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The Hoeflinger Podcast
Welcome to the The Hoeflinger Podcast, where Dr. Brian Hoeflinger and Kevin Hoeflinger delve into riveting discussions about life as a neurosurgeon, the world of medicine, healthy living, fitness, and anything else that piques their curiosity. Dr. Brian Hoeflinger, MD, brings his extensive 24 years of experience as a full-time neurosurgeon to educate and inform. Get ready for engaging conversations that will broaden your understanding of the medical realm and beyond!
The Hoeflinger Podcast
#15: Miracles & The Power of Belief
Do you believe in miracles? Dr. Hoeflinger, drawing from his extensive career as a neurosurgeon, shares how he has come to believe in miracles through the countless awe-inspiring stories of patients who have defied medical odds and experienced miraculous outcomes.
In this episode, Dr. Hoeflinger gives a glimpse into the profound moments of hope he has experienced throughout his career as a surgeon. Dr. Hoeflinger and Kevin also discuss the power of belief and positive thinking in their lives and the world. They believe there is remarkable potential that belief holds in shaping our lives and our world. And encourage everyone to embrace the miraculous possibilities that arise when we hold onto hope, foster optimism, and believe in the extraordinary power of the human spirit.
Tune in every week for new episodes of The Hoeflinger Podcast with Dr. Brian Hoeflinger and Kevin Hoeflinger.
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Do you believe in miracles? I have to say I do, after being a nurse for 25 years, and so this is going to be a special episode of the Halflinger podcast. We're on vacation right now. We're on a cruise sailing through the Caribbean Sea. We left Jamaica last night. We're on our way back to Florida. So we're somewhere in the Caribbean Sea and so bear with us, for you People are just listening.
Speaker 1:I was just showing where we're, on the balcony of the cruise ship room, but wanted to do a podcast episode and we thought you know, as a neurosurgeon you've seen a lot of situations of life and death and you know, maybe some people do or don't believe in miracles, but you've definitely had instances where you've proven to think miracles are true. I do. I mean, there's things that you see that that happen that makes you believe in miracles. Like I remember a gentleman. He was a priest actually some time ago and I was on call in the emergency department and he had come in because he hit his hat and was having a headache and was a little bit sleepy. But you know, as I was talking to this guy, he was like 80 years old, he was a lifelong priest. He just suddenly became unresponsive. He, literally, right from the eyes, just became comatose and they rushed into the CAT scan immediately. He had already had a CAT scan that really didn't show just a tiny bit of bleeding, with nothing that. He did surgery and then the repeat CAT scan showed this massive blood clot with massive pressure on his brain. And his family was there with him and I had talked to him and when I examined him, I mean he was in a coma, his pupils were dilated, they didn't react, he really had no brain reflexes that I could elicit and for all purposes I mean he was dead, you know, brain dead anyways. And I told his family that and I said I don't think there's anything that I can do that's going to save him. But the family really, I mean they believed in God and they really wanted something to be done. And you know we talked about surgery, emergency surgery to remove the blood clot, and I kind of was a little bit against it with him because I said you know, I don't think I can do anything if he has no brain function. But they were very persistent in their faith, wanted him to go down and have surgery.
Speaker 1:So I called the operating room and I took him down Emergingly for surgery. You know, I shaved all his hair and it made a big incision, took off a big piece of his skull about that big and once I opened the covering of the brain there was just a massive blood clot underneath that was pushing on his brain. So I took all that blood off the surface of the brain and right when I took the blood off there was a bleeding artery just pumping away and that's why he became unresponsive quickly, because it was a bleeding artery as opposed to a vein and it wasn't going to clot off. So I cauterized that artery. The bleeding stopped. Initially his brain was not pulsing but within a few minutes his brain started pulsing again. And you know, I put things back together, put his bone back out of the plate and screws and sewed him up and then he was admitted in a intensive period and I told the family that I took the blood clot off.
Speaker 1:Everything went fine at surgery. But I said I don't think he's going to do well. I mean that next morning that gentleman was up talking eating breakfast in the ICU. They had taken the breathing tube out already. He was so awake and he made a completely normal recovery and there's no way I can explain that on things that I've seen over the past 25 years. Yeah, that's crazy, but that's a miracle that I can't explain.
