When Betty Cumming’s otherwise healthy husband went in for routine hip surgery in 2000, she never thought she would be a widow by the end of the week.  

The hospital’s medication error that caused Wayne’s death was terrible, but what was worse for Cumming was how the staff at the hospital treated her when she expressed concerns about his delayed recovery and later when he died.  

“You can imagine what over-whelming feelings you have,” said Cumming, a music teacher who lives in Sidney, Mont. “It’s all kinds of grief that range from bitterness to sadness to anger.”

A few years after her husband’s death, Cumming heard about the book The Lost Art of Healing by Nobel Prize-winning author Bernard Lown, MD, on a radio program. She was convinced that this was exactly what the doctors who cared for her husband were lacking. 

“It was like a light went off!” Cumming said. “I thought, ‘this is how I change my anger into joy.’” 

According to the author’s website, (www.bernardlown.org/), the book is an evaluation of modern-day medicine that shows how the biggest problem in medicine today is the lost interpersonal relationship between patient and doctor. It describes how healing is an art and how it can be integrated with standard medical practices.

“We’re not talking earth-breaking, shell-shocking endeavors,” Cumming explains. “It’s ways of sharing hope and humanity from one person to the next person.”  

With her portion of the malpractice lawsuit settlement, Cumming has been buying a copy of this book for all the second-year medical students at The University of North Dakota (UND) since 2003. She chose UND because two of her five children attended the school, one in physical therapy, another in sports medicine.  

Cumming does not want pity from the students. She wants to make a difference. 

“I’m getting older. I’m going to make some good docs,” she said. “I want to be a part of who [the new doctors] are and influence in some small way…. Someplace I hope that it’s going on just with a little tick of memory of what those things in the book said.”  

She also sends copies of the books around the country, including to her own doctor, people she meets on airplanes, even tennis partners.  

The now 80-year-old Cumming still keeps every single thank-you note she receives from the medical students who receive the book.  

“It doesn’t make losing him any easier,” she admits. “The action that I took was self-saving. So that I got rid of my anger and the hate I had for people who simply don’t care for one another…. [I hope] our loss maybe will be other people’s gain.”