Surgeon writes book on spiritual side of medicine
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To learn more about Dr. Allan Hamilton, go to his Web site at: www.allanhamilton.com.
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Early in Dr. Allan Hamilton's career, a young boy who had spent months in a coma after suffering severe burns claimed to see his recently dead father standing at his bed.
"I whipped around to look, not seeing anything," Hamilton said.
At the mother's suggestion, doctors had used the father's skin for grafts as a last-ditch effort to help the dying child. The father had died of a heart problem while the boy was in a coma.
Hamilton told the boy, named Thomas, that his father had died. The boy's reaction was to wave to his father and tell the doctor that it must be his father's spirit watching over him.
Hamilton, a surgeon for 25 years, 18 with the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, was not religious or spiritual at the time of Thomas' surgery and rejected those things that could not be explained by medical science. Thomas' faith was the start of the doctor's journey into the spiritual and supernatural.
Hamilton's experiences into the unknown while becoming a successful brain surgeon and now a surgical consultant for the TV show "Grey's Anatomy," are chronicled in his new book, "The Scalpel and the Soul: Encounters with Surgery, the Supernatural and the Healing Power of Hope."
Hamilton believes that all medical professionals experience "miracles" or manifestations of an outside power but don't talk about them.
He said his first experiences surprised him.
"My interest is in the most advanced techniques in surgery," he said. "I wasn't really prepared for it. Nobody said, 'You are going to see things you can't explain and see miracles that there are no explanations for.' ''
He said the book is his personal spiritual evolution, which happened because of his patients. Those experiences include an American Indian shaman telling him to let a patient die and a woman who was brain dead during surgery but remembered conversations between the doctors and nurses.
Since his book's release, Hamilton said he's gotten three reactions. Some people have told him that surgeons shouldn't discuss spirituality. Others have been grateful that someone is finally brave enough to talk about spirituality and medicine.
The third group, he said, is medical residents and interns who tell him they are relieved to learn that there can be more to medicine than just the science.
Hamilton didn't see Thomas for another eight years as he continued his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital. As he prepared to leave on his last day, he encountered a woman and a teenage boy who had obviously been a burn victim. At that moment he realized it was Thomas.
He wrote in his book: "As I saw Thomas smile and wave, I reminded myself I had been permitted to watch the mortal threads of my life, interweave with the strands of the spiritual powers in Thomas' life. . . . This eight year-long adventure was not just the story of a surgical residency. It was a message: We're never solitary mortal beings."
Hamilton will attend a book signing and discussion from 4:30 to 6 p.m Tuesday at the UA BookStore, 1209 E. University Blvd.
It is very common for survivors to be visited by recently died loved ones;
for persons nearing death to be visited by loved ones on the other side waiting to welcome them;
for the severely demented by organic brain damage to become completely lucid, aware and logical just prior to death-medically impossible, but it happens.
I can't explain this, but I have to accept it-because it happens and I have experienced it.