Speaker 1:And how does that affect you? I mean, I'm assuming it does. How does that affect you? When, then, you go into your personal life, you take off your neurosurgeon hat and you just live in your personal life, does that change the way you think of things or see life? When you experience something like that where you thought there was not, there's a very, almost 0% chance of that happening. Yeah, and there's two. There's two components to that, because I mean, does that mean I should take everybody to surgery because they're dead and I think they're going to survive? Because I still think the majority of people who you take the surgery of a blood clot like that no brain, some reflexes will make a recovery, and my brother was an example that when he had an injury in a blood clot like that, he went down for emergency surgery and he didn't make that kind of outcome. He never walked or talked again and was dependent on other people to take care of in the rest of his life. So I don't think that's always the case.
Speaker 1:I think there's a component, I think, of things that we can explain why someone made that recovery. But I also think as a neurosurgeon, if I think about it, it's because I was there. I mean, I saw him when he decompensated. We got into this operating room immediately, got that blood clot off, and I think that makes a difference too, because you know, if you take somebody who has a blood clot a blood clot like that and is out in the outline hospital and they're at the outline hospital for hours and then they finally make it to our hospital and they finally get the survey it's eight hours later I don't think that person's going to make that type of recovery. So a lot of it depends on the situation. But I think for him, I think it's part of where the miracle was is that the family had faith and the family believed in a higher power, than something needed to be done, and they were right, and that's part of where the miracle is, yeah, and so I think how do you balance that, not only like you as a neurosurgeon, like laying out the cards, but how do you also balance that if it's someone that is a loved one to you, whether taking a chance with that person or letting them especially if they're older, dying peacefully or like letting them go. Yeah, because I mean that's just.
Speaker 1:That's like a conversation that I go through often with families, especially with Melbourneite. I think what it really comes down to is comfort. I mean my job, I mean so that still affects me, but I compartmentalize it so I can do my job, and I have to put it somewhere, the actual depth about it, somewhere else. But I think I'm good at talking to people about helping them come to a decision, and whatever decision a family makes in that moment, they have to live with the rest of their life and have to be comfortable with it. So part of my job is just making them comfortable with what they decide to do. And if they're comfortable with me taking someone for emergency serving that's what they really want to do We'll do it.
Speaker 1:But I also tell them stories like this you know, and even with my brother, that a lot of people don't turn out very well after serving. So some families will decide not to do anything and I help them become comfortable with that. Because you got to live with your decision the rest of your life. You're making that decision for your loved one and there's never a right or a answer. It really comes down to what you believe and also what I say to them. But I'm honest with people. I mean, I can give them examples of this gentleman and the example of my brother and other people I've seen, and then you have to decide what you believe in. Well, I think it's important to lay everything out for some people so they can make their own decision.
Speaker 1:I think something that you said before that I think is powerful is not being thinking about yourself. Like you, obviously, when it's your loved one, you want them to be around, you want everything to be done. But sometimes you have to think what would the actual person who's unconscious that might need the emergency surgery? What would that person want If they saw themselves with tubes and all this? They might just potentially be brain dead the rest of their life if the surgeon saves them. But they want that for themselves and I think most people then will realize no, I don't think this 80-year-old who's lived a full life would want to be artificially kept alive, and then that is the best way to think about it.
Speaker 1:For people out there listening to this podcast. I mean it's such an important topic that you talk to your family about, because when I'm with families, what I really try to do is just look at what's said. I mean, pretend your loved one who's sitting there in a coma with a breathing tube and is sitting there with you talking to me, looking at themselves, hearing all the options, what the potential outcome could be, and then think about what that person would want, what's not about it. You know you have to make those decisions for that person, to try to cure out their wishes and not so much your wishes. I mean, I had a case not too long ago of a person who came in with a bad brain injury and there was a decision do we need you know we're going to do surgery, let's do it now, originally or not?
