"Years ago, I was treating a woman in her mid-sixties with chronic foot ulcers from diabetes. Medically, we were doing everything right. The right dressings, offloading, antibiotics, regular check-ups. But her wounds weren't healing. I couldn't understand why. I grew frustrated. I started questioning my treatment plan. I blamed myself. Then one day, she said softly, "Sometimes I don't even want them to heal.""
"She wasn't being difficult. She was being honest. Her husband had passed, she lived alone, and these appointments were one of the few times someone checked in on her, looked her in the eye, and asked how she was. Her wounds gave her a reason to be seen. That stopped me in my tracks. I realized I had been treating her foot, but I wasn't seeing her, not fully."
A podiatrist encountered patients whose physical wounds failed to heal despite appropriate medical interventions. One patient revealed that she sometimes did not want wounds to heal because clinic visits provided rare human contact after her husband's death. The clinician recognized that focusing solely on physical treatment overlooked deeper emotional and social needs. Medical training had emphasized resilience, efficiency, and suppression of vulnerability, which contributed to emotional disconnection for both clinician and patient. Integrating attention to emotional wounds alongside clinical care can improve healing and restore empathy and connection in caregiving relationships.
Read at Tiny Buddha
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]