Seven Spiritual Ways to Prepare for Surgery

This article appeared in Positive Thinking and was written by Paul Sterman.

My wife, Joelle, was scheduled for surgery to remove her right adrenal gland in three months, and she was terrified. "Every night I'd wake up and my heart would be racing," she recalls. "Fear would come over me. And panic."It's a common reaction when facing a medical procedure. Some people are psychologically scarred by a past experience. Others fixate on the pain they might suffer, or like Joelle, on the helplessness of anesthesia. "I was afraid of not waking up or feeling really disoriented," she says. "It's that loss of control that's so scary."If you're a stressed-out patient like my wife was, there's hope. You can take steps to face down your fears. Joelle did, and they made a dramatic difference. Her strategies:Don't deny your fearSheila Messina, an R.N. who has had a dozen major surgeries, says it's helpful to recognize your anxiety and get your feelings out in the open. Stay connected with your friends and family. A new study published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons shows that patients with a large support network feel less anxiety and pain prior to operations and have a quicker, smoother recovery.Ask questionsTalk to your physician and to other patients. Joelle peppered her doctor, Christopher Ng, M.D., of Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, with questions. His answers gave her a better idea of what to expect. Dr. Ng also put her in touch with patients who'd undergone the same operation. Talking to them "made me feel like I wasn't alone," Joelle says. "They survived—so could I."Meet your anesthesiologistMessina does this well ahead of an operation and is honest with the specialist about her fear, because it can affect her response to anesthesia. "We tend to become hypertensive when we are fearful, which can make recovery more complicated," she writes in her essay "Making Friends With Fear" in the journal Nutrition.Practice daily relaxation in the weeks leading upto surgeryJoelle used the techniques in psychotherapist Peggy Huddleston's book and CD, "Prepare for Surgery, Heal Faster." Huddleston recommends daily relaxation exercises such as deep breathing, meditation and guided imagery (picturing positive images in your mind, like a tranquil scene on a lake or the face of a person who makes you happy). Once you get the hang of these techniques, you can use them in the hospital to bring inner peace.Have a loved one keep you company before the operationWhat's the best thing friends and family can do? "Just stay there with them, hold their hand, have them take deep breaths," says Cathy Smith, an R.N. for Fairview Southdale Hospital in Minnesota. "They might need to cry a little or talk about their fears."Listen to music during pre-opResearch shows music reduces anxiety and blood pressure in hospital patients. It helps people focus on something other than their worries and the hospital noises around them, Smith notes. "Some even play music during their operation," she adds. "It brings them calmness and makes the heart rate slower, which is a good thing because it means less sedation may be needed." She says that ritual music, such as Tibetan chants, is particularly effective, but the important thing is to choose whatever makes you feel relaxed and uplifted. Joelle made a mix tape that included disco tunes, numbers from The Lion King and "slow songs we danced to at our wedding."Bring a little piece of home to the hospitalHuddleston suggests taking along photos and other belongings that help you feel comforted, relaxed and secure. Joelle brought a special blanket and a photograph from our honeymoon in Yosemite.All of the effort my wife put into learning what she could do to combat her fear about surgery paid off on the day of the operation. "I felt almost a calmness that morning," Joelle says. She came through the surgery with flying colors.

Sufi Music in Surgery? Eyes wide shut??