Speaker 1:And the person's significant other said that you know, we've been married for 30 years and I know that she would have not wanted to have this done. She would want no surgery. And she said I want her to go to surgery, but I'm carrying out her decision, her. You know what she wanted. So he said I got to get over myself and do what she would have wanted. I know what she would have wanted and he was very comfortable with it. He said because I'm making that decision for her, because I know what she wants.
Speaker 1:So it's the best way to look at things is you know you have to do what you think your family number would want and take yourself out of the equation, because nobody wants to lose a loved one, right? And it's a tough decision. Well, it's hard to think of in that moment when all of your senses are high and you know you know you can't make that split second decision Like you're saying. That's why it's important. A lot of people you know God forbid anything that happens suddenly anyone but it's why it's so important to talk with your loved ones and your family about things like organ donation. In situations like this, if you need emergency surgery, what you would do, so people have something to fall back on where they're like we've talked about this before, I know I know what they wanted, versus trying to think what they might have wanted when you never talked about it.
Speaker 1:Well, I think the hardest thing for families I've seen is they don't. Some people can't carry out those wishes. Right, they know what the wishes are, but it comes down to it at that moment they can't carry out their loved ones wishes. They just can't, even though they know 100% what the person would have wanted. So I don't know how you get over that. I mean, yeah, because you know. You know what the person wants, but yet when it comes down to it, you're making a decision. You feel like you can't because you feel guilty that you're holding out or something along that line. I think, just like other people, that's where sometimes faith comes in and different people believe in different things. But I think that's why some people fall back on faith or belief in their own version of their higher power and they try to let that be the guiding decision.
Speaker 1:Like you said, like that, that's where sometimes things that are miracles can happen. But also but those are probably talked about more than compared to the time, like when, say, my uncle, your brother, had it and he was brain dead for the next 30 years. You know those are going to be propagated in the media as much. Necessarily, right, but I think you know miracles. It even sounds weird. Miracles work both ways, I would imagine, because the gentleman I told you about, who was, had no brain function. That's the normal.
Speaker 1:For other people, a miracle is having a loved one not end up in a coma, living in a nurse home as what people would call a vegetable. The miracle might be being at peace, knowing that they went peacefully to wherever they believe they may go in the afterlife and have the family have a peace of mind that they're not lying around somewhere. That's actually no, that's a really great way of putting it. We like the miracle. That's like this crazy, against all odds. But yes, sometimes the miracle is just getting to live a full life and having your family there. When you pass away peacefully, versus people that have to, they say go through cancer and they suffer, for you know, in great years Some people will say eventually they want to, they'd rather just stop all that stuff. It's painful to go through chemo, right, it's all the things that does to your body. So some people would rather just let themselves. You know they've gotten to live the life they've lived and the miracle is just getting to transition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think a lot of this is, you know, control and losing control. I mean when you're in a situation where someone has to make this decision for you, you've lost control of your wishes and you just have to hope that someone carries those wishes out for you. So that just is having conversations. I mean, sometimes it's never about how many conversations, but the more you talk with your loved ones, probably the better likelihood that stuff like that will go as you want. And I do think like this is why, ron, an important topic is organ donation, because I mean one person can save the lives of like eight or nine people and it can help 50 people live a longer and better life. And I mean just think about all the people out there who need a life saving organ, who will die on the waiting list because they can never get that organ. So it's like the biggest gift you could ever give in this world is for someone to give organs when they can't use them anymore. So we have those conversations with people and organ donation team comes in and tries to help people understand what they can do, what their loved one can do for other ones.
Speaker 1:So if you're not an organ donor, I mean obviously I'm an organ donor and you're an organ donor and you put it on your license. But you have to let your family know too what you would want, because sometimes, again in the middle of the night, when things are happening quickly, they're not going to look at your license or carry out the desire or what you've had in your license and they're going to ask your family. You know they're going to ask the family. That's what your family, as final, said. I think they do for the most part, unless you're going to get, you know. Well, for years you're not in the middle of the night. It's going to be whatever family is there. I'm just saying your experience as a surgeon. When you've seen that, you've seen that it's the family, it's the family, but then that might not be the how it always goes, but that's just what you've seen.
