Can Prayer Heal?

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Allow me to describe an example of the healing power of prayer in one of my patients that will better illustrate my belief.

I examined a 24-year-old young man a few years ago who was diagnosed with either an osteosarcoma, or an aggressive high grade lymphoma which had “eaten” through his shoulder blade into the bone in his upper arm, thus destroying his shoulder joint. The presence of this large and fast-growing tumor was confirmed by x-rays, and an MRI, as well as through clinical tests. No less than three physicians agreed that this was a “nasty” cancer and something had to be done right away.

As a family practitioner, I really had nothing more medically to offer this young man except the power of prayer. I prayed with the man. I asked my family members to join me in praying for him. I made a referral to a nationally known orthopedic oncologist in New York City, who by the way agreed with the diagnosis of the other three specialists.  He scheduled a biopsy to confirm the presence of what he felt certain was an aggressive lymphoma. “I’ve seen cases like these a few hundred times and it’s always a lymphoma,” he told me with utmost certainty.

The next afternoon, I received a startled call from that renowned orthopedic oncologist.  He had attempted to confirm his diagnosis through biopsy, but found no tumor. There was only a bunch of burned out looking cells,” he told me in disbelief. He added that he had no idea what to make of this and asked me to schedule a PET scan. That led to a lymph node biopsy, both of which showed that the cancer had disappeared. When I reported the results to the expert and asked him what he thought had happened, he paused and said quietly, “I think it’s a miracle.”

And what became of that 24-year-old cancer patient with the large, aggressive high-grade lymphoma destroying his shoulder joint? He’s now playing softball and bowling in his spare time and raising two young children who were born after his diagnosis. He is in excellent health today, living without a trace of disease.

Perhaps you read my story about the healing power of prayer with a healthy skepticism.  You might say that, given the limited state of our medical knowledge, along with the natural history of lymphoma, and the limitations of our imaging technology, that the patient never had a tumor in the first place. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we just don’t know as much as we think we do about such matters. You may recall that, Sir William Osler, a father, of modern medicine, is said to have remarked: “Half of what I learned in medical school turned out to be false. The only problem is, I don’t know which half.”

I have presented this medically documented case of an extraordinarily, irrational outcome. I choose to call it a miracle.