Overcoming fear and urgency

Defence is the first act of war.

~ Byron Katie

Fear mobilizes defensive action. Our nervous system is programmed to fight, flee or freeze in case of an attack. It’s life-saving. But many of our modern-day fears are learned and may not serve us well.

Being consistently in defence mode causes a lot of wear and tear in the body. Unlike a zebra that calmly goes back to chewing grass shortly after escaping from the tiger, humans tend to ruminate obsessively over perceived or actual threats. It is destructive to our health and well-being.

Last week, I heard a medical doctor claim that, in medical school, he learned to create fear and urgency to motivate patients to comply with his recommendations. He no longer does that.

I have no idea if this is common practice in medical training, but I can tell you that I have been exposed to this approach several times. I’ll share two recent examples in this blog.

Humility

There is nothing more humbling for health practitioners than to experience a severe health challenge personally.

Being trained to help prevent dis-ease I have been humbled over the past couple of years. Nagging at me at times has been the thought that if I cannot help the people I love, how can I possibly help others in need.

When you have complete conviction, walk the talk, and preach that genes are not one’s destiny and that daily habits and environmental exposures switch genes on and off, you can feel an exaggerated sense of failure when you, or someone you love, becomes sick.

My daughter's health scare

In 2018, my daughter, who had always been incredibly healthy and accomplished, almost overnight, lost complete vision in her right eye. As the CEO and founder of a startup, she was in Chicago, doing an entrepreneurial boot camp.

A stroke, tumour and MS (Multiple Sclerosis) had to be ruled out as a possible underlying cause. We spent 24 hours in the hospital - the scariest 24 hours of my life.

During the night in this teaching hospital, health care workers awakened Erica almost every half hour, shining lights in her eye and testing her reflexes. Erica would wake up with a smile and never complain. She even told a specialist she had done this to herself by not prioritizing self-care, and relaxing with a drink nightly. The specialist reassured Erica with much compassion that she had not done this to herself, subconsciously implying that Erica might be a victim of her genes.

But Erica was having none of it. She does not have a victim mentality. Thinking she had done it to herself meant she felt empowered to fix it.

So when the probable diagnosis, based on an MRI, became MS and the disease-modifying drugs and immune suppressants were encouraged and prescribed, Erica said: No thanks!

To this day, I am not sure how Erica overcame the fear and urgency created for conventional treatment.

Within ten days, she regained 85% of her vision and was back at the boot camp. She had a couple of other scary episodes but proactively took steps to heal herself. Her vision recovered. She is incredibly resilient.

My husband's health challenge

Then in April 2019, when we had just sold our home and intended to move to Switzerland for the fall, my husband got sick. It started with a cough and back pain that lingered. I encouraged Dave to see his doctor and to have blood work done.

He did see a doctor but, no blood work ordered. The doctor prescribed pain killers and antibiotics. The pain was managed but not completely relieved. The cough lingered, and he started to lose weight.

I was persistent in my recommendation that he go back to the doctor to do some lab tests. Dave is a teacher. When he finally did see the doctor, approaching the end of the school year, the prognosis looked dire.

The blood tests showed anaemia of chronic disease and a lot of inflammation. Because of that, the doctor urged a follow-up ultrasound.

The ultrasound showed a large mass around the pancreas. Pancreatic cancer was suspected.

That fear and urgency mobilized to action.

A follow-up CT scan showed countless growths from the neck down to the groin. Gut oncologists (cancer doctors) still believed this was in their purview even though the new scan suggested the tumours were in lymphatic tissue, not the gut.

To get a final diagnosis faster, the oncologists insisted on doing an ill-advised endoscopic ultrasound-guided biopsy, an invasive and likely unnecessary procedure. Later a better diagnostic deep tissue biopsy had to be done.

After a PET Scan, we met with the haematology (blood-related) oncologist that did some blood tests and resorted to using kidney results to create urgency for aggressive and immediate treatment.

That's when I experienced righteous anger. I asked to see the blood work.

I was very familiar with kidney lab tests. Although kidney function had regressed from the previous week, because the kidneys were busy clearing radio-active PETScan by-products, Dave was not on the verge of experiencing kidney failure as had been implied. I told the oncologist that they were using fear (false evidence appearing real) to get compliance and impairing our ability to think clearly - forget every available resource.

We found out later that the PETScan confirmed a Stage 4, highly aggressive form of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Dave did six rounds of chemo but passed on other highly invasive treatment.

When told he was tough and would fight this, it did not resonate. Battles and chemical warfare were not our preferred approach.

Dave made peace with his predicament and looked for the hidden life lesson embedded in it.

He did many natural, evidenced-based therapies including, a fasting-mimicking diet around chemotherapy, IV vitamin C and ice packs on hands and feet during chemo to prevent neuropathy.

Five months later, in December 2019, he was cancer-free and remains healthy and drug-free today. His immune function recovered impressively.

Closing thoughts

In both cases, doctors had good intentions. They were deeply concerned about Dave and Erica. We are grateful for their effort on our behalf. They did what they learned to do, and some of what they did was life-saving. For that, we are thankful.

But, I honestly believe both my husband and our daughter recovered because they overcame fear, prioritized self-care and learned a life lesson.

For Erica, it was that health is wealth.

For Dave, when you fear the future, you risk losing it.