Speaker 1:So, whether or not it's just important to have conversations like that and so to go back into and how we started with the miracles and obviously there's more examples you can provide but did you before you ever became a doctor and you saw some of these things, what was your take on miracles or did you know? How has that evolved when you've seen these different cases where you believe a miracle happens, has that changed since you were younger? I guess it's because I've seen more like. Here's a good example. So this is a different type of miracle. So you could say that me taking some of the surgeries is the miracle because I'm inner, artificially interfering, but I think this is a miracle.
Speaker 1:I mean I remember a little girl who fell off a swing at school and obviously she was taken to the nurse's office and she was complaining of like a little bit of a headache but seemed fine. But obviously the nurse is going to call the mom and the mom comes to school because they wanted the child to go home. And so the mother comes to the school and child you know it's just not perfect and complaining with headache, but seemed okay. And the nurse suggested mom should just take her child home and just keep an eye on her and if it gets worse, take her to emergency department. You know there's something about a mom a mom knows, knows their child, obviously. So she just knew something wasn't right. So she decided to go to the hospital instead and so child went to emergency department, still complaining a little bit of headache, but not too bad, but then suddenly started vomiting, became sleepy and then all of a sudden was in a coma and I got called right away.
Speaker 1:Um, emergency CAT scan was done huge blood clot building up over the surface of little girl's brain. You know she was, she was actively dying and she was in between life and death and she wouldn't survive long without having something done. So obviously, you know, parents went to a theater surgery so we took her immediately to surgery. Um did the same type of surgery I talked about with that gentleman and I. I took a large blood clot off the off the surface of the brain and again underneath the brain was a bleeding artery. It was called an epidural hematoma, which is a blood cut that's caused by bleeding artery. I cauterized the artery, um, and then finished surgery and then really in the recovery room later, an hour or two later, uh, the little girl was awake with her parents. She was talking um, smiling a little bit and eating a popsicle and she's back to normal.
Speaker 1:And so that's a case where the miracle in my mind was that mother her mother's the miracle, I mean something told her mother that she needed to go to hospital. If her mom would have took her home she would have died at home. I don't think she would have got the hospital sooner or later had surgery because it was a bleeding artery. So the miracle is her mother knowing somehow that there was something wrong with her child, and whether that's a God-given thing or just a mother's intuition, but it's a miracle. Yeah, you know, and you can't. I think that's sometimes why there's a higher power. We call it your gut instinct, whatever that is, but it's something beyond any logic or like of what you don't know concretely. But you have that feeling and that's why I mean it's important to trust your feelings at times.
Speaker 1:Well, the miracle too is like think of the fact that mom would have taken the child home for the nurse's recommendation, not knocking the nurse in any way, because the child didn't seem like there's much wrong. But just think of that child, her little girl would have died in the middle of the night. You know, woke up because I had to have more of a parent wait. So those checks on the child, they're dead. So just think of that would have happened and then that would have ruined all their lives. I mean that would have been a whole different one of my universe for those people. So the miracle was that that didn't happen too. Well, I think what's crazy? No one ever thinks that that rare or that more rare case has happened. You know it's like a routine in person and you feel good. So I think like sometimes I I well, you've always said any time anything's ever involved in the head, it's always better to be safe than sorry, because the worst case scenario, if you're wrong, you go to the hospital and you're just wrong. And I'm not advocating, you know, rushing your children to the emergency department every two minutes. This is not out to scare anybody Like.
Speaker 1:I remember Kevin when he was little. I was a resident and Kevin was just two or three years old and he fell outside of our little house on the concrete sidewalk and hit his head and he threw up once or twice and I kept, you know, we kept him home, which just kept an eye on him and even watched him overnight, and the next day he was still complaining a little bit of headache, and so I finally took him in and got a head CT and it was normal, so he didn't have a blood clot. But you know, there's a case where everybody makes their own decisions. So I made a decision because I was a nurse of your resident. I didn't want to jump the gun and everything worked out. But it's one of those things I you know.
