8 Spiritual Ways to Prepare for Surgery

This story originally appeared in Positive Thinking and is reprinted with permission.

My wife, Joelle, was scheduled for surgery to remove her right adrenal gland in three months, and she was terrified. "Every night I'd wake up and my heart would be racing," she recalls. "Fear would come over me. And panic."

It's a common reaction when facing a medical procedure. Some people are psychologically scarred by a past experience. Others fixate on the pain they might suffer, or like Joelle, on the helplessness of anesthesia. "I was afraid of not waking up or feeling really disoriented," she says. "It's that loss of control that's so scary."

If you're a stressed-out patient like my wife was, there's hope. You can take steps to face down your fears. Joelle did, and they made a dramatic difference.