Disappointment is almost always predicated on a prior expectation. That moment in time where you determine in your brain that ‘x’ + time = ‘y.’ Whether or not the equation is grounded in science or emotion is irrelevant. You consciously or unconsciously link a present item with a future item.
Falling sick involves a rapid and unexpected deterioration of expectations. Whatever was on the to-do list for the day gets an automatic up-chuck out the window. Abandon all and head for the hills (ie. hospital).
Part of the human condition is a capacity to feel sorry for yourself. That moment of reflection where you somehow feel your personal situation is unique and especially intolerable.
Two patients may suffer the exact same clinical condition scientifically speaking, but their experience of their illness varies exponentially. One person with a heart attack minimizes a nagging feeling of indigestion, the other feels a titanic-sized weight on their chest. One person’s broken bone is popping out of their skin yet they remain zen-like, the other is shrieking and yelling holy je$u$(!), bloody murder(!)
I’ve written some generalities about our classmates, our classes, our professors, and now it’s time to write about the key reason we are all here: our patients.
There are so many to choose from to talk about, I am overwhelmed. But today there was one patient’s smile that shined so brightly, I had to remember her. “Rosmeri.” She’s 17. Her son is 1 year old. She is one of the most cachetic and complicated we’ve seen: she caries a dual diagnosis of metastatic choriocarcinoma superinfected with TB.
These are her lungs:
Yet, she recounted with the most radiant smile how she survived her time comatose in ICU. Her courage so strong in having 5 foreign doctors gawking over her unfriendily with N95 masks. She still saw the beauty in the world around her.
Any health care practitioner can tell you that treating the sick, brushing shoulders with those on the brink of passing to the other side – it changes your own level of what constitutes grounds for self-pity.
As the unexpected arrives with regularity in all of our lives, I often find myself with ever-increasing gratitude towards that which patients teach us.
While we should acknowledge the very real and important reactions to illness and the unexpected in our lives; throwing self-pity out the proverbial window is the point at which we begin to live, and to heal.
Hopefully Rosmeri will live long enough that her son might get to know his mother. It’s doubtful. But I hope he will have a caregiver in his life that will at least teach him to see beauty in the everyday things, just like his mother did.