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By Brooke Bunch
A man with a pink
shirt and positive outlook on life and death took the podium at Irvine Hall
Saturday afternoon, the site of the keynote lecture and lunch
for OU-COM’s
annual CME
Conference and All Class Reunion.
Bernie Siegel, M.D., was the focus of the luncheon, and
he spoke of the importance of faith, love and laughter in
everyday life.
The conference and alumni
reunion brought back dozens of OU-COM alumni and their families
to the Athens campus for a weekend of continuing medical
education seminars and social events for the third consecutive
year.
Siegel spoke on “The Psychology
of Illness and the Art of Healing” at Saturday’s presentation.
“Don’t let the
kid in you die,” he told an audience of D.O.s and their
family members, students, faculty and staff. “Don’t forget the love and the
laughter.”
Siegel
embraces a philosophy
that love, hope and respect prolong
lives more consistently than medical science.
His books, “Love, Medicine and
Miracles” published in 1986, “Peace, Love and Healing” in 1989
and “How to Live Between Office Visits” in 1993, have broken new
ground in the field of healing.
Siegel maintains
that as students, medical professionals are not exposed to the
basics of practicing medicine in a personal manner.
“What we get is information but
not an education,” he told the crowd. “What we are not
taught is how to deal with people as well as ourselves.”
Preaching from personal
experience as a patient himself, Siegel stressed the importance
of connecting with and developing personal relationships with
patients.
“Help people heal their lives,
and then they can be cured,” he said.
Siegel also spoke on accepting
mortality and dealing with loss. He encouraged the D.O.s to
attend their patient’s funerals, accepting death — not fearing
it.
“Be comfortable with death,” he
said. “You can’t control it. If you’re surrounded by support and
love, dying isn’t that hard.”
Siegel presented a series of
slides to the audience, depicting various drawings made by
former patients. Siegel claims much can be told from a simple
drawing, adding a positive outlook will most definitely mean a
better reaction to surgery.
“Who knows what can happen if
you get up everyday loving life,” he said.
Lastly, Siegel stressed the
importance of making yourself happy. He urged audience members
to do what they love, adding happiness will follow naturally.
“You only have one life,” he
said. “Be who you want to be and be where you want to be.”
In 1978 Siegel founded
Exceptional Cancer Patients (ECaP), an individual and group
therapy based on “carefrontation,” a loving, safe, therapeutic
confrontation enabling everyone to understand his or her healing
potential. He has written extensively about the mind-body
connection in medicine, encouraging patients to take an active
role in the healing process.
Siegel attended Colgate
University and Cornell University Medical College, where he
graduated with honors. His surgical training took place at Yale
New Haven Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. He
practiced general and pediatric surgery until retiring in 1989.
On Friday evening Siegel spoke
at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium to an Athens
community audience.
Sponsored by the Office of
Alumni Affairs, the Society of Alumni and Friends, the Area
Health Education Center and the Center of Excellence for
Multicultural Medicine, the three-day event featured more than
25 seminars on a range of subjects, from cardiovascular medicine
to dermatology to cancer.
News for the week
of Sept. 27 – Oct. 2
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of Sept. 20 – 25
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