Fog

I sat with my patient to discuss her progressive disease. It has now spread to many sites and it was deemed incurable. We had done several tests, and that much was certain at this point. I sat across from her and her mother. I started the conversation about treatment, but I felt I could not complete it. My patient got distressed and was no longer receptive to the information I was trying to relay. In addition to the tears in her eyes, the air between us felt foggy. I was not expecting her to “bounce back” and be with me in the session just yet. I wanted to say, “Go home come back in a week”, but I find that most patients want me to still speak after they’ve mentally left the session. They want me to go on a soliloquy penetrating the fog. I find that most want some instantaneous miracle to come out of my mouth. It saddens them further when I do not have that miracle. But I have to get through this conversation about the treatment, to get some sort of plan in place. All I want to say is go home and come another day.

 

Her mother took center stage with tears in her eyes and started asking questions to make sense of the decisions that needed to be made. Another set of ears to determine the next course of She pulled me in and pushed on the discussion in the midst of the fog that now clouds the mind of my patient. My patient was tearful, and her mind preoccupied and weary of what she is about to face. What do you say to someone who is young who has been robbed of the years yet to come?

 

A fog is blinding, the road that was clear is now murky. There are many dangers. I have never liked driving through a foggy day. I always say when it will end, having always to remind myself that it will eventually end. My eye sight limited, my vision obscured. My senses are heightened, ready to react, and my fears accentuated. I can only imagine the burden a diagnosis such as this places on the patient. When a fog descends upon your life, it’s not a highway, a road or an alley, but rather your life. I reflected on this, as drove in this morning through the thick fog that had engulfed Iowa City. The clouded roads, nowhere to hide from it, affecting everyone. I know that it eventually lifts but sometimes the feeling that it will not, overpowers. That is the time I wish I could tell my patient go home, and come out when the weather clears up.

 

I can’t lift the fog even if I try. The fog is in front of your eyes. The fog is in your way, the fog is in your life right now; but I know it will lift one day, and I hope that day is soon.