Friday Reflection 50: The Look

TR is a 72-year-old woman, a retired executive, who had been in excellent health until she began experiencing exertional dyspnea and palpitations. After waiting out the symptoms for about a month, she called and made an appointment to see her primary care doctor. The day before her appointment, she awoke unable to move her entire right side. With difficulty, she reached for her phone and called her daughter. Her daughter was unable to understand her and called 911.

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Someday, I will close up my practice and be left with an enormous hole in my life. I will miss the 12-24 people I get to spend time with every day during their appointments. I will miss the sometimes-intense relationships with a fantastic diversity of people. I will miss working to make people’s lives better and longer. I will miss the diagnostic puzzles and the reward of seeing someone “get better” over days, or weeks, or months.

I will also miss my colleagues, the clinicians who have chosen to dedicate their careers to helping people. I will miss meeting the next generation of doctors, nurses, psychologists, physical therapists, pharmacists, and the like.

I will not miss The Look.

I was well into my career when I first recognized The Look. I had just returned to our inpatient service after a leave to care for my mother, who had experienced a serious, life-altering illness.

A few days after my return, my team admitted TR. She had been in excellent health until a few months before admission, when she began to lose weight and have some trouble sleeping. More recently, the symptoms had progressed to include exertional dyspnea and palpitations. Our evaluation revealed hyperthyroidism from a toxic multinodular goiter, leading to atrial fibrillation, leading to a large, embolic, left middle cerebral artery stroke.

From a medical perspective, the case was classic and straightforward. My resident assigned TR to a medical student as she thought it was a perfect teaching case.

On the second day of TR’s admission, I met her daughter and learned more about TR. She had grown up on Chicago’s South Side and had always been a star student. She excelled in the public school system and was eventually awarded a full scholarship to the University of Illinois. When she left for Urbana-Champaign, it marked the first time she had left Chicago.

She graduated summa cum laude from U of I and began working in a corporate office back in Chicago. She excelled in this world as well, eventually managing a fifty-person team.

She had one daughter, whom she adored, and two grandchildren. She retired just before her 70th birthday. She was thriving in retirement, traveling alone and with friends, and serving on two corporate boards. She loved her work on boards because it enabled her to meet a small group of African American women executives of her generation who shared similar experiences.

The Look on her daughter’s face was familiar to me. I recognized it because I knew I had worn it a few weeks before, caring for my mother. The Look reflected the emotions TR’s daughter articulated to (and for) me. There was sadness and anger for what her mother had lost. There was anxiety about what was next for her mother. There was a realization that her mother’s situation would affect her. Their relationship had permanently changed. TR’s daughter spoke of how her mom had always been her foundation. Overnight, the daughter had become the middle of the sandwich. She now had to care for her kids and her mother. There was also a little bit of guilt. How can I worry about the impact this will have on my life when my mother is now disabled?

Seeing The Look that I knew we shared, the empathy I felt for TR’s daughter made it difficult for me to play my usual role in counseling and planning. I told my resident and the case manager they would have to “do this one without me.”

Since that day ten years ago, I recognize The Look not infrequently. I see it on the children who suddenly lose a parent, while gaining responsibility for that parent. I also see it on the faces of husbands and wives when their partners begin to fail. In these situations, my relationship tends to be different. While the adult child is, more often than not, a stranger to me, both members of the couple are often my patients. While I care for one partner with cognitive and/or physical decline, I care for the other living with the trauma of this decline.

Filial love and romantic love (if this is the proper term for a decades-long relationship) are different; spouses experience something different than children. The spouse is not only mourning a relationship but also often dealing with direct caregiving. In addition, most couples evolve into productive codependency. Physical tasks are shared – who cooks, who cleans, who does the taxes, who fixes the sink – as well as cognitive ones. Who is better with names, keeps track of birthdays, maintains relationships with friends. While the sandwiched child must manage a new relationship, the spouse must manage losing a part of themselves.

I am being overly writerly here. If you showed me 10 pictures of traumatized people, I would not be able to identify who had The Look. I only recognize it when I see the person and hear about the situation. As a clinical skill, though, recognizing this sign is useful. Like knowing what needs to be done when I smell the scent of alcoholic ketoacidosis, or hear the familiar ramblings of delirium tremens, I have come to understand the role I need to play when I see The Look.

When I give up clinical practice, I will be happy to see The Look less. The human tragedies that lead to it are situations I’ll be happy to avoid.

Photo Credit: Baptista Ime James

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