Keep a Positive Mindset with Parkinson’s Disease: Think optimistically about your future

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(Lesson learned in my role as a physician.)

I am an anesthesiologist. I meet people everyday who are going through one of scariest thing in their lives to that point.

Many of these patients come in for the procedure, grateful for the care they are receiving and are optimistic about how everything will turn out.

Others are ambivalent and just go with the flow. Just do what you gotta do.

And others come in convinced that nothing ever goes right for them, and no one knows what they are doing, and a “why does bad stuff always happen to me” mentality.

I have noticed that more often than not, patients go home after the surgery feeling that the day turned out just as expected.

On one end of the spectrum the extreme optimist who gets stuck 15 times for an IV, will be grateful that we finally got it and will be singing the “Everything is Awesome” song from the Lego movie as they leave the hospital.

On the other end, the extreme pessimist who we get the IV on the first stick but in a place that they don’t like, will be angry that we couldn’t put the IV where they wanted it, and that the tape hurt when it was removed.

I have often wondered if anyone has ever studied the surgical outcomes based on the patient’s level of optimism going into it.

I didn’t find anything about that. I did find several articles studying the outcomes in people with cancer, diabetes, chronic pain or who have had a stroke. Across the board those who thought positively about their futures had better outcomes, lived longer, had lower cortisol levels and fewer inflammatory markers and were in better physical shape than those who thought negatively about their futures. Even when adjusted for severity of illness and prognosis, the optimistic patients did better.

By setting big goals, long term and short term, we are routinely thinking of a positive future in which we achieve those goals.

We have the choice of how we look at every situation, and there is always silver lining somewhere; sometimes you have to look harder than others.

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