How to Heal: One Patient’s Amazing Healing Story

I recently wrote an article for AARP Magazine titled Super Healing. This article is based on my book, also called Super Healing, in which I discuss the best ways to heal from injury and illness. Since the AARP Magazine article came out, people have been writing to me daily and telling me of their own healing journeys. I wanted to share Samantha’s story with you because it is so powerful. The odds were really stacked against her in so many ways and yet she has done remarkably well. Perhaps her story will inspire and help you. I hope so! Here Samantha tells it in her own words:

“While I was in graduate school, from the time I was 52 until I graduated at 55, I became increasingly tired. It made sense, since I was working and going to school and keeping up with rigorous academic demands, including two year-long clinical internships. My marriage of 25 years had ended very painfully, my daughter had been killed. School and a new career were all there was. So I pushed on, because I wanted and needed to complete my professional education, even though it was taking a lot from me physically. But after I graduated, and was working only one part-time job, I was even more tired than before. I would have to pull my car to the side of the road on the way home from work, to nap, before I could continue the drive (only about 35 minutes total). At about that time, my health insurance changed and I needed to find another doctor. I was post-menopausal but had begun to bleed again, quite heavily. My new doctor referred me to a gynecologist who said she wanted to run "base line" tests. I underwent a Pap smear, some blood tests, and an endometrial biopsy, and then forgot about the tests.

A few days later my gynecologist called me at work and told me I had endometrial sarcoma, or cancer. She set me up to be seen as soon as possible by a gynecologic oncologist, and I had surgery within a couple of weeks. The cancer was totally removed before it had time to metastasize. The speed with which my cancer was addressed made it possible for me to survive.

The fatigue, however, remained. My oncologist followed me closely and, by the one-year anniversary of my surgery, was able to tell me I was cancer free. I told him about the fatigue, and he said, "I don't know what's causing it, but it's not the cancer, because the cancer is gone." I was well past the time of normal post-operative convalescence. Life was impossibly difficult. I lived alone and lacked the energy to shop for groceries, to do laundry, to take out the trash. I'd go to work in the morning and then come home an hour later to sleep. Then I'd go see a patient and come home again to sleep. After another patient in the afternoon, and another nap, I'd be back at the office at about 7 p.m., completing my paperwork. I was too embarrassed to let anyone know how far I was falling short of being able to live a normal life. The doctors I saw ran their blood tests, took their X-rays, and told me there was nothing wrong with me. I couldn't walk from the parking lot of the supermarket to the refrigerated case at the back of the store, and so I went without fresh produce, meat, fish, and most healthy foods. I shopped instead at the little convenience store near my apartment. My diet of processed foods wasn't helping.

When I was 64 and in constant pain and exhaustion, I persuaded my primary care doctor to refer me to a rheumatologist, who diagnosed me with fibromyalgia. I wept with joy to have found someone who understood what I was living with and had a treatment plan for me. Finally, I could tell people that I couldn't keep up with normal tasks, or walk any distance, because I had an illness that had a name.

I met a wonderful new man. I told him before our first date that I had fibromyalgia. He had never heard of it, so he looked it up on the internet. After reading about it, he told me that he admired me for my fortitude in the face of my illness. He married me and nursed me back to the health I now enjoy. For the first five years we were together, he shopped and cooked and took care of me so that I could follow my regimen of nutrition, sleep, and exercise. I have had multiple medical problems and more surgeries, but with the understanding of my chronic illness and a treatment plan to follow, I feel better now at the age of 70 than I have in almost 20 years. I now can walk, shop, work, keep up with the laundry, and stand in the kitchen long enough to prepare an attractive, nourishing meal.

I have learned how to take care of my body, and to make that my number one priority. I spend about five hours a day on self-care (meditation, yoga, strength training, prayer, fresh air, etc.), and additionally need about 10 hours of sleep. The remaining nine hours are for doing the work I love, sharing the housework with my husband, socializing with friends, playing music, enjoying my new grandkids (14 of them!), and being actively grateful for my great good fortune.

I believe the collective trauma to my mind and body of my failed first marriage, my daughter's death, the demands of graduate school, and the impact of cancer depleted my reserves of energy and my resiliency. I had to rebuild my whole self, body and spirit. It took the full combination of the right diagnosis and a full understanding of my body's needs, combined with my dedication to recovery and my husband's support, to build me up again, and restore me to health, better now at 70 than it was at 52.

It's a privilege to be able to tell you all this. I have regained the health and joy of life that I thought I had lost forever.”

Have you had an incredible healing journey? Tell us about it. Do you need to heal? Share what’s going on.

Julie K. Silver, M.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School. She is also the Chief Editor of Books for Harvard Health Publications.

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