Once I changed the message on my answering machine, my patients began drifting back—at first in a little trickle and then, after several months, in a fast flowing stream like the ones that appear after the snows melt in the high country.

One of the first patients to return, a well-known spiritual guide and psychic healer whom I had only seen once before and did not know well, remarked as she sat down, “There’s a lot of activity going on inside your head. I can see waves of heat coming out of your crown chakra. And I can see that something happened to your eyes since I last saw you a few years ago.”

Stunned by the patient’s paranormal observations about the heat inside my head, I gave her a five-minute synopsis of what had happened to me and mentioned that the heat that she perceived probably came from the inflammation and swelling inside my head from the brain surgery. She advised me to use the metal in my brain as an antenna to conduct healing energy. She suggested that I raise my arms over my head and ask for the energy to come inside my body and heal me.

The second patient came in for an evaluation of new onset hypertension after discovering that her son had become a drug addict. She sat in the chair next to my exam table as I took her blood pressure. The monitor showed an unusually high reading. The second reading showed an even higher level. I asked her to do an experiment to see what effects her mind and emotions had on her blood pressure.

We did a few minutes of deep, slow breathing together and then, as I took her blood pressure, I gently put my hand on her head and spoke ever so slowly and softly, “Close your eyes and imagine you’re in your favorite place. It’s very peaceful. Everything is just as it should be, right here, right now. There is nothing to do or undo. There is nothing to fix. You are filled with a peace beyond all understanding.”

Her blood pressure dropped all the way down to a normal level. Mine probably dropped as well—to subnormal levels.

Not only did the patient’s mind and imagination help to lower her blood pressure, my tending to her with genuine compassion helped me as well.

Service to others is one of the best medicines for healing a wounded mind and heart.

Many years ago in the 1990s I read a book called The Infinite Mind about new electronic devises that could detect and measure the magnitude and extent of the human energy field that surrounds our body—an electromagnetic field that all living cells emit—sometimes referred to as an aura in non-scientific literature.

The author, Dr. Valerie Hunt—a researcher and science professor at UCLA—did an experiment on patients who sought treatment for their various ailments by a well-known acupuncturist in the Los Angeles area. Dr. Hunt measured the energy field before and after each treatment session. As expected, the energy field of the patients increased after their treatments by the healer.

Interestingly, Dr. Hunt found that the healer’s electromagnetic field increased as well.

I’m sure that my energy field increases after treating my patients. Every time I feel waves of love and compassion toward them, I feel a bond of empathy and a greater sense of wellbeing.

Too much self-absorption about my symptoms tended to create unhappiness and a sense of isolation and disconnection. The cure lay in heartfelt service to others.

Initially I had concerns that the patients’ anxiety would magnify my own anxiety disorder, given my empathic nature. I noticed that as long as I focused on taking measures to help relieve the distress and fear of my patients, then my own anxiety did not pose a problem. In fact, the anxiety disappeared entirely during those sacred “I and Thou” sessions.

Being of service gave my life meaning and provided a way to transform the unbearable suffering into something that could help others. The transformation process included a deepening of my own humanity with an even greater capacity to put myself in the shoes of others—no matter what those shoes looked like.

Whatever depth of suffering and agony my patients experienced, I could meet them at that depth and then throw them a rope. And no matter what kind of intimate details they shared with me or how difficult their behavior, I had no desire to pass judgment or to cast them out of my heart.

One year after the brain surgery, a friend invited me to attend a workshop about a program called HeartMath, a stress management system that involves software designed to measure the coherence of the heart rhythm patterns.

The speaker emphasized that the heart is not merely a pump that functions like a metronome, beating out a regular, steady rhythm. Thoughts and emotions influence the wave patterns produced by the heart’s electrical system that, in turn, get transmitted to the brain. The brain in many ways can be considered the servant of the heart.

Emotions such as fear, anger, and worry trigger the sympathetic nervous system—referred to as “fight or flight” system. The sympathetic nervous system speeds up our heart rate and makes the waves on the electronic tracing more erratic and disordered.

In contrast, emotional states like unconditional love, gratitude, compassion and forgiveness trigger the parasympathetic nervous system—the “rest and digest” system. This branch of the autonomic nervous system slows down the heart rate and makes the waves look smooth on the special heart monitor.

The more balanced and smooth the waves appear on the monitor, the more in balance are both branches of the autonomic nervous system.

Most of us live in a chronic state of “fight or flight.” Being out of balance can have serious adverse impacts on the functioning of the mind and body. The HeartMath Institute hoped to remediate this problem with their software.

The researchers designed the software to make a black and white picture on the computer screen light up like a coloring book when the participant’s heart showed optimal coherence.

