Every experience opens the door
into a temple of new light,
although the vestibule may be dark and dismal.
–ABRAHAM HESCHEL
SO MANY THINGS in life turn out to be something entirely different than what they seemed at the outset. This is especially true of chronic pain and serious illness. The very thing we fear as a tragedy may be the springboard that jolts us out of spiritual complacency into profound growth.
Fifteen years ago, I was a young anesthesiologist planning ahead for the college education of three small children, running mini-marathons, and feeling somewhat smug about my success in life. Even though I had been a heart team anesthesiologist, I was ignoring my own loud heart murmur–at least subconsciously.
One day, feeling particularly tired after a ten kilometer race and needing an insurance policy exam, I had a chest x-ray. It revealed an enlarged heart, which was determined to be due to mitral valve insufficiency. Devastated by what was a life-limiting defect, I started the tortuous and frightening path to regaining health.
Close friends and a wise pastor helped me find the spiritual and psychological strength to locate this solution across the Atlantic. In 1985, heart valve repair was not common in the United States, largely due to the steep learning curve in a severe medical and legal climate. Through research, prayer, and spiritual guidance from multiple sources, I chose to go to France and have my heart valve repaired by Dr. Alan Carpentier–a pioneer in heart valve repair.
I regained my health, but not without a shift in consciousness. I became more sensitized to a universal problem–that of pain and suffering.
I write this book as a man who has had a major change of heart, both literally and figuratively. I want to take readers on a journey of listening to the wisdom of my patients. But their experiences are ultimately your story and my story as well, for pain is not limited to physical injury or illness. Sooner or later, heartache from the loss of a relationship or the death of a loved one strikes us all. This is a poignant experience of pain, which I will also address in this book.
I am now a full-time doctor of pain medicine, after practicing anesthesiology for twenty-five years. Finally, I am doing what I went to medical school for–treating the whole patient, addressing the total pain experience. Paradoxically, I have become the student of my patients, learning daily how some meet adversity with spiritual expansion.
While treating the total pain experience it became apparent that encouraging patients to find their spiritual kernel was essential to redefining wellness. Much has been said about the body-mind connection in obtaining relief from pain, but I have observed that the body-mind-spirit connection is what gives purpose to a patient's pain. Many of my patients have revealed how their particular spiritual path has helped them reframe their life with pain. Many of them have found that pain has helped them redefine their beliefs, and they would not choose to return to a life without a spiritual center.
I have written down these thoughts and stories for the benefit of pain sufferers, their friends and loved ones, physicians, therapists, and even spiritual directors. My hope is to provide an understanding of the complexities of the pain experience; to encourage a deeper reverence for the integral unity of the human person–body, mind, and spirit; and to renew hope for a life no longer dominated and determined by pain. To stretch your thinking on pain and its various treatments, I will do more than present facts and observations. I will dramatize them in experience by telling stories to help you perceive the inevitable reality of pain in new and different ways. I will tell you some of my own stories, especially those responsible for my awakening as a healthcare provider and pain specialist.
I would like to give healthcare providers a degree of comfort in addressing spiritual issues as an integral part of treating pain patients. I want to help caregivers view the pain experience not as a dead end, but as a journey which may take surprising twists and turns in leading to a life that is enlarged rather than diminished by the intrusion of pain. And for all of you who are caught in the grip of pain, may you discover that what has threatened to undo you can become the harbinger of your wholeness.
At some bend in the road as we walk through life, all of us may experience the "pain paradox": the very thing that is supposed to help you may make the pain worse, and what you think will hurt you may be the thing that frees you from a pain-dominated life.
–Dr. Erv Hinds
Santa Fe, NM, September 2002
Acknowledgements
My sister, Ann Tull, encouraged me to expand a lecture on pain and spirituality into a book. She contributed to many aspects of this book, from the original vision to the final details. Thanks to her continued support I was able to complete this book while maintaining my professional practice.
Kathryn Helmers started as my agent, but evolved into my collaborator. Her literary skills helped me thread the philosophy and spiritual substance into the medical science matrix of the book, and her experience as an agent helped guide this book to publication.
My daughter, Emily Hinds, helped me refine my ideas into clear concepts. My niece, Linda Revol, worked extensively on researching the citations.
Friends and colleagues, Robin Hermes, M.D., Kevin Pauza, M.D., Kathryn Moore, and Jan Comeau, read the book and offered encouragement and direction.
Pastor Talitha Arnold, Sister Mary Joaquin, Terath Kaur Khalsa, Maria Matus, Carl Miller, Dan Namingha, Carolyn Silver, and Norman Yazzie shared their stories and spiritual paths.
Dedication
To my patients, from whom I have learned many of life's lessons as I watch them move from entrenchment in pain to renewal.
