HOW A LIFE WAS SAVED WITH JUST WORDS
Several years ago, I’d spoken at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Medical Center. This spring, I spoke there again and was approached by Dr. Cynthia Dowdall, Director at Northwest Fire District, Tucson, Arizona
She told me a story I think will dazzle your imagination. This is what she said:
Locally, we’d had a 14-year-old boy who was killed on his bicycle and then, three months later, his friend was riding a bike, was hit by a car and was dragged through the street. A charge nurse and I had been trained in Verbal First Aid so we were called in. The doctors who were attending this injured boy found that they could not stop his bleeding. As a result, they couldn’t give him a blood transfusion and it seemed that there was nothing they could do to save him.
The mother, upon hearing that her child was dying and the doctors could not save him, fell to the floor in a fetal position and began to decompensate. So I said to her, “There is something you can do to help him stop bleeding.” And she said “I will do anything.” I told her “There is research on a protocol called Verbal First Aid(tm). And I can show you how to do it to help him stop bleeding.”
I had learned that people in pain, fear, and crisis may be in an altered state of consciousness, like a hypnotic trance, and words spoken to them, especially by an authority figure, could be accepted by the unconscious mind and the body as hypnotic suggestions. Except for major arterial and venous bleeding, a command to stop bleeding can be followed.
We went into the ICU and we talked to her son and we said, “The Worst Is Over, let your body begin to heal itself, rest and relax, let the nurses and doctors do what they need to do, and you can stop bleeding now. And,” I added, “Captain Goldberg wants to have you come to the fire station as soon as possible so he can show you the engines.”
Two hours later the doctor came out and said, “I don’t know what happened, but he stopped bleeding.” Things had turned around. The doctor insisted, however, that the boy’s recovery was going to be a long, slow one, about six months.
But three weeks later the boy was out of the hospital, in the firehouse, having a tour of the station and looking at the fire engines.
The mother tells this story all the time and calls it a miracle. It feels like a miracle. What a wonderful gift it is.
Just to help you understand what happened, here’s my interpretation:
The boy’s fear, as a result of his friends having died from a similar accident, had set his heart racing, pumping the blood that caused the loss that threatened his life. The picture in his mind nearly scared him to death. When Dr. Dowdall offered him a different picture, the reassurance allowed his mind and body to begin respond to another set of images revolving around healing and rescue. The adrenaline and cortisol flooding his body, the chemicals of fight or flight, were replaced by the parasympathic nervous system chemicals that help us “rest and digest,” and be calm, so that his heart could regulate, his pulses and breathing could find their way to homeostasis.
And the future pacing—imagining visiting Captain Goldberg and the fire fighters—provided him with a trajectory of and reason for recovery. With nothing more than words, they were able to turn a potential tragedy around and save a life.
We’ve just somewhat updated and reprinted (and also made into a Kindle e-book) the book on which the Verbal First Aid protocol is based. The Worst Is Over: What To Say When Every Moment Counts, by Judith Acosta LISW and Judith Simon Prager, PhD. has been called “the ‘bible’ for crisis communication” by The International Journal of Emergency Medicine.