During the break for lunch at the HeartMath workshop, the speaker encouraged our group to try out the software on the computers at the back of the room. Enthusiastic participants lined up behind the three computers. When it was my turn to try to fill in the black and white pastoral scene with color, I only got a few patches of grass to turn green. I could hear the people behind me getting restless, anxious for their turn. Not ready to give up, I tried some slow, deep breathing that resulted in a few clouds turning white. I still had a long way to go to fill in the colors.

I was about ready to give up when an image popped into my head. For a few seconds, I relived a scene during an appointment with a patient the day before. A young man had come to see me because he had a rash on his body that led him to believe that he had something life threatening, related to unprotected sex. He cried from fear during the appointment. I told him that the rash was benign and would go away after a few weeks without any treatment necessary. As he sat on the edge of the exam table, I gently held his head in my hands, looked into his troubled eyes and said reassuringly, “You are going to be just fine.”

At the exact instant that I gave reassurance to the young man in my mind, every inch of the black and white scene on the computer filled with bright colors. Thrilled at the instant success, I tried one more time after lunch.

As I sat in front of the computer screen with the same black and white picture, I imagined patting and hugging one of the dogs I see every morning on my walk and telling him what a good dog he is. Within a few seconds of imagining that scene, the entire picture filled with color.

The HeartMath program gave me a concrete demonstration of the direct impact of my thoughts and emotions on my heart and brain—for better or for worse. When the mind imagines something, the brain responds as though it were real.

With even more determination, I paid attention to what I thought and imagined, knowing that my brain responded accordingly and took my thoughts and imaginings literally.

The mindfulness meditation helped me to not believe or take too seriously my thoughts and worries that come and go like passing clouds.

In the early part of 2010, something startling happened. One of my patients, Marcia, arrived late for her appointment with me, saying that she had a very good excuse that would surely interest me.

A biology teacher at the local high school, Marcia had told her class that she would dismiss them early because she had an appointment with her doctor. When the designated time arrived, all the kids left the classroom except for one girl who stayed behind. She said to Marcia, “I know the kid who hurt your doctor. He used to be my boyfriend. He told me about the snowboarding accident three years ago. He said that if I ever told anyone he would hurt me. So, I can’t tell you who it was, but I wanted to let you know that he knows what he did to your doctor.”

People ask me if I feel angry toward the boy who hit me snowboarding, or the orthopedic surgeon who put stainless steel in my leg, or the anesthesiologist who disregarded my warning about the intravenous pain medication and caused me to have a respiratory arrest.

No, I don’t have any anger or resentment. And no, I don’t want to look for the boy and press charges against him. I feel sorry for the boy. He has to live with the burden of knowing that he caused harm to somebody and then fled the scene of the accident.

Forgiveness allows freedom. Resentment and grudges hold me hostage to the past and prevent me from moving forward. Those emotions actually hurt me more than the people I might resent.

I don’t have the energy to hold onto grudges or anything else that has the potential to stir up additional anxiety and inner turmoil. When my sister, Veet, and I had our occasional moments of discord, I felt my life force sink into a steep decline and my stomach tighten. I made amends as fast as I could. I had become almost allergic to my own stress hormones. Excess adrenaline felt like poison.

I went to great lengths to avoid anything that created additional stress for me, including the news. When friends talked about politics over dinner, I had to change the subject.

In that same quest for stress reduction, I quit testifying in court as an expert witness—after almost twenty-five years. I had reluctantly filled this role on behalf of my patients who pursued legal action related to toxic chemical and mold poisoning. These injured patients needed an expert witness trained in environmental medicine to testify on their behalf. Given the relative paucity of doctors trained in this area of medicine, I felt obliged to help.

Being an expert witness included interrogations by one or more lawyers that could last all day, in addition to writing lengthy documents to support my position, and testifying in front of a judge and jury—activities that I dreaded.

After the brain damage, the increased pressure in my head from the contentious atmosphere of the legal world no longer felt bearable. I became a seeker of peace. I could not hold onto any contentious feelings. Anger, fear, and worry made me feel drained and toxic.

I learned to foster emotions that produce peace and healing—like gratitude, forgiveness and compassion.

The suffering that I endured served as a strict guru, keeping me on a straight and narrow path toward wellness of mind and body.

The year following surgery, I made a determined effort to expand my shrunken little world, one step at a time, beyond the safety of my home. I resumed the PTSD deconditioning program that I had designed for myself before the surgery. I continued to gradually increase the time I spent in the grocery store.

Two years after the brain surgery, I could go to most stores and shop for about a half hour with only minimal discomfort from sensory overload and anxiety. I had no more episodes of PTSD—only pervasive anxiety without any specific cause.

Cautiously, I began to drive in early 2010. I began by limiting my driving to the two-mile stretch to the health food store and back. I avoided traffic and driving at night.

I had already trained my brain to only pay attention to the images seen through my right eye, so I no longer needed to wear an eye patch for the double vision. To compensate for the diminished peripheral vision, I moved my head from side to side reflexively while driving.

