I find it fascinating when patients decide to open up to me. Sometimes it's when I'm pushing a medication through their IV, or I could be emptying their Foley catheter. Often it's when I'm doing something task oriented and not when my gaze is focused on them and I'm asking what else can I do for you? It's as if in that particular moment when I'm present but not expecting anything from them they want to share a piece of themselves with me. A gentlemen was telling me back in the "old country" they don't have doctors. There are medicine women and pharmacists who treat the towns people. This was back in the 1940s, but not much has changed since. To have a hernia removed you don't go to a hospital and have it surgically removed, a medicine woman would come to the home and burn it off. He had his hernia "burned off" several times as a youth, but it kept coming back. He's lived with it for 70 years. When I asked him if he planned to have it surgically removed someday now he has the resources, he told me 'Nah, it's a part of me. I've had it this long' Another interesting story I heard recently was of a young boy in Guatemala who lived by the sea. When he was only six years old he witnessed German and U.S warfare during WWII. Him and his friends would watch the submarines come in from Germany and the US had a base there. He said it was something he would never ever forget.
pixelskylines
ellievsbear
snowghoul
baratheonpilled
gummygunk
tangentwithtanner
