In Chinese medicine (the perspective from which I write this column), a diagnosis is a starting point, not a conclusion. While several patients may be experiencing the same symptoms, they may be considered very differently, with a variety of approaches to treatments available. By falling into identification with a diagnosis, the “ISness” of it, we risk narrowing our options and closing off possibilities for healing.

Here is a true story as a case in point.

An aging former Olympic runner began to experience knee pain on his daily 15-mile runs. As it worsened, he continued to run, until he couldn’t run any more, at which point he sought professional help. The diagnosis he received led the runner to undergo surgery on his knee. Soon, he was back to his daily runs. Six months later, at age 42, he was dead of a heart attack.

Rather than considering his earlier symptoms as warning signs, he waited until his “diagnosis” concluded him as a candidate for knee surgery. Of course, we don’t know what his actual thinking was around his knee pain, and had he heard his body’s earlier warnings, the messages to “slow down,” “run every other day,” “run fewer miles now — you’re not as young as you were,” could he have avoided the heart attack?

When we wait until a diagnosis is made, it is often too late. The body sends signals that “something is not right.” In the beginning, those signals may be very small, and if we don’t listen or pay attention to them, they get louder. By the time they are loud enough, there could truly be pathology.

Another story. A young woman and her husband had been trying to conceive for over 5 years. She was labeled “infertile” and was recommended for IVF treatment (in vitro fertilization). She longed to be back in her hometown, hundreds of miles away to raise their family. She only would get part-time jobs so she could move at any time. She had no real friends where she was living — all her friends were “back home.” Back home. Hmmm. What was this, where she was living? Here she had no investment in a job, friends, or pursuing personal interests. Why would she want to bring a child into a place where she didn’t feel at home? Would that be the child’s job — to create a home?

So, the young woman joined a church, accepted a full-time teaching position, and began to make a home for her and her husband ... and the child she conceived six months later! Was she ever infertile? What does that diagnostic term, infertile, mean, and what implications did it have for this family? How did it impact their choices. Would it have been better had she lived into that diagnosis of infertile, had IVF treatment, and conceived to bring a child to a “homeless” couple?

As I stated last month, there are certainly very real illnesses with very real effects on people’s lives.

My question is, what effect will the diagnosis have? Will it limit and make conclusions about who we are and how we live our lives? Or will it create other possibilities for growth and opportunity? Can a diagnosis become a door opening onto a new path, or a stopping place with a DO NOT ENTER sign. Is a diagnosis a conclusion, or a starting point? We can choose!

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