“Just a Sliver of Me!”
“I was just sitting there getting nothing done, feeling overwhelmed and discouraged,” said my patient, his eyes flashing, “and then I suddenly realized, ‘You have ADD!’ ”
He frowned, indignant : “It’s hard, because everyone jokes about it: ‘I’m so ADD!’ No one believes it’s for real. It is for real. You have been trying to tell me this for 2 years now. You see just a sliver of me. It’s more than taking medicine. That’s the easy part. I have to do the rest. I have to get myself organized and keep myself organized. This is serious. It’s really messing up my life.”
As I was listening, I was doing my best to maintain my professional demeanor, but inside I was yelling, “Yesssssssss!”
What suddenly makes a patient able to hear what I am telling him? More to the point, though, what makes it possible for a patient to listen to the wisdom inside herself? Damned if I know, but as a clinician I keep on trying. The clinical skill involved is what Sheldon Roth, MD, a colleague of mine, calls the “art of wooing nature.” Well, sometimes nature is reluctant to be wooed.
As my patient said, “You only see just a sliver of me.” I have to recognize that, to keep my limitations in mind. Seeing “just a sliver” reminds me that I have to do more with patients than just prescribe medication and then monitor them to be sure they are taking it correctly. That’s fine with me, actually, because I have no interest in just prescribing medicine for patients. In some settings writing prescriptions is all the doctor has time to do. Not for me, lucky that I am. I get to see them whole, not settle for what I see in the “sliver of me.”
