In 2012, Greg Thomas was diagnosed with cancer. Stage Four. He was sent home to get his affairs in order.
Against medical advice, Greg spent his dwindling energy on renovating a 150-year-old abandoned church. He spent entire days refinishing pews, scraping paint, or sanding floors.
After months of labor, Greg went for a follow-up exam. The tumors had vanished. The doctors called it “spontaneous remission.” Which is medical shorthand for “What the…?”
In 2004, a 60-year-old Japanese man named Shinshū Kōda was diagnosed with malignant lymphoma. The abdominal tumor was the size of a softball.
Kōda refused chemo and retreated into meditation and prayer, sometimes for upwards of 12 hours at a time.
Months later, doctors found no tumors. The mass had liquefied. Doctors theorized this was due to a rise in Kōda’s interleukin-2 levels, immune system protein levels in the body associated with prayer. Nobody knows how these proteins work, or what they are exactly.
So, doctors called it “spontaneous remission.”
In 1986, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was in his mid-80s. On a whim, he began a weekly tradition. Each Sunday, he would pass out crisp $1 bills to anyone who came to visit. He would give a blessing, then the dollar. Each recipient was supposed to give his or her dollar away to charity.
One day, a man visited Schneerson. The man was scheduled for high-risk heart surgery to repair a ruined valve. He was actually on his way to the hospital when he stopped to see the Rabbi.
Schneerson gave the man a dollar and told him, “The doctors are looking at the wrong map.”
One hour later, surgeons opened the man up. They found his cardiac valve wholly intact. Medical staffers checked the man’s identity bracelets, certain this was the wrong patient.
But no.
The scans which had been taken only two hours prior showed a destroyed valve. But new echocardiograms showed the valve had corrected itself.
On July 20, 2021, an extreme drought order was issued by Hopi Tribe Chairman Timothy Nuvangyaoma. The drought had caused a 100 percent reduction in livestock. This was not only one of the worst droughts to strike Arizona, it was one of the worst droughts ever recorded in the Southwest.
Hopi elders gathered for the Butterfly Dance, a ceremony of day-long rhythmic prayer to restore balance and rain.
Critics chimed in. Onlookers laughed. Local meteorologists predicted a zero percent chance of rain for the entire month.
Within one hour of the ceremony’s conclusion, a localized “monsoon” cell formed directly over the Hopi mesas. Meteorologists called the storm cell “unexplainable,” and “highly unusual.”
The storms dropped three inches of rain in a bullseye pattern not reflected anywhere else in the state.
There was significant flooding in the area. A state of natural disaster was declared. National Weather Service records report that the occurrence was an “anomalous convective event.” Which is meteorological-speak for “spontaneous remission.”
In January of ‘91, the Gulf War was in full swing. At around 6 p.m. Iraq launched a cavalcade of Scud missiles at Tel Aviv.
Miriam Cohen was in her apartment when she felt an immediate, inexplicable, overwhelming need to pray the 20th Psalm. “May the Lord answer you in the day of distress…”
Miriam also felt an urging to rush into the hallway and stand in a specific place between her kitchen and bathroom. This was not a location that made structural sense for safety.
The missile hit her building. The structure collapsed. Miriam’s apartment was decimated. A few days later, rescue crews were digging through a mountain of rubble when they heard a voice.
Rescue workers found Miriam standing in a pocket that had been unharmed. It was the only remaining solid structure, shaped like a V. Later, engineers would call this event a “freak of physics.”
But you can call it spontaneous remission.