The Loneliness

I saw a patient the other evening for hip pain. She's in her 50's. She has breast cancer. She's been getting chemo. That scenario in itself is getting to be so common, it seems. Maybe it's just a function of my age. Maybe it's a reflection of my community. I don't know but it just seems to be all too common.

I saw her in one of our hospitals. She was down the hall, her room was dark, and she was lying in bed, hairless, half exposed, roasting with a fever, miserable with leg pain. Alone.

I saw that and I had to think, of all the miserable conditions in life, that had to be one of the worst. Alone, scared, and miserable. Needing relief when none is available. I mean, I see this stuff from time to time but I can't get over that impression. And it's not even that you can do a whole lot about it. Cancer is a part of life, part of being an animal. I'm a believer when it comes to prevention and to treatment, but a skeptic when it comes to eradication. I walk out of that room and I realize, I'm not afraid of cancer. I'm not afraid of dying. Given the choice, I'd certainly rather not endure pain and, fortunately, there are great options for treatment of pain. Frankly, like most people, I hope to just wake up dead some day.

Coming out of that room what I fear is loneliness. Sometimes I think it's loneliness that's our greatest epidemic. We treat it with distractions and we self medicate, but, at the end of the day, at the end of the hall, at the end of a life, it's loneliness that haunts us. Like many other ailments, loneliness is treatable. Like so many other ailments, too, it requires awareness, that you listen to your body and your mind. Treating loneliness requires you pay attention to who you are, what you're doing, and who's by your side. It requires you invest yourself. It's you more than others.

Successful treatment results in a life of comfort, calm, and inner peace, even when you're in a room by yourself-- and you don't have far to go.