(from the Turkish Daily News) Patients of the cardiac surgery intensive care unit at Memorial Hospital are treated with Sufi music therapy. The department’s medical specialist Erol Can, a Bulgarian immigrant of Turkish descent, tries to heal his patients through playing the ney, a traditional Sufi instrument. The tranquilizing sound of Sufi music echoes in the cardiac surgery intensive care unit of Istanbul's private Memorial Hospital where patients undergo Sufi music therapy as part of their treatment. Medical specialist Erol Can, who pioneered this treatment, was a member of the Turkish community in Bulgaria who were forced to migrate to Turkey in the 1980s. Upon his arrival, Can began researching the effects of the sound of the reed flute (ney) on the mental and physical health of his patients. Each day, while sitting next to one of his patients, Can played the ney and tried to see whether it had any effect on the patient's heart rhythm and blood pressure. After a series of experiments, he proved that Sufi music had positive effects on each patient's health condition. “We got negative results only for one patient,” said Can, noting that the patient was suffering from post-surgery depression at the time. This led Can to undertake further research, where he found that some parts of certain musical genres have negative effects on the individual. “Some parts are not suitable for patients who suffer from depression,” he said. He later decided to ask his patients which musical genre they prefer. Can had received a number of medals by Bulgarian authorities before the forced migration took place. He also hold a dozen of honorary diplomas, his name is on patented projects and he is the author of some 60 scientific articles so far. A cardiovascular specialist playing the ney Can is a graduate of the Medical University of Varna in Bulgaria. “I was not able to use my real name. The name that the Bulgarian state gave me was Emil Sariyef. And I just had to work two times harder than those genuine Bulgarians in order to be successful,” said Can. H managed to accomplish the impossible in the field of medicine and graduated with a perfect score of 100/100. “This was a kind of response to the discrimination imposed by the Bulgarian state,” he said. In 1989, when he was a PhD student, Can was subjected to forced migration from Bulgaria to Turkey. “Half of the members of my family were left behind. Moreover, I learned at the last moment that my mother had cancer,” he said. But Can also encountered problems upon his arrival in Turkey. “I was penniless. I had to start my life from the beginning. Furthermore, there was a huge cultural gap between me and the new social environment I was surrounded by,” he said, noting that at that point he began using music as a remedy for himself. This is not surprising as Can was born into a musician family and has always been drawn to music ever since his early childhood years during which he learned to play many musical instruments. The Florance Nightingale Hospital in Istanbul was the first institution in Turkey where Can began to practice medicine. He then continued his career at the cardiac surgery intensive care unit of Memorial Hospital. This was where he performed his initial music therapies with the ney. “Once I played the ney for an unconscious patient of mine. When he regained consciousness I asked him how he felt and he told me he had found himself listening to peaceful music in heaven,” said Can. Music therapy an Eastern tradition Can said music has always been a significant part of rituals and ceremonies at special instances like births and deaths throughout history, since the early Pagan times. For him, its positive effects on the human soul cannot be denied. He said he borrowed the music therapy method from the Orient. “In the Medieval times, while some patients used to be burned in the West because they used to be perceived as souls possessed by evil, experts in the East were treating their patients with music and water therapies,” he said. Specifically, the sound produced by the ney and the kemençe (the Eastern equivalent of the fiddle) is the closest to the human voice and therefore gives the human soul a feeling of peace and serenity, he added. Not so long ago, Can himself underwent heart bypass surgery. As he was preparing for the operation, he wanted to hear the sound of the ney. “My blood pressure had jumped to 160 for I was quite nervous before I listened to the ney sound. But after I listened to it, I took my blood pressure again and it was 130,” he said, referring to his personal experience of ney therapy. A mere hours after he awoke, Can began playing the ney as though he had just taken some painkillers.

Music in the Hawaiian OR...continued!

(See the previous post for the intro to this article.)

Eye-surgery patient Benjamin Semana went to sleep under anesthesia yesterday listening to Dr. Samuel Wong, the Honolulu Symphony's outgoing music director, play Bach and Beethoven on an electric piano in the operating room. Medical benefits of music What: Pan-Pacific Conference on Music and HealingWho: Distinguished speakers and performersWhen: 2 to 6 p.m. tomorrow at the new John A. Burns School of Medicine at Kakaako, and from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday at the Neal S. Blaisdell Concert Hall. Suggested donation: $100 per person.Sponsor: Dr. Samuel Wong's Global Music Healing Institute The unique, musical setup at the St. Francis Medical Center-Liliha is part of the hospital's new Laser Tear Duct Center, which will be used for all kinds of eye surgery. Wong, who is also an ophthalmologist, stopped playing to observe Dr. Jorge G. Camara perform laser surgery on Semana for a blocked tear duct. But the live piano performance continued with Dr. Arthur Harvey, University of Hawaii music professor and researcher, at the keyboard. While Camara had help yesterday from guest musicians, he's a classically trained pianist, as well as a surgeon, and he plans to play for patients while they undergo and awaken from anesthesia. "I could hear it in the background," Camara said after Semana's operation. "It relaxed me. To have a live pianist is an awesome experience, and to have Dr. Wong by my side is incredible." The Laser Tear Duct Center was blessed yesterday by the Rev. Joe Specht, the hospital's chaplain.

