Our Health and the Luck of the Draw
By DANIELLE OFRI, M.D.
NYT
Sometimes you hear stories from your patients that leave you staggered by the caprice of life. A young West African patient told me how his extended family had trudged through the forest on foot to escape rebels. He was 10 years old at the time. At one point in the journey, he had to urinate. He excused himself and retreated several feet into the bush. Moments later shots rang out. When he finally had the courage to crawl back out onto the path, he saw that his entire family had been killed in an ambush.
After that, he wandered alone through the countryside, a child with no resources, crossing paths with some who would try to kill him and others who might offer help. An ongoing series of chance encounters eventually brought him to New York City. To this day he does not comprehend how he survived. Nor can I.
We imagine medicine as a rational science, and we imagine our attention to our lives and our bodies pays off in reasonably predictable ways. But our health and well-being is much more bound to random chance than we’d like to think.
For one patient of mine, it was a car accident that changed her life — entirely for the worse. Her injuries healed, but ongoing pain and post-traumatic stress derailed her, and she has become a permanent patient. Her life now revolves around doctors’ appointments, therapy, tests and medications. She never recovered her spirit or her outlook on life.
(More here.)
NYT
Sometimes you hear stories from your patients that leave you staggered by the caprice of life. A young West African patient told me how his extended family had trudged through the forest on foot to escape rebels. He was 10 years old at the time. At one point in the journey, he had to urinate. He excused himself and retreated several feet into the bush. Moments later shots rang out. When he finally had the courage to crawl back out onto the path, he saw that his entire family had been killed in an ambush.
After that, he wandered alone through the countryside, a child with no resources, crossing paths with some who would try to kill him and others who might offer help. An ongoing series of chance encounters eventually brought him to New York City. To this day he does not comprehend how he survived. Nor can I.
We imagine medicine as a rational science, and we imagine our attention to our lives and our bodies pays off in reasonably predictable ways. But our health and well-being is much more bound to random chance than we’d like to think.
For one patient of mine, it was a car accident that changed her life — entirely for the worse. Her injuries healed, but ongoing pain and post-traumatic stress derailed her, and she has become a permanent patient. Her life now revolves around doctors’ appointments, therapy, tests and medications. She never recovered her spirit or her outlook on life.
(More here.)
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