I avoided driving in the early morning when my vision was blurry from the elevated intra-cranial pressure that rose throughout the night from lying horizontal, a position that allowed increased blood flow to the brain. The increase in pressure made my corneas swell, blurring the images that I saw.

About one year after the brain surgery, my intestinal tract began to heal. As the swelling in my head subsided post-surgery, so did the swelling in my gut—giving a dramatic demonstration of the gut/brain connection.

Around that same time, I reached three hours of continuous sleep. By the following year, 2011, I managed to get four hours of sleep a night. The length of sleep I got remained stuck at four hours until early in 2016 when some nights I got up to five hours at a stretch with the help of CBD-enriched hemp oil that decreased the residual inflammation in my brain and also diminished the nighttime anxiety—the same hemp oil renowned for stopping seizures in babies.

I had to be careful not to be goal-oriented about the amount of sleep I got. Too much longing for sleep created more anxiety over the insomnia. I stopped looking at the clock and just accepted my sleep status, resorting to the supine meditation during the interminable hours of insomnia. The meditation allowed me to get rest and recuperation even without sleeping.

But some things were harder to accept than others.

Barrett’s graduation ceremony from George Washington University would take place on June of 2010. I felt overwhelming sadness thinking that I would not be able to attend this important occasion in my son’s life. Traveling by myself to DC would not be possible due to the visual impairments and the anxiety attacks from being in the airports and at the commencement ceremony with the hordes of people.

When I tearfully told Tom, Barrett’s father, that I would not be able to attend our son’s graduation, he generously agreed to drive to Santa Fe and then accompany me every step of the way on the trip to and from DC. Fortunately, his wife gave her blessings to the travel arrangements.

The ceremony took place on the green grass of the National Mall with Michelle Obama as the speaker. She talked about the benefits of public service that can open our minds and our hearts. Her talk resonated with my own lifelong journey.

In a sea of an estimated 25,000 people, I stuck close to Tom and Barrett, keeping my focus on the ground to avoid sensory overload and panic.

Although the trip provoked tremendous anxiety, I resolved to act as though I was a normal person without any major problems. Acting “as if” helped to calm down the amygdala in my brain and keep it from firing out of control and creating a panic attack.

The people who run Alcoholics Anonymous programs understand the universal benefits of the advice: “fake it until you make it.” Sometimes the brain doesn’t know you’re faking it and goes along with the charade.

Even though it was with Tom’s much-appreciated help that I was able to travel, I felt like I had overcome a major hurdle in the path to healing my damaged mind.

If I can make it all the way to DC, then there’s no stopping me now in what I can do to regain my life—with some help.

My sister, Jackie, came with a friend from the East Coast to visit me for a few days. Unfortunately, the barometric pressure dropped before a storm moved in during her short stay. As a result of the dropping barometric pressure, the pressure in my head rose from the expansion of the remaining fistulas. The resulting pain hit with ferocity and caused vomiting that persisted for two days.

For fear my kidneys would shut down from severe dehydration and complete cessation of urine, I called my ER doc friend with the mobile clinic. She came to my house and gave me three liters of intravenous saline. After she plugged me in, she left, knowing that I could manage the IV myself.

Jackie sat down on the couch next to me. As I watched the IV drip in a stupor, I heard a soft, barely audible voice say, “You are beautiful. I love you, Rickie.”

Those kind of loving and tender words were not usually spoken in my family growing up—except when a family member neared death. I smiled and reassured Jackie, “I’m not going to die. This will pass. I’ll be all better by tomorrow.”

I forgot how scary my symptoms could be to others.

A few months after the trip to DC—toward the end of 2010—one of my patients, Gloria, asked if I would consider going with her to Brazil to see John of God, a medium renowned for his instant healings.

I told Gloria that I had already gone there out of curiosity with a friend in 2001. I had brought a paper bag with me, stuffed with 53 photographs of my sickest patients. I intended to ask John of God for a healing for them. To my great surprise, John of God said that it was I who needed the healing first and that the patients could wait.

I remember feeling a deep sense of peace while I received healing from him—the kind of peace that Jesus talked about—a peace that “surpasses all understanding and guards the heart and mind.”

Gloria persisted and said that she would pay for the cost of the entire trip if I would go with her. When I looked puzzled, she said that she would feel more secure if I went with her.

At that moment, I realized that Gloria had no idea how damaged I was after the accident. How could she possibly feel more secure with me?

I revealed to her that I had some serious problems from brain damage that left me with an anxiety disorder and visual problems. I let her know that travel would be very difficult for me and that it would be I who needed to feel more secure by holding on to her in the airport.

Even after being fully transparent with my shortcomings, Gloria still wanted to pay for me to go with her. After thinking it over, I agreed to go.