Music in the OR in Hawaii

I've written many times about my mentor, Dr. Arthur Harvey. He has been a believer of the power of music during surgery for a long, long time. Enjoy this article excerpt from the http://starbulletin.com/2005/05/20/news/story2.html

Dr. Arthur Harvey played classical music on an electric piano at St. Francis Medical Center's new Laser Tear Duct Center yesterday as Dr. Jorge Camara, in colorful hat, operated on patient Benjamin Semana's blocked tear duct and Dr. Samuel Wong observed at right. Wong, the Honolulu Symphony's outgoing music director, is also an ophthalmologist.

A Surgeon's Heart Beats to Music and Medicine in N.J.

by Robert Wiener NJJN Staff Writer April 03, 2008 For much of his life — indeed, for all of this and much of the past century — Victor Parsonnet has stood at the center of Newark history, especially in the fields of medicine and music. As a cardiac surgeon, he has been closely involved with such pioneering developments as the pacemaker, the transplant, and the artificial heart. As a pianist and patron of the arts, he has until recently served as chair of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and contributed much to its attaining world-class status. And as a third-generation member of the Parsonnet and Danzis families, he is heir to the tradition of quality medical care practiced by his grandfathers, the first Victor Parsonnet and Max Danzis. Now, as he nears the age of 85, the chief of surgery at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center is quick to acknowledge he is “the luckiest man alive.” Late last year, when he stepped down as the chair of the NJSO, observers could be forgiven for assuming that he was at last ready for retirement. “I have not retired,” he insisted in a recent interview. “I am emeritus.” Likewise, when it comes to medicine, he has no intention of stepping down. “I retired in July and unretired a week later. I love to work,” he said. “I love patient care, and I love research, and there is a lot to do. It is very important to me.” He is willing, however, to take a look back on a career in medicine and the arts, even if a few of its chapters have yet to be written. His grandfathers were principals in building “the Beth” in 1901. What began as a 21-bed facility on the corner of West Kinney and High streets is today a state-of-the-art medical center on Lyons Avenue that always made room for the Jewish and African-American physicians denied positions elsewhere. Unlike so many other Jews of his era, the second Victor Parsonnet was born not at the Beth but at a summer home in Deal on the Jersey shore. But his boyhood addresses were in Newark — on High Street and Pomona Avenue — and he attended Maple Avenue School and Weequahic High School. He left Cornell University and entered the U.S. Navy Reserve during World War II, and while in the service, he went to medical school at New York University. There was never a doubt he would follow his father and grandfather into the “family business.” “I was brought up in the Depression era,” he said, reminiscing at a round table in his office in the hospital. “People didn’t have much idea about branching out. All I knew was medicine.” His grandfather’s fatal heart attack in a hospital laboratory helped Parsonnet decide on a medical specialty. “I became interested in sudden death,” he said. It was a field just beginning to grow. The right place At the start of his career, Parsonnet said, “there was no such thing as heart surgery. There was no heart-lung machine. You couldn’t open the chest. The heart-lung pumps began around 1957. Heart surgery began as a specialty in the late 1950s. So I was lucky, I was in the right place at the right time for everything.” At first, he operated on blood vessels. Then, seeking more training, he moved to Houston to study closely with two pioneers, Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley. When Cooley performed the first successful human heart transplant in the United States in 1968 and implanted the first artificial heart a year later in Houston, Parsonnet said, “I never left his side. I scrubbed in with him on every case he did.” When he returned to Newark, Parsonnet began sharing his knowledge and “sort of slid into” doing heart operations on his own. To laypeople, few things seem more awesome and inspiring than a surgeon actually holding a patient’s heart. “But I am less concerned about that than about before and after surgery,” he said. “The operation itself is a treatment. The patient’s relationship with me is more telling, more emotional. It’s more important.” But in 1985 when he performed his first transplant — the first ever done in New Jersey — “what was really exciting was holding someone else’s heart and putting it in this empty space.” After his first five transplants, however, “I didn’t want to keep doing it anymore. I did not want to be up all night, and I was interested in other things.” So he shared his skills with others, helping the Beth become the seventh-busiest heart transplant center in the country and the only one in the state. First pacemaker He hit another milestone in 1961as the first surgeon in New Jersey to install a pacemaker, the internal device used to jolt a malfunctioning heart. Parsonnet with the da Vinci surgical system, a robot that is used to insert probes through the abdomen or chest while a surgeon manipulates them from across the room. Photo courtesy Victor Parsonnet “It was a big deal,” he recalled. “Opening a chest with a heart standing still and sewing the wires in and watching it beat was very exciting. We did 16 that first year.” There are now 400 to 500 doctors installing pacemakers in New Jersey and two to three million worldwide, he estimated. But it was a patient at the Beth, not a doctor, who designed the world’s first stents in 1987, installed in the groin area to detour blood flow around a patient’s blocked arteries. The inventor was an engineer named Dominic Wiktor, who was determined to find a less invasive procedure than the heart operation he had received. Of course, progress in the years since then has been dramatic. Now, said Parsonnet, “a new era of diagnostic technology is just beginning. You can see organs inside in three dimensions.” But Parsonnet said he predicts that the most promising developments will come from stem cells. “It looks like they have something for Parkinson’s Disease that will lead to treating an infinite number of things, such as regrowing parts of organs, treating people with leukemia and other blood disorders, and replacing damaged cells with healthy ones.” “But,” he sighed, “it is a political issue.” Looking at the even broader issue of health care in America, Parsonnet had a speedy one-word diagnosis — “disaster.” “We are nowhere near the best medical care in the world. We are far from the best mortality rate. Cuba has a lower mortality rate than we do. France, Germany, England are doing better than we are. I think it’s a disgrace.” Weight of heredity Along with politics, Parsonnet said he spends “lots of time thinking about religion in general” and feels “very strongly about being Jewish.” “I am a secular Jew. My grandfather, Max Danzis, was a Jewish scholar. My grandparents were immigrants from Ukraine or Russia in shtetls that no longer exist. I have a heavy weight of heredity on my shoulders. My first wife, Mia, was a refugee from the Holocaust, so I have very strong emotional feelings about Jewish tradition — but I am not religious,” he explained. Another family legacy is a love for classical music that started when he began studying piano as a child. He followed his father onto the NJSO board. Parsonnet served as chair when the symphony made its new home at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark in 1997, a milestone for an ensemble The New York Times has called “one of the country’s best regionals.” As chair of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Victor Parsonnet enjoys a post-concert moment with famed violinist Isaac Stern. Photo courtesy Victor Parsonnet “It is one of the most important things I have ever done,” said Parsonnet. “Music is part of me.”

