That meeting with Paul Dudley White was something of a landmark in my life. It gave me confidence in my rapport with my own body. It reinforced my conviction that the human mind can discipline the body, can set goals for itself, can somehow comprehend its own potentiality and move resolutely forward.
In recounting this episode, I certainly do not intend to suggest that patients with serious heart disease should go against the advice of their doctors. I had Dr. Hitzig’s backing. Besides, there were factors in my case that might not apply to others.
Has my respect for the medical profession diminished as the result of the three episodes? Just the opposite. The thousands of letters I have received from doctors have demolished any notion that physicians are universally resistant to psychological, moral, or spiritual factors in the healing process. Most doctors recognize that medicine is just as much an art as it is a science and that the most important knowledge in medicine to be learned or taught is the way the human mind and body can summon innermost resources to meet extraordinary challenges.
Some of the letters asked whether I would be able, in the event of another serious illness, to mount the kind of total response that I did earlier in my life.
My answer was that I honestly don’t know how many such efforts are possible in a single lifetime. But I know I would certainly try.
I know I have been lucky. My body has already carried me far beyond the point where the medical experts in 1954 thought it would go. According to my calculations, my heart has furnished me with 876,946,280 more heartbeats than were thought possible by the insurance doctors.
It was the sheerest of coincidences that, on the tenth anniversary of my 1964 illness, I should happen to meet on the street in New York one of the specialists who had made the melancholy diagnosis of progressive paralysis. He was clearly surprised to see me. I held out my hand. He took it. I didn’t hold back on the handshake. I had a point I wanted to make, and I thought the best way to do so was through a greeting firm enough to make an impression. I increased the pressure until he winced and asked to be released. He said he could tell from my handshake that he didn’t have to ask about my present condition, but he was eager to hear what was behind the recovery.
It all began, I said, when I decided that some experts don’t really know enough to make a pronouncement of doom on a human being. And I said I hoped they would be careful about what they said to others; they might be believed and that could be the beginning of the end.
* The problems of improper administration are discussed later in this chapter.
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Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient Page 11