How belief and prayer uncover the hidden power of healing

Have you ever thought of someone, and then a few minutes later, they called or texted you?

Have you ever felt or had a whole conversation in your mind to later be told that is exactly what someone was saying about you at the same time, even though you were physically in a different place?

How can that be? Is it merely a “coincidence,” or are these beautiful hints from the universe to remind us that we are actually truly interconnected? That there is no separation between us? That thoughts (which are energy) can travel and reach others, and we can actually receive that information?

Does prayer work the same way? Can it change how we feel? Can it heal?

As surgeons and physicians, we tend to take all the credit for outcomes and say we are the ones doing the work and the healing, but I think that is truly the farthest from the truth. I am an instrument for healing, but I am not the healer.

On my last day of surgery on New Year’s Eve, I added a patient for urgent surgery as he continued to bleed from his urine. Despite holding his blood thinner medications and doing our usual treatment of running saline through a catheter to stop the bleeding, he was getting more anemic, and two scans a month apart showed what looked like a large bladder mass.

There are a few things that can truly make you humble as a urologist, which can bleed a lot and be tricky, and those are large bladder tumors or removing part of a kidney. In this patient who was debilitated and with many medical problems and a possible large bladder mass, I was cautiously bracing myself for what I would find under anesthesia. I felt uneasy in ways as I had not seen electively in the office what was inside, but I was bracing for what I would find under urgent conditions.

However, all of a sudden, about an hour prior to surgery, I felt this wave of peace, comfort, sureness, and knowing things would be OK. I had this sense, a thought, and could almost “see” someone was praying for me, which I have never felt before so clearly.

As I finished talking to the patient and family prior to surgery and asking how I should find them after, the daughter told me nonchalantly, “Oh, Dr. Londoño, I prayed for dad and also for you,” to which I said, “Yes, thank you, I felt it.”

How could I have felt the peace, clarity, and the actual prayer during the time it was happening? How does love, healing energy, and prayer “work”?

It may be something to sit with, ponder, and be grateful for, as this is what makes life magical.

I will tell you this, though: As I went in with the camera under anesthesia, there was no tumor (only an old clot), no active bleeding, and everything was “normal.” To which I am asked how that can be, and then our answer as physicians is usually, “I don’t know.”

The thing is, many of us actually do know, and it is when you believe it, that you will see it.