I'm rarely at a loss for words during team conferences with my patients and their families. I've done it enough times that I'm usually prepared to answer even the toughest questions: "Is my eyesight going to come back?" "Will my sister have to live in a nursing home?" "Is my husband ever going to get better?" Yesterday I was not prepared for the question a patient asked me.
She'd put on sixty pounds since she'd been with us as a resident at our facility, and she was feeling sensitive about it. It was likely a side effect of the medications I'd been prescribing, medications that were necessary to keep her from screaming at the top of her lungs all day. After eight months of recovery she'd finally regained enough awareness to realize that she couldn't see very well and probably never would, that she wouldn't be able to take care of herself, not to mention her baby daughter, and that she was seventy pounds heavier than she used to be.
She asked me, "Doctor, am I overweight?" Um, um, um . . . I could only stutter. I could tell by the look on her face that no answer from me might as well have been a "yes" answer from me. The nurse next to me said, "Honey, you are a beautiful young woman." And her face immediately brightened. THANK GOD FOR NURSES.
After the conference, the team told me, "You cannot hesitate when a woman asks you that question!" I confessed this was uncharted territory for me, never having had a wife or a girlfriend to ask me if she looked too big in something she was wearing. Now I know. Lesson learned. The correct answer to that question is always, first, "You are beautiful."