FOX MEDICAL TEAM: Life After Illness

ATLANTA - As medicine gets better at treating some serious illnesses, many patients are learning that life goes on. Between hospital stays and doctors' visits, treating the mind may be just as important as treating the body.

An Emory nursing professor believes a simple tool may help people cope with a serious illness.

Jessica Lucas first got a stage four breast cancer diagnosis at age 33.

That was nine years ago.

Since then, Jessica has managed to build a good life, even in the face of death.

Emory School of Nursing professor Susan Bauer-Wu teaches her students a technique to help people cope with life-altering illness.

She says teaching patients to use guided imagery and meditation to center and focus their minds pulls them out of the tunnel vision that often comes with serious illness.

The technique helps them realize there's more to life than medical treatments and doctors' appointments.

“The world starts to open up. They realize there's a lot that's right with them that's wrong with them,” said Bauer-Wu.

Bauer-Wu described helping a woman who faced a long hospital stay being treated for leukemia. She closed the shades and shut out the world.

“This person was in isolation, getting blood products, getting lots of medications, away from her family...she was looking at the clock, a big clock in front of her face and was angry that it was a reminder that she was running out of time,” said Bauer-Wu.

Bauer-Wu says mindfulness helped the woman accept what was happening to her and to see the treatments as healing.

The ticking clocks became a soothing presence and she began to see the IVs in a different light.

“Instead of seeing it as holding her down and poisons going into her body, she could see, ‘Wow, this is helping to keep me alive,’” Bauer-Wu said.

Eventually, the woman reopened the shades.

“She used it as an opportunity to connect with something that was soothing for her, and that was nature,” said Bauer-Wu.

Bauer-Wu says the simple but powerful tool isn’t just for patients.

“I like the calmness that I feel,” said first-year nursing student undergraduate Rachel Straight. “Being a first-year student, you have a lot of information thrown at you in a short amount of time, so I think the stress levels are very high.”

At the point in life we feel a loss of control, Bauer-Wu says meditation can help you find peace from within.

“Mindfulness is not about running away from what's happening. It's actually looking at what's happening and being with what's happening,” she said.

If you're interested in learning more about mindfulness, and how to incorporate it into your life, Susan Bauer-Wu has written a book about it titled Leaves Falling Gently.