A True Story

This is a story about my mother. It illustrates how your mind can affect your health. My brother was in the hospital with a respiratory infection, in a small community hospital. One night the hospital was short nurses, so they moved patients that were farthest from the nurse’s station (my brother) to rooms normally used for seriously ill patients, to save the nurses steps.

My mother, who is seventy-nine and a little hard of hearing called the hospital the next morning and wasn’t able to reach her son in his room. Calling the nurses station she asked why and was told he had been moved to the ICU room. I’m sure the nurse explained why he was moved, but all Mother heard was intensive care unit.

Calling me to take her we rushed to the hospital. I could tell on the way there that she was becoming unstrung. When we reached my brothers floor Mother ran to the room number the nurse had given her. Stopping in the doorway Mom threw her arms into the air and shouted, “Oh my god! He looks TERRIBLE!!” The turning away from the door she stood slumped against the corridor wall.

I stepped into the doorway to have a look. On one side of the room, a man, thirty years older than my brother, a foot taller, with almost no hair, teeth, or beard, occupied the bed most visible. My brother has a lot of black hair, black beard, and teeth. My brother was on the other side of the room from the elderly gentleman. I was stunned; to think she could believe this man was my brother that she had seen just the day before yesterday. I felt bad that she was so upset, and I was laughing at the same time.

Even after I took her into the room where she could see him for herself, she was still upset. We laughed about it after she recovered but she spent the next two days, not sleeping well, tired, and nervous. She is a worrier, and thinks the worse in any situation.

What can you do?

Worry is just about the worst form of mental activity there is - next to hate, which is deeply self-destructive. Worry is pointless. It is wasted mental energy; it also created bio-chemical reaction, which harm the body producing everything from indigestion to coronary arrest, and a multitude of things in between. Excerpts taken from” Conversations with God” by Donald Neal Walsh His book also suggests that all illness first begins in our mind, and science confirms the fact that ones mental attitude has a profound effect on our health.