A friend of a friend called me the other day to thank me for loaning her a book. The book: Love, Medicine and Miracles: Lessons Learned about Self-Healing from a Surgeon’s Experience with Exceptional Patients
Love, Medicine, and Miraclesby Dr. Bernie Siegel. It’s a book about exceptional patients—you know, the ones who do battle with diseases like cancer not only with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, but with attitude. Not just any attitude. I’m talking positive, hopeful, this-won’t-get-me-down-or-kill-me attitude. I thought it was an appropriate book for this young woman, a wife and stay-at-home mom of two little boys, who finds herself fighting stage 3 lung cancer. But what I realized when I talked to Dianne on the phone is this: The girl doesn’t need this book. She’s already exceptional.
Dianne is a non-smoker, an active gal who had no risk factors for such a horrible disease. She got it anyway, though, and by golly, her mission is to get rid of it. Knee-deep in both chemotherapy and radiation, her spirit is amazing. She’s strong, tough, and willing to do what it takes to crush cancer. Crush it is exactly what I think she’ll do. She’s an exceptional patient, after all. I think she’ll realize this as she flips through the pages of her new book and realizes she’s the very person Dr. Siegel discusses. Yes, Dianne, is going to do just fine. It’s the cancer that won’t fare so well.
