will be amazed at how many respond to your therapy.


Doctor Milton Erickson, from his childhood experience with polio and hearing his doctor’s dire predictions to his mother that he wouldn’t see the sun rise, knew how important words were. As a child his anger led him to defy the doctor’s predictions. As a psychiatrist, and hypno- therapist, he knew how to talk to patients to achieve the best outcome. There are many books about his work. One, by Dr. Sidney Rosen, is en- titled My Voice Will Go With You. And our voices do. At the conclusion of an operation, while patients were still under anesthesia, a time when they hear their surgeon’s words, I would say, “You will awaken comfort- able, thirsty and hungry.” I did that until I noticed many of my patients were gaining weight and so I added these words, “but you won’t finish everything on your plate.”


For many, Dr. Bernard Siegel-or Bernie, as he prefers to becalled- needs no introduction. He has touched many lives all overthe Planet. In 1978, he reached a national and then international audience when he began talking about patient empowerment and the choice to live fully and die in peace. As a physician who has cared for and coun- seled innumerable people whose mortality has been threatened by illness, Bernie embraces a philosophy of living and dying that stands at the forefront of the medical ethics and spiritual issues our Society grapples with today. Read Bernie’s regular blog posts on his website where you will also find his books, articles, and CDs: http://www. berniesiegelmd.com.


Bernie currently holds a cancer support group the second and fourth Tuesday evenings of the month 1:30-3:30PM at Coachman’s Square at 21 Bradley Road, Woodbridge. If interested contact Lucille Ranciato: lranciato2@yahoo.com 203 288 2839; or Bernie: bugsys- siegel@sbcglobal.net. You can find Bernie’s books ad CDs at Wisdom of the Ages in Simsbury, Ct. See ad on page 39.


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