Speaker 1:I think, as a parent, you have to decide, as the parent, what your comfort level is. You know, and you know your children and you know when they're acting differently, and so so it's one of those things. Yeah, well, it is like that's. These are extreme cases, obviously, and that's what miracles come from. Extreme instances where there is. But I think you have to trust your gut instincts. You have to. When something doesn't feel right to you, I think that's when you have you have to take action. But I mean there is no right answer because it's so unique.
Speaker 1:But you know, I remember a lady who she she over the course of a day could move her arm or her leg. She's paralyzed on that side and her husband had brought her to the hospital and she was complaining of a bad headache over days and was vomiting and was sleepy and by the time she got in the hospital that evening she was really into slipping into a coma, pretty close to being in a coma. So she got a head CT in her brain and right and showed a what I would say massive brain tumor on the left side of her. I was on the right side because her left side was paralyzed and to me it looked completely malignant. I mean it looked like a malignant brain tumor. There's lots of swelling around the tumor, a lot of pressure on the brain.
Speaker 1:I talked to the family, I mean just, you know, because she deteriorates so quickly and it seemed like what I call malignant edema, malignant swelling the brain from a malignant brain tumor. It looked like a primary brain tumor. I had an honest discussion with the family saying I mean it looks like brain cancer and how fast she's gone downhill. I don't think she's going to survive much longer. I mean I don't think she's going to survive this, and so it's kind of like she was actively dying. And so again I had this conversation with the family about what are options, and one option was to do nothing and let nature take its course, and the other option was to try to go and just take as much of the tumor out as I could and just try to prolong her life for the time being, get a diagnosis, and so it's a tough decision, but obviously it all happened so quickly.
Speaker 1:The family wanted her to go down to surgery. I took her down to surgery and obviously the brain was very swollen. When I first got in there, I mean to my amazement and I just can't explain it. I mean the tumor has such a different look at surgery than it did on the MRI. It was what I would call well-circumstried. I was able to delineate it very well from the surrounding brain and I really was able to take that whole tumor mass out, and before I even tell you that, so I took that whole tumor mass out.
Speaker 1:Surgery went very well the next morning. I mean she was wide awake in the intensive care unit and she was talking and eating a little bit of breakfast. She had the breathing tube had been taken out earlier and she was that weak, was almost completely gone on her left side. She was pretty close back to normal. The miracle is that it turned out to be benign. It was called a pilus, a gastrocytoma, and the treatment for that is really surgery to take the whole tumor out. And once you take that tumor out, it doesn't occur in most people, and so it was something I thought was a malignant brain cancer, with someone who had days to live, if not hours, and it turned out to be a completely benign tumor and the swollen was able to go back and live a normal life with their family and their kids. So I mean I don't know that. That was just one of those cases. That what a case. I mean you know somebody I thought had no future who now had a bright future, and it turned out to be a benign tumor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I think, especially in your line of work, you're more inclined to like there are these things that most people never would hear about, any of that type of stuff, like there aren't some of these miracles that aren't necessarily put out in the media as much and they're more complex, but I mean it's all, it's all miracle and it's. I mean there's. There's so many things in this world that are like that. I think it's just sometimes choosing to see the positive, like, oh, there's. You know there's bad things happening all the time, but there's also a lot of goodness happening. It's just not propagating as much.
Speaker 1:What do you think? Can you think of any miracles of your life that you've done? Um, I mean, I just think some miracles I mean like, not like personally that have happened to me necessarily, but some miracles I think about are just so like with like an Iron man, a person who survived against all odds, some like fire, and then the doctor told them they're never gonna walk again. And those people whether that's a miracle or their personal belief that they will walk again, and I can't remember their name, but they, they said they told them their mom, I'm gonna do a triathlon I'm going to do one. And then they trained all the time and eventually they could walk again and they did like that, actually did a full Iron man, and so I think that's insane. Oh, one of the people I'm thinking of is Calin O'Grady, who went on to become the first person to go self across Antarctica. He wrote a book called Impossible First, but he was in a very bad fire accident when he was traveling when he was in his 20s and then he eventually went on to do a triathlon I think the Chicago triathlon. He got first place and then he ended up doing all these crazy physical feats but he just never gave up the belief and he prayed his mom that I'm gonna, I'm gonna be able to walk again, and then so he set a goal of doing a triathlon as that guiding motion.
