Alone

There are some folks who like to be left completely alone when they are not feeling well.
There are some folks who feel would feel more comfortable surrounded by the company of people.

While both types of people deal with pain in different ways, there comes a time when each type has to deal with the condition all alone.

No one can possibly understand the multitude of emotions that must beset the afflicted. Friends and family and loved ones can imagine the feeling, but at the end of the day, the condition must be faced alone. Even when another person has the same affliction, each afflicted person responds differently to it. Their bodies respond so differently to the same treatment regimen.

Seeing my post-ops. today, I was struck by how the mental state can really affect the person's dealing with their situation. I had two patients, one that came after I operated on her eye last week. Her case was extremely challenging and risky, but she has done excellently. Her vision went from Count Fingers to 20/25 today. She was smiling. Happy. Looked awesome. She felt good, said she was doing well, and taking great care of herself. Her case lasted almost 2 hours, while I struggled to harvest a graft for her eye and transplant it onto another site in her eye. Her tissue was thin and friable, and I sweated throughout the whole case. With each stitch, her tissue came apart from the graft. Then, on post-op. day 3, she poked herself in the eye with her steel antibiotic ointment salve tip and started bleeding from her eye. She came in to see me emergently and said timidly: "Did I ruin your graft?" I saw that it was in place and mercifully was intact. I treated her, patted her on the shoulder, and told her not to worry; that she did really well treating herself with her drops, with no one to help her. The past few days, she has come through beautifully, and all alone.

My next patient had the same exact surgery. Her case took less than an hour, and the results were perfection. The OR nurses and anesthetist even ooed and awed over the "beautiful result". She comes in with her husband and family in tow. She squints her eye shut and keeps rubbing at her eye, where the beautiful graft I harvested was transplanted. Her vision was count fingers and she is better than her pre-surgery vision near 20/25. She doesn't care things are looking great. She has a terrible horrible headache, and she's decided that nothing, not anything is going to make her feel better, because she is sure it is after having surgery that caused her headache. Her family shakes their head. They say she's been complaining all day about this and that for days. She is surrounded by her doting loved ones. They are her daily entourage. But her state of mind says that nothing is going to make her feel better or see better, though her surgery was by the textbook and her post-operative course was unventful and smooth.

At the end of the day, each patient has to work through their condition alone, in their own way, and in their own minds. Whether surrounded by people or alone, it is done in their own personal way.

My dearest, you are not alone. I know you may feel alone right now in your journey, but as you can see, so many many people love you so much and are right there with you all the way. And though you do face this alone, with your great mind and attitude, you will be like my number one patient, in whose case I actually struggled, and then she struggled all alone, but she is doing Beautifully. Perfectly.