doctor's life support

31st March: The Touch of a Human Hand

Jesus... touched him. Mark 1:41

I once had a leprosy patient for whom there seemed little we could do. His legs were a mass of ulcers, and each really needed amputation. His leprosy (tuberculoid) was burned out, but he felt rejected and had `turned his face to the wall'. I was reading a book about Paul Brand at the time and was struck by a comment that leprosy patients need to feel the touch of a human hand. So we shook hands with him on ward rounds -- all of us. The transformation was almost unbelievable. he began to smile, to enjoy the little daily ritual that cost us so little. He began to trust us -- even to the point of allowing us to amputate both his legs and fit him with prostheses. He walked -- perhaps for the first time for years. He was always to be seen around the town after that, smiling, and talking to people. The last time I saw him he was back at the hospital -- but this time as a sick visitor -- visiting one of the nurses who had tended him -- now herself ill (though not with leprosy).

It cannot have been coincidence that the thought that inspired our action came from the biography of a Christian who has taken much of the initiative in leprosy work. For the Christian is merely following in his Master's footsteps. The same challenge comes to us in different clinical situations -- the elderly patient who gets `passed by' on the ward round, the difficult depressive or schizophrenic, the smelly incontinent man, the alcoholic, the delinquent boy. All need human contact -- our eyes to meet theirs, our hands to touch theirs, and our words to go out to meet them in their need. I have a colleague who, at times when technological medicine has little to offer, shares with the patient a precious word from his store of poetry. What do we share?

I pray today for my least attractive patients. Help me
to see them through your eyes, to accept and understand
them as you accept and understand me, and to love them
with your love as those with whom you are glad to
associate, and for whom you found it worthwhile to give
your life.

Further reading: Mk 1:40-45. Mt 9:9-13. Lk 14:16-24.

PCB