Updates on Music with Surgery

Good Monday morning to you! As you may know, helping people to use music with their surgery is one of the main things that I do. There is so much research out there on the multiple and varied benefits of music THROUGH HEADPHONES during surgery that it's no surprise that more and more hospitals are offering music to incoming surgery patients during the pre-surgery phase. I'm working hard to create a powerful and easy-to-use system that patients can take into surgery or having waiting for them in the waiting area. I'm working on an eBook right now that will provide a step-by-step process for creating your own surgery playlist and talking with your physician/surgeon about using music before, during and after the procedure.

As I travel around the country I try to talk with as many interested physicians as possible about these ideas. On a recent trip to Sarasota, Florida, I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Marlene Buckler, an ER doc who is very excited about my music and surgery ideas and has given me many insights and suggestions already. I'd like to refer my readers to her website http://www.stayoutofmyer.com/ and suggest that you sign up for her free "Tip of the Week." I've worked with hundreds of people now, helping them choose the perfect music for their procedure. I hope you'll consider it and tell your friends to visit my website for more info! Have a great week!

Music and Anesthesia

Earlier today I was talking with an old friend about the benefits of music during surgery. Of course the number one benefit that I usually tell people is the fact that reasearch has documented that people using music during surgery have been known to need less than 50% of the usual amount of anesthesia. Why is this important? Because anesthesia is one of the main things that one must recover from after surgery. Pretty much all of the bodily functions such as peristaltic action, come to a grinding halt during surgery. You do know about peristaltic action? Let me quote from Wikipedia: Peristalsis is the rhythmic contraction of smooth muscles to propel contents through the digestive tract. The word is derived from New Latin and comes from the Greek peristaltikos, peristaltic, from peristellein, "to wrap around," and stellein, "to place." In much of the gastrointestinal tract, smooth muscles contract in sequence to produce a peristaltic wave which forces a ball of food (called a bolus while in the esophagus and gastrointestinal tract and chyme in the stomach) along the gastrointestinal tract. Peristaltic movement is initiated by circular smooth muscles contracting behind the chewed material to prevent it from moving back into the mouth, followed by a contraction of longitudinal smooth muscles which pushes the digested food forward."

In other words, you are likely to be very constipated after surgery. The anesthesia causes not only this but lots of other potentially life-threatening conditions. If music through headphones can help, let's do it!!