Speaker 1:But I don't know, I think there's tons of, if you pay attention, I think there's miracles happening all the time of just like how. I mean just even. It's simple, but the miracle of life, the odds of you being, of all your ancestors surviving, and the specific version of who you are being born. I mean it's rather it's like one in trillions and trillions, but I mean you can go all over on stuff. But I think too miracles, like you hear about people. I think it is about your mind has so much more power than you think honestly. I mean you hear about too many people who set their mind to doing something and they end up doing it, and I think there's some component to that. I know when it comes to diet, I mean people can will themselves almost to diet at some point in their life. I see it too often Once the people that will make it right to their hundredth birthday, or they make it right to their birthday and then die because they have a goal they just want to reach their birthday.
Speaker 1:But I think, just like the gut instinct you can't scientifically prove that but something like the placebo effect that can be just as powerful as actually taking some proven medicine. So I think that the belief is by that power of belief. It's almost like a placebo effect if you truly believe it. And Brian used to say this, but I think it's originally Henry Ford, my brother Brian, who said this the person who thinks he can is right. The person who thinks he cannot is also right. So it's all about taking that positive aspect, because if you sit there and say I can do something and then you do it. You're right. If you say I can't do it and you never do anything, you're also right. But if you take your gonna, life's probably gonna be richer. If you take that belief that you can do something and I might be thinking of that wrong, but I think that was originally Henry Ford or maybe that's a misquote, but I think that the power of the positive thinking and self belief, it's sometimes when I think of like if you did be kind of, or like it's kind of. It's not concrete, you can't put a scientific label on it, which sometimes you like, but but you say you can't do something, you won't do it and you'll never know if you could have done it right. So it's definitely.
Speaker 1:We all talk about the power of positivity and there's something to that with our brain and our life. And if you think you can do something and you actually try to do something, I mean you can do it. Well, not a related note to that. What I always think about especially I remember when I was younger people all the time fear of failure is a huge thing. So a huge thing people would do is like they wouldn't study for a test in grade school, because if you didn't do well in the test and you could say well, I didn't study for it. So you always had a backup point. Because to put yourself out there long and say I gave everything, I tried and I failed, that's a very hard thing to accept in life, but I always think about it.
Speaker 1:If you set ambitious goals or you go from things and you believe you can do them, even if you fail, you're probably still much further along than if you just did something that you absolutely knew you could do but you didn't go outside your comfort zone, right? Well, we talked about that a lot too, really off the top of your head. But definitely you can't grow unless you face your fears to some extent. If you hide behind your fears, you're never gonna get past your fear. So you can't experience new things in life and new challenges and become the person you want to be if you don't face some of your fears as soon as possible.
Speaker 1:Well, I think all this ties into the fact that we're working on a TikTok video for social media and you had written something up about how you know you dreamed of becoming a neurosurgeon. You didn't come from any special family or any special schools, but you believed that you could and you worked really hard to do that. But you had to have that underlying belief and you eventually did. So I think talking about miracles and all these other things, it's just to show all these things are possible. Whether you know, that just seems like a euphemism at times, that anything's possible. You're a cult from a book, but it's more than that. Yeah, like in the Iron man slogans, that anything's possible. I think it's all about showing people that things are possible.
Speaker 1:And talking about miracles that I mean just all of these go for it and whether you get it or not, at least you gave it your all. So I don't know, I think that's kind of deep for a cruise, right, but we just start talking same thing sometimes. But I think that's alright, let us know what you think. We're working on it. We're hoping for a great. This might be the last episode of 2023. We're hoping for a great 2024. We're really going to try to double down and keep. I mean, we enjoy doing all these things and want to keep doing more stuff, but we like topics, too, that you have to think about. You know, it's kind of interesting these things about miracles and life and how to become more than what you want to be in life, and it's all these things that are deep thinking. I think it's interesting to think about, you know? Yeah, so all right. Hope everyone has a great day.
