Whispered Wisdom On Treating The Whole Patient, Not Just The Foot

I had continued on from my Himalayan journey with a side trip over to Tibet. After weeks of near frostbite, dizziness from high altitude and body wrenching reverse peristalsis — not to mention just good ole normal regular hyperperistalsis — I got this wild idea in the back of my mind that if I showed up at the right place and perhaps the right time, I could somehow get that once in a lifetime chance to talk with him.

I knew that if I got within striking distance, I could convince his staff to give me an audience. Surely my mind and body would somehow clear enough from the toxicity of yak products on the long trek to the palace that I could develop a convincing argument for why he should see me.

Now that I had the opportunity to “talk” with the smartest computer in the world, I had set my sights on getting some real face time with the sage of the Tibetan Stage. I know you are thinking Bill Murray here in Caddyshack wanting to speak with the Lama, but no. No, it was not that Lama I wanted to talk with, it was Paldog Rinpoche, known to many as the “human whisperer.”

Now you have all seen the television show The Dog Whisperer. If you have not, then you should dial it in for an episode or two. With the right cabernet titer and an open mind, you will learn something. Cesar Millan takes these unruly, obstreperous canines and dissects their psyches with the precision of an MRI guided ultrasound cyberknife. (Yeah, that really exists. Check out https://safeshare.tv/w/DTAINyElxY . Maybe it is better than an episode or two of the canine controller.)

Well, it was rumored that Paldog Rinpoche was the dude extraordinaire when it came to figuring out what was driving folks way over the speed limit on those superhighways of neurosis. This cat could supposedly  “see” things (interpret diagnoses) that no other could in people and that includes the people themselves. But more importantly, it was said that he could impart an understandable and soothing enlightenment that nearly all would absorb — and subsequently lead to change.

Yep, I wanted to get me some of that type of karma control for damn sure. I would bottle it up and dispense it at my clinic (might even private label it) faster than my electronic medical record system could keep up with one-button template documentation. I did not care if it was a covered service or not. This type of power was going to really help people and make my life, once and for all, transcendently peaceful.

It took me a while with some truly Machiavellian creative storytelling to get his staff to grant me access but I finally got to see him for 20 minutes after his morning meditation the next day.

I was seated in the garden room of the palace on a very large red embroidered satin pillow when he entered. As I started to rise to greet him, he immediately extended his palm toward me, putting me back into my seated position. Hey, this dude really is like the Dog Whisperer. He was already controlling me with hand signals. I quickly looked around the room to see if there were any loose objects lying around that he would soon be throwing for me to fetch.

I had proffered my first and only allowed question, and patiently waited while he shifted himself into a more comfortable position. In sotto voce and nearly perfect English, he replied. “Your entire profession is built on a fallacy. For that matter, all of the Western medical specialties are built on the same fallacy.”

Now if this guy was not so smooth and physically impressive in his wildly exotic and different way, I would have fired back at him from a highly pissed off defensive stance that he did not know what the hell he was talking about. However, I resisted and nodded with feigned acquiescence. “Please explain,” I asked in a softness nearly matching his.

He nodded back to me and smiled widely. “Is the foot not connected to the whole body?” he questioned.

“Yes it is,” I answered.

“There you go. The whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. Treating a part, no matter what level of expertise, is still treatment of a part. Not the whole,” he said and started to get up.

“Whoa, hey, hold on a minute here, fella. I traveled on the bony back of a mule for more than 16 hours while pulverizing my ischial tuberosities to get that?”

“Your profession is built on a fallacy.”

He sat back down, realizing that I was about to turn off the superhighway of neurosis onto the onramp of Downright Crazy Boulevard (12 weeks of yak meat will do that to ya).

“While Western medicine is considered the best in the world by many, it is severely flawed by the level of specialization it has reached. Think about it,” he continued. “You have the cardiologist, the pulmonologist, the back surgeon, the knee guy, the ear-nose-throat doc, the gastroenterologist, the colorectal surgeon, to mention just a few. Oh, then you’ve got you, the foot doctor.”

I was already getting his erudite drift when he continued on. “Do you really think you have a chance at the ultimate patient outcome when you take no consideration of the heart, desire and soul of the patient into account?”

This dude was right on. You could do the most extremely precise, artful surgery that, if filmed, could be archived in the sacrosanct texts of our profession, but if that little tiny spot of cortex up in the patient’s brain said, “Nope, I was expecting more,” you haven’t done jack, now have you? 

“Do you ask patients what they really desire? Do you look at their faces while talking or examining them to see what effect they have? Do you hone in on key words that they say or emphasize and listen to the tone in their voice while they are talking to you? What about the person behind the eyes? Is he sad? Does he have energy or is he lethargic? Unless you totally disarticulate the foot from the patient, you have to treat the mind of the patient as well as the foot.”

Before he could get up, I replied. “That is totally spot on, sir. For example, if we beautifully correct a crooked toe and it looks great but the patient cannot wear a high heeled shoe, she is unhappy.”

The Rinpoche became engulfed by his own electric smile. “Precisely. The patient may want it a little crooked so she can still wear the high heeled shoe. You must treat the desire of the patient and not the desire of the radiograph. Your profession has reached the summit of technical expertise with more growth to go of course, but it needs to start looking at the mind with the same intensity of procedure development that your specialization has had over the last few decades.”

He elevated himself almost without any effect of gravity and left the room.