Wounded Healer

It’s in the nature of things that some illnesses and accidents come. For two weeks we tasted the pleasure of a lakeside cottage. Then the accident. It was minor, but I was grateful for the insights I received as I moved through it. 

What happened was that I’d slipped on a dock one wet stormy afternoon, and I’d broken my wrist. There followed a day and a half in hospital. I assume this was because of the patient's age!  

In hospital or at any time of sickness we are more (than usual) sensitive to the attitudes of others towards us. More than anyone else one person comes to mind. My first impression as she walked into the lounge and called my name was one of kindness and friendliness and, for some reason, weariness. She is I would guess in her early sixties, her hair greyish, short, neat. When she asked me to follow her, I noticed she moved slowly with a tentative slightly lurching walk. And as she asked me to prepare for the X-ray, she chatted gently and reassuringly. Her voice was quiet, her accent north of England. Then as she placed my arm in the correct position on the machine, I saw her fingers, delicate, spotlessly clean, already twisted in the unmistakable contours of arthritis. 

I suppose it was the way she tended to me and, I assume, others. She not only witnessed pain but obviously experienced it with grinding persistence, I could not help but see her as a kind of wounded hearer. And precisely because she was wounded it gave her a sympathy and gentleness that communicated itself in every word and touch. I was very moved.

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Medical illustration of pain in a broken wrist iStock 1438877349