From Patient to Doctor, Defining Healing

Photo by Hamed Saber.

Cancer.
ITP.
Burst appendix.
Hit and run.

That was 1989, not my greatest year. A life-threatening illness, a rare bleeding disorder, a burst appendix and infection. Then, to add injury to injury, as I was walking across Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, I was hit by a ’57 Chevy.

I was 32 and very fit, and I recovered, physically. Meanwhile I was thinking, Why me? Will I die? Will my doctors cure me? I wasn’t thinking, I want to become a naturopathic doctor and work with cancer patients. But I did.

And it was during this time in my life, from 1989 to 1996, that I began to think like a doctor. I began to question life, death, medicine, the strength and fragility of my body, and the influence of my mind and spirit. Most importantly, I sought out my own answers when the answers presented weren’t satisfying, lasting, or curative. Quite simply, my illnesses forced me to think outside of the box.

So, I applied to naturopathic medical school. I didn’t know what to expect. In my first week of lectures at the National College of Natural Medicine, my world rocked. Dr. Zeff was teaching a totally new way of medicine: it made perfect sense but I had never heard it presented in this way: the body knows how to heal.

It sounded simple, natural and beautiful. As I heard him talk, and as I watched him pound the podium with his fist, I realized that he knew things that I wanted to know. I asked to be his student and he graciously agreed. I apprenticed with him outside of medical school for 5 years, and something came to light: A knowing that people can heal and a sense of how it happens. I knew it in the marrow of my bones that every one has, at any moment, the possibility to heal.

But when I began my own medical practice, an interesting thing began to happen, especially after the first few years when I thought I had enough experience to really understand cancer treatment and natural medicine. I began to question and examine my dogma–my stringent beliefs and exclusive commitment to my ideas about what natural medicine was, and how it should be practiced. My dogma was being challenged because my clinical experience did not match my ideas of how things should be–how natural medicine was accepted in oncology, what patients could and would do with natural therapies, and of course the outcomes. More than I liked, I saw people die. It made me question. Did my interventions make a difference? When they died, did I fail? How about if they died in peace? Slowly, I had to question the black and white world of curing, and entertain the very real and very uncertain world of healing, but now in the role of doctor. If I could not cure cancer, what was I doing? If I was involved in the healing process, what was I doing, and why was I doing it? There was a lot of uncertain territory ahead.

After 11 years of walking in this uncertain territory, this is what I am certain of: I don’t absolutely know what is right or wrong for any given patient at any given time. I don’t always know if I can help and some days now I don’t know if I even need to help, other than to listen. I do know that Grace, or magic, or healing, or whatever you call it, exists. I know that I am a part of that process but also that I am not–a doctor is both witness and participant.

I have seen the exact same diagnosis turn some people’s lives into hell, and some people’s lives into heaven.

I think that medicine is the profession where people pay to heal you.

I think that when I don’t need to heal anymore, I will cease being a doctor.

I think healing is knowing deep in the marrow of your bones that there is nothing to do, nothing to change, nothing to fix, and then doing absolutely everything you can to make it better. Some days that makes me scared and some days that makes me smile. Today, it makes me smile.

Dr. Ken Weizer has a hospital-based naturopathic practice in the Providence Integrative Medicine Cancer Centers, teaches oncology at the National College of Natural Medicine, and lectures on cancer care at Nike. He lives in a co-housing community in Portland, Oregon where he is slowly but surely learning to cook.