fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Perspective

My physical scars are minimal, and I know the history of each and every one.

Both of my knees have “eyes”—little scars from various scrapes and stumbles. There is a long scar across my back that I was “born with,” upon arriving in the world through an incision in my mother’s abdomen during our family doctor’s first and only C-section delivery. Apparently, I had huddled too close to the edge of the womb.

I acquired my most recent scar—a chunk out of my right breast due to a lumpectomy for “stage 0 DCIS” (ductal carcinoma in situ)—a few years ago. Postsurgery, in the changing room of the radiation treatment suite, another patient noted my scar and commented, “Wow, they really mangled you!” Yet her head scarf, and the semicircle of welts beneath her breast implants, indicated that she had actually traveled a much rougher road than I had.

Life is all about perspective.

Anonymous

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