As we grow older, many continue to view medical outcomes in this simple binary manner without acknowledging another key patient outcome measure: patient healing.
The healing of the body and mind takes on a different course than the curing of the disease. One can be cured without being healed and one can heal without achieving any type of cure.
As practitioners, we help the patient get as close as modern medicine allows towards a cure but too often the healing part of the journey is left entirely to the patient.
The concepts of healing and curing sound the same but are not. While curing is defined as the removal of the disease state and the return of the patient to a more normal state of physiology, healing is quite different. Healing is the return towards a state of wholeness whereby the medical condition is no longer able to deliver an ongoing impact in emotional, social and and spiritual dimensions without the patient’s full permission.
It is with forgiveness, acceptance and compassion towards ourselves that we allow ourselves the chance to heal and get back on track to the constantly evolving person we want to become. Curing may allow the body to get back to the way it once was. Healing allows the individual to finally catch up to becoming the person he or she has been planning.
