Your hand is an instrument of your mind. If you apply your mind rightly, you create positive thoughts, and your positive thoughts can guide your hand to perform miracles. Friends, imagine your mind as a garden, your thoughts as sunshine and your hands as tools nourishing the flowers to bloom. To create a bountiful garden, we must first soak our mind with positive thoughts. Today I am speaking about three individuals; and how they reprogrammed their mind to create miracles. All of them are medical professionals, surgeons, and my speech today is a tribute to the medical fraternity.
Recently, I received a book “Gifted Hand” by Ben Carson. As I was flipping through the pages of the book, a picture caught my attention. It was two 7-month-old Siamese twins joined at the back of the head. Ben Carson, then director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Medicine, devised a unique operative plan to separate them. I was intrigued - how it was humanly possible. As I thought it over, my mind drifted to a time recalling an incident when I was a teenager.
My cousin brother Raphael never wanted to be anything but a doctor. Anytime his teachers asked – “What do you want to be when you grow up” – he would readily answer, “I want to be a doctor, I want to be a surgeon.” He studied hard and got admission into a medical school. After completing Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, he got admission into Master of Science in Surgery at a prestigious medical college in Jaipur, India. However, as he started his first year, he met with a terrible accident which shattered his world. One day while driving on his motorcycle he suddenly hit a divider; as he fell to the ground, his face landed directly into the shattered rearview mirror. The impact was severe, and the splintered glasses disfigured his face. When Raphael was taken to the hospital, it was determined that he would require extensive cosmetic surgery. Fortunately, the hospital had a plastic surgery department and the lead plastic surgeon, Dr. Bapna, agreed to operate on him. The surgery was successful. While he slowly regained his health, Raphael realized that one of the fingers on his right hand was disfigured. He was devastated, his dream of becoming a surgeon was shattered. One day, when Dr. Bapna came to visit him. Raphael pointing to his right hand, said feebly, “Sir, is there any hope I can ever become a surgeon.” Dr. Bapna was silent for a long time and then he uttered,
“Your hand is only an instrument of your mind.”
His words breathed new life into Raphael, he realized he could be a surgeon if he applied his mind to it. Those words began to carry him through his month-long long ordeal. It wasn’t easy work, but because he set his mind to it, each day he felt a little better. Gradually his fingers gained strength, his dexterity improved. Friends, today my cousin brother Raphael is a renowned ENT surgeon, he excelled in his profession, his steady hands performed many complicated surgeries, saved countless lives, it’s a miracle.
Friends, in his book Dr. Carson described how he faced insurmountable odds to separate the conjoined twins. The toddlers, Benjamin and Patrick, shared the major veins and blood draining system directly behind their brains; the biggest challenge was how to stop the bleeding when they were separated. After several days of trying different things, he found the answer. It was the dead of the night; he was in deep thought when he heard a sound
“Plink, plink, plink”
It was the sound of dripping water from the kitchen faucet.
He unconsciously turned off the faucet; the flow of water stopped, there was no more dripping. He turned it on, the dripping started again.
“Plink, plink, plink”
Carson stopped dead in his tracks. He thought, like the faucet, if he could turn off the heart, he could keep the babies from bleeding. Dr. Ben Carson finally led the surgery separating the main vein joined at the back of the head, connecting the heart to heart-lung machine thereby preventing bleeding, placing special implants in the boys’ skulls to stretch their skin and to cover their separate skulls. The team of 70 doctors and nurses worked non-stop for 23 hours and finally the babies were separated, Friends it was a miracle.
Friends, your hand is only an instrument of your mind. The more you feed your mind with positive thoughts, the more your body performs, the more you accomplish, the more you achieve.
“Plink, plink, plink”
A Toastmaster Speech by Ankur Bora
Raphael and I grew up in my beloved Fauzdaripatty neighborhood of Nagaon town, Assam, India. My grandfather Mahi Chandra Bora and the grandfather of Raphael, Bimola Bora were distant relatives. Late Bimola Bora was a man of very broad outlook – he named his sons Nepal, Bhutan and Iran. Raphael’s dad, late Iran Bora, in turn named his younger son after one of the seven Archangels. Raphael, his elder brother Rommel and I studied in the same school - Nagaon Govt Boys' H.S. School.
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