When Virginia Liebling was a young mother, her doctors discovered a mitral valve heart condition she’d had since childhood. The idea of surgery was so frightening to Liebling that she spent years simply ignoring her problem. But by the time she was 50, she was frequently short of breath and she knew putting off surgery off any longer was foolish.
“I was visualizing death,” says Liebling of her intense anxiety about surgery, despite the fact that she was a regular runner and had taken good care of herself. “I figured, this was it.” Liebling got through her open-heart surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital with a five-step program based on a book by Peggy Huddleston called Prepare for Surgery, Heal Faster, which focuses on relaxation and visualization.
In the weeks leading up to her surgery, Liebling listened twice a day to guided-imagery CDs to help her relax and envision herself after the surgery, healed and active again. “As I was lying on the gurney ready to be wheeled in,” Liebling recalls, “I knew everything was going to go great. There was no doubt in my mind. And the next day I felt so great I was washing my hair in the sink. The nurses told me most patients can’t even raise their arms over their heads. I felt absolutely fabulous, and I did not want bed head!”
In the two years since her surgery, Liebling has given healing workshops at Emerson Hospital in Concord, teaching hundreds of patients to relax and improve their recovery. Many hospitals throughout the Boston area are using the mind-body program, which was first published in 1996, largely because patients are demanding it. Some patients get the book and CD and follow the program on their own, and others take group or private workshops.
Huddleston’s program guides patients through five pre-surgical steps:
1. Relax by thinking of someone you love and remembering a time when you felt great love.
2. Visualize the outcome you want and an activity you’ll enjoy doing again when you’re healed.
3. Ask friends and family to send you calm and loving thoughts the half-hour before your surgery, and focus on that “blanket of love” during that time.
4. Ask if someone in the operating room can repeat healing statements to you, such as “Following this operation, you will feel comfortable, and you will heal very well.”
5. Meet your anesthesiologist beforehand, discuss your questions and fears, and make sure you have a good rapport.
Hospital staff and their patients who use the techniques report that after surgery they feel more peaceful, alert, and in control. They have less pain and fewer complications, use less medication, recover faster, and leave the hospital earlier.
A study by orthopedic surgeon Benjamin Bierbaum of 44 knee-replacement patients at the New England Baptist Hospital, one of the pioneering hospitals to use the program, found that those who used the surgery-preparation techniques were calmer the day before surgery and left the hospital 1.3 days sooner than a control group. Some patients who have had prior surgeries that have not gone well come to the workshop to allay their fears, says Marianne Quirk, who teaches it at the Beverly Hospital Hunt Center’s Lifestyle Management Institute in Danvers. “People who couldn’t even go into a hospital without having a panic attack have sailed through with flying colors,” she reports. “I am in touch with everyone I teach afterward, and in four years all have had positive experiences, both in mind and body. They’re all amazed at how well it’s turned out.”
Patricia Reilly, program manager for integrative care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, started a program there five years ago, one of the earliest hospitals to do so. The book and CD are available to borrow and buy in the hospital library and gift shop, eight certified instructors teach classes, plus the program is available on the hospital’s TV system and website. Reilly is now setting up a phone bank in a joint program with Faulkner Hospital, so that patients from outlying areas can call in and take it.
“We’re trying to look at patients as whole beings—minds, bodies, souls, hearts, fears, concerns—and help them see themselves completely whole and healthy before they’ve even had the procedure,” Reilly says. “It’s so powerful. If patients listen to the relaxation CD, they become less fearful of the surgery, and they’re already seeing themselves able to walk around Jamaica Pond, ride a bicycle, climb a mountain. It definitely shifts their consciousness.”
Deep relaxation, studies have shown, decreases the levels of the stress hormones cortisol and epinephrine, which in turn suppress the immune system. “When you get into that peaceful state,” Reilly says, “that’s really when all healing occurs.”
