Healing Hope

Suffering, Hope, and Healing

The words “pain” and “suffering” are so often used together in clinical practice they sometimes seem to merge into a single concept, with clinicians simply referring to “pain-and-suffering.” Writing in the early 1980s, Eric Cassell bemoaned the fact that the medical literature contained very few studies that specifi cally addressed suffering, although there were hundreds of reports that focused...

The hope for a self-healing brain.

We do not look back on the folk aspects of the history of medicine with any sense of nostalgia. Leeches, trephination, and bloodletting are not therapies we miss. Before we understood the germ theory of disease or had developed anaesthesia, medicine was much less successful and intensely more painful. But within a decade or so, we will perhaps envisage today's medicine with the same kind of hor...

cAMP blue skies: a journey of grief, healing, and hope.

Dear Editor: A child’s grief process is different from an adult’s. A child’s grief experience is not only shaped by his or her loss but also by the complex reactions of the adults in their life. Grieving youth crave normalcy and the opportunity to share and connect with peers or others who know what they are going through. It is essential for them to do this without judgment or fear of triggeri...

OHAfrica Lesotho Initiative--for hope, health and healing.

New Hope for Wound Healing after Bowel Resection

1. Yoon SJ, Kin JS, Min BS, Kim NK, Baik SH, Lee KY, et al. Risk factors for anastomotic leakage after a low anterior resection for rectal cancer. J Korean Soc Coloproctol 2007:23:365-73. 2. Veyrie N, Ata T, Muscari F, Couchard AC, Msika S, Hay JM, et al. Anastomotic leakage after elective right versus left colectomy for cancer: prevalence and independent risk factors. J Am Coll Surg 2007;205:7...