Do You Believe in Miracles?

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.
-Albert Einstein

Let us go singing as far as we go: the road will be less tedious.
-Vergil

One of the peculiar aspects of my job is that I often have the bitter pleasure of meeting people whose time left in this world is as brief as the arrogant reign of summer. Just as the evening breeze begins to chill, these patients wither and fall quietly to earth for the simple reason that they are fatally stricken with cancer. Modern day treatments can eradicate some malignancies but there are still far too many others that fall into the category of "incurable." How cruelly the days fly off the calendar when the rest of one's life can be measured in just a few seasons! How awkward it is to reply when someone asks "Can this be cured?" yet this question towers above all others and demands an answer. To ask such a question requires courage - to answer does not, but to answer with compassion does require belief in something more inspirational than the implacable edicts from the temple of science.

The other day I had some free time (always risky for a medical oncologist) and sat at my desk, contemplating about the phenomenom of miracles. I thought about the "miraculous" cure of cancer and if it even exists. There are many cases of patients who mysteriously recover from metastatic cancer, yet I suspect most of these examples reflect either a spurious diagnosis of cancer or a tumor that for reasons unknown is exquisitely sensitive to chemotherapy or radiation therapy. It seems absurd to call such an event a miracle, but tell that to the patient.

"Sadness enfolds the physician on his rounds as snugly as his jacket," I thought. Is it this melancholia that constricts the heart, that bludgeons the faith needed to summon the miracles our patients deserve? I tried to answer: "Maybe I have it all wrong...maybe my definition of miracles is incorrect." I hunkered down to cogitate but nothing brilliant emerged from the cave between my ears, so I went back to work.

Later that day, like a beachcomber finding a sand dollar, I think I stumbled upon the answer. While listening to a patient describe her many children I felt the familiar chains of despair choking me. There was no way she would ever live long enough to see them go off to college, let alone marry. It was then that I realized that the miracle my patients searched for was the same one I sought - one that has nothing to do with cheating death. None of us can win that bet. The miracle of life is not that like the lucky patient we can sometimes avoid death for as long as possible - it is that we were given life in the first place. Why not recognize this and make the most of our time while we draw breath? Every day we live it is a miracle, for every day we have the power to love, to give, to delight in the precious world around us. Only death can stop us, and since death is inevitable it is futile to deny this. Better to concentrate all our powers on life - on the miracle that surrounds us each day, asking only to be appreciated while the summer sun still floats high in the sky.