Making the Most of Your Bedside Visits: Tips for Patients

Making the Most of Bedside Visits

Whether you are convalescing at home or are in a hospital or other facility right now, there are some simple things you can do with a loved one or companion – that will feel good and also help you to heal.

In the hospital setting, you may be in the care of a physical therapist. Such a specialist can help you work wonders on the way towards recovery. But the demands on their time are such that your needs for physical exercise cannot be met by them alone. Time is of the essence here; the sooner you can get started the better off you’ll be.

Ask your visitor to help you with Yoga. Yoga exercises are a gentle antidote to the kind of deterioration that can happen to our bodies when we lie in bed and don’t get a chance to move around. They will help you get in the habit of being in a healing frame of mind. They will help you remember what it feels like to be alive and vibrant. And they can also help you to lovingly re-connect with your body after medical treatment.

Exercises and Massage

Because there’s nothing like a gentle massage to help you feel comforted and relaxed, we offer easy-to-follow instructions to guide your companion in providing you with a comforting massage of your head, hands and feet even the first time they do it. You can even enhance your pleasure of this experience by using nicely scented massage oils.

Physical exercises and massages are ways of giving love to your body. While you want to follow the instructions so as not to hurt yourself, this is less about technique and more about exploration. As you begin an exercise, be easy and gentle with yourself. First experience it as a sensual experience, paying attention to how it feels and what your inner sense is telling you about it. You are beginning to reconnect with that part of your body. As you do this, don’t force anything, simply give it your awareness.

Accepting New Limitations

Trying out exercise and massage may help you adjust to new limitations – both temporary and longer term – and finding new ways of living with them. We mean “living” with them, not just gritting your teeth and suffering with them.

On the emotional level, you may be experiencing a sense of loss or a sense of relief and release. Your body may be feeling a sense of anger, feeling that it was invaded by surgery, chemo, or radiation treatments and had violence done to it. Patients have often experienced this at the very same time that they are amazed and grateful to be seeing clearly after finally having had their cataract corrected or having those bulky, oppressive fibroid tumors or malignant growths removed.

Talking to Your Body

You may first want to “talk” to your body, or a specific place that has been the site of trauma. Words have power. That’s why techniques such as guided visualization can be so effective.

On a spiritual level, patients often experience these medical procedures as separation, brokenness, a disruption of wholeness. Wholeness doesn’t depend on an inventory of body parts. It’s a condition of Being and is always within reach.

Offering your family and visitors the opportunity of helping you opens up a whole new range of healing possibilities that can happen during your bedside encounters. Healing benefits will flow in both directions and can extend beyond these visits. You may prefer to do certain ones only with certain people and your companions will also feel more comfortable doing some things rather than others.

Read more on Open to Hope by Bernie Siegel: https://www.opentohope.com/we-dont-die-our-bodies-do/

Check out Dr. Siegel’s books at Amazon.com : bernie siegel

Bernie Siegel

Dr. Bernie Siegel, who prefers to be called Bernie, not Dr. Siegel, was born in Brooklyn, NY. He attended Colgate University and Cornell University Medical College. He holds membership in two scholastic honor societies, Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha and graduated with honors. His surgical training took place at Yale New Haven Hospital, West Haven Veteran’s Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. He retired from practice as an assistant clinical professor of surgery at Yale of general and pediatric surgery in 1989 to speak to patients and their caregivers. In 1978 he originated Exceptional Cancer Patients, a specific form of individual and group therapy utilizing patients’ drawings, dreams, images and feelings. ECaP is based on “carefrontation,” a safe, loving therapeutic confrontation, which facilitates personal lifestyle changes, personal empowerment and healing of the individual’s life. The physical, spiritual and psychological benefits which followed led to his desire to make everyone aware of his or her healing potential. He realized exceptional behavior is what we are all capable of. Bernie, and his wife and coworker Bobbie, live in a suburb of New Haven, Connecticut. They have five children and eight grandchildren. Bernie and Bobbie have co-authored their children, books and articles. Their home with its many children, pets and interests resembled a cross between a family art gallery, museum, zoo and automobile repair shop. It still resembles these things, although the children are trying to improve its appearance in order to avoid embarrassment. In 1986 his first book, Love. Medicine & Miracles was published. This event redirected his life. In 1989 Peace, Love & Healing and in 1993 How To Live Between Office Visits followed. He is currently working on other books with the goal of humanizing medical education and medical care, as well as, empowering patients and teaching survival behavior to enhance immune system competency. Bernie’s realization that we all need help dealing with the difficulties of life, not just the physical ones, led to Bernie writing his fourth book in 1998 Prescriptions for Living. It helps people to become aware of the eternal truths and wisdom of the sages through Bernie’s stories and insights rather than wait a personal disaster. He wants to help people fix their lives before they are broken, and thus not have to become strong at the broken places. Published in 2003 are Help Me To Heal to empower patients and their caregivers and 365 Prescriptions For The Soul, in 2004 a children’s book about how difficulties can become blessings, Smudge Bunny, in 2005 101 Exercises For The Soul and out in the Fall of 2006 a prescriptions for parenting book Love, Magic & Mud Pies. Published in 2008 Buddy’s Candle, for children of all ages, related to dealing with the loss of a loved one, be it a pet or parent, and to be published in 2009 Faith, Hope & Healing with survivor stories and my reflections about what they teach us. Woody Allen once said, “If I had one wish it would be to be somebody else.” Bernie’s wish was to be a few inches taller. His work has been such a growth experience that he is now a few inches taller. His prediction is that in the next decade the role of consciousness, spirituality, non-local healing, body memory, and heart energy will all be explored as scientific subjects. For many, Bernie needs no introduction. He has touched many lives all over our planet. In 1978 he began talking about patient empowerment and the choice to live fully and die in peace. As a physician, who has cared for and counseled innumerable people whose mortality has been threatened by an illness, Bernie embraces a philosophy of living and dying that stands at the forefront of the medical ethics and spiritual issues our society grapples with today. He continues to assist in the breaking of new ground in the field of healing and personally struggling to live the message of kindness and love. Dr. Siegel appeared on the radio show “Healing the Grieving Heart” with Dr. Gloria & Dr. Heidi Horsley to discuss Finding Thanksgiving After Loss.