One patient stood out today. She waited on the bench with a devastated face and when we made eye contact and I smiled at her politely, her face got sadder and she said something unintelligible from my distance and the normal Arab doushah. I wondered why she looked so scared.
I helped her walk into the examination room and I realised she came to the clinic alone. Stealing a look at her ticket, it stated she was 65. She came complaining of left axillary swelling and examination revealed left mastectomy.
The thought of recurrence is a nightmare for cancer patients, what more she was 65 and she came to the clinic alone. No one should ever be alone when they're scared.
She kept muttering to me in pity of herself but I didn't know what to say, I didn't know how to soothe her. Everything I thought of saying sounded like a lie, even robbuna yashfiik, matkhofish. If I were her I would probably be clobbering in tears until I was absolutely cleared.
I just stood beside her silently, my eyes expressing all the kindness and pained sympathy I could muster and offered her my hand. Reassured her after the doctor reassured her the swelling was subcutaneous and not a lymph node and helped her back on the waiting bench for her mammography investigation. I parted with her with a robbuna ma3aki and a small smile.
But her expression never wavered from the first time I saw her.
2 comments:
what does the last sentence mean? that she remained scared?
oh and what does robbuna yashfiik, matkhofish mean? =)
Yup. The last sentence means my words had no physical effect on her. She was still as scared as she was when she first entered the clinic.
Robbuna yashfiik means "may God cures you" and matkhofish is Egyptian slang for "dont be afraid".
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