I can tell she is trying to act as if being here at the std clinic isn’t a big deal.
As usual, I tell my patient that I will be good to her, take care to attempt to stick her only once to draw her blood and get her out of the chair as soon as possible with as little pain as possible.
She doesn’t respond. She is trying not to look at the needle, as do most of my patients. She is concentrating on the pictures and papers I have put on the wall to inspire my patients or to give them something “nice” to read while I am drawing their blood. For some of them it may be the only nice word they get all day. Who knows?
I make sure my words and touches are gentle and therapeutic for my patients. It may be the only “good” touch or word they get all day and I want to inspire them to give that good karma to someone else because they remember how reassuring it felt when they were uneasy and afraid. Still all of the goodness, reassurance and trust that I am attempting to pass on to this gal is hitting a brick wall. Her eyes are empty and I can tell she is asking herself all of the questions that we all ask ourselves when we are in trouble…. especially this sort of trouble… “What have I done now?, Why did I do that? Why didn’t he/she tell me?” and the all encompassing, mind boggling, “What now?”.
I ask her if she would like for me to count or just go for it? She doesn’t respond again.
She is still looking at the wall. I am hoping something has made some sense to her and she is feeling better by absorbing it a bit. I prepare the arm and begin to draw the blood. The moment the needle is inside the vein, the tears begin. Maybe the small pinch of the needle was simply the permission she needed to let go.
“May I have a tissue please?” she asks, embarrassed and sad faced, tears on their journey down her cheeks. I finish the draw, ask her to press on the cotton and reach for the paper towel dispenser telling her, “These aren’t exactly sandpaper but they also are not Puffs.” She buries her face. I do not want her to be embarrassed.
My compassion button has been pushed and activated. This is why I do this job, it is not glamorous, it does not use every skill I learned in school but having walked at least 5 miles in the shoes of every broken hearted person who sits in my chair I feel it does use the lessons – the very hard lessons – that life has taught me. One of those hard lessons is herpes. I work here for a reason. So I tell her, “I have sat in this very chair, please do not feel bad. Illness is not selective – if it is gonna get us – it is gonna get us. Illness does not care how much money we make or where we go to school or church or even what sort of car we drive.”
No response – only the constant flow of tears.
I know my patient is not going to leave the chair. She is curling up in a ball towards the wall. I grab more tissues and gently hand them to her. I push the door shut a bit.
I ask a difficult question. “Did someone hurt you? Do you need help?”
She erupts.
“YES!! He could have told me. He been my man for months and he couldn’t even tell me! His baby momma had to go and call me at 4 in the morning! I tried not to care about him having another girl; I cared about him…. he say he don’t love her but why he over there at 4 am? I tell you why….cause he already went and done this to her!
She already dead and now I’m gonna die too….he killed what I had left. Now I never gone have a baby, now no man gone want me! I’m messed up now.”
And more tears, more and more tears. I hand her more sandpaper Puffs.
I ask her “Why do you think you are messed up Boo? What did he not tell you?”
(I would like to thank whoEVER made the word “Boo” for friend. It is multi-purpose, comes off the end of your tongue, is recognized by most and sits well with my patients.)
She looks me straight in the eye for the first time since she has been in the room.
“His baby momma tol’ me! She tol’ me he has herpes and he give it to her and now she got to be careful when she has dis baby, maybe the baby will get it. I dunno if I care. I don’t wanna be hateful – I don’t want God to hate me cause I hate him but I hurt, an maybe dis isn’t all he give me. Di’we check me for hiv? Oh God! What if he gimme that too?” She is quietly breaking down in the chair. Her tears are racking her and still she tries to hold it together through this revolution – this sudden burst of painful “what ifs’.
I tell her that we have done an hiv test and it will be back before she leaves the clinic.
She is crying less now. She is trying to be big and brave again with little success.
I take her hand and look her straight in the eyes and tell her, “IF you really do have herpes – IF this is what is really happening – there is help for you. I have herpes. I am married. I have a wonderful life. This is not the end, maam; life begins over again so many times in our lives. We lose something and we gain something else.”
She looks at me as if I just told her the sky has fallen. “How do you gone stand there and tell me you have dis? You don’t act like it!” Not wanting to bring up that even a person with herpes doesn’t act a certain way, I remind her that I had told her I had sat in the same chair, felt the same way and admitted I had probably acted worse.
My patient takes her hand from mine, she stands up, I think she is going to leave the room. Have I upset her? She puts down her sandpaper Puffs – and she hugs me.
And cries a bit more. I tell her as she is hugging me that this is NOT the end and we really don’t even know if that is what it is yet. I tell her that I will be waiting when she comes out of the room with her clinician and I hope she will be smiling. In fact,
I am counting on it. I tell her if it is what the baby’s mother has told her it is – I will help her. But we will cross that bridge when we get there. I help her dry her eyes, give her one more little hug and tell her that after she gets her exam, I want her to come back and see me so I can know how she is.
There is a small light in her eyes that was not there before. She is just a tiny bit more alive than when I first saw her, a bit more hopeful perhaps. Again, she looks me straight in the eye and tells me “We gone figure dis out.” I tell her “Yes, we are.”
I believe she gave me the only small bit of a grin she had left in her. I gave her a wink and told her I would be here when her exam is done.
I am busy drawing more blood but I hear her called into a room. Her samples are taken and given to the lab. The patient is back in the waiting room nervously watching some television. In my heart I am praying the TV hasn’t been turned to Springer or some other nonsense show that might upset her. I try not to allow those types of shows in the clinic waiting room for a good reason. At the clinic we handle tough situations and on sensationalizing-type talk show, those tough situations are used as entertainment.
But she seems fine and is watching some old movie. Her Practitioner calls the patient back in. This is when they receive the results of their visit.
I am waiting.
I am stocking my room and sense someone is there, I look up, it is her…..and she is smiling! I put down my Sharps containers and she is coming into the room and she gives me another hug. NOT like the first one – no, this is so much different.
She has grabbed me and is holding me in a bear hug and patting me saying (nearly chanting!) “It izin’t herpes! It izin’t herpes! The doc say if dis is herpes he will eat his hat!” She is laughing, jovial and maybe a bit overly euphoric but hey! 20 minutes ago she said she was dead. The dead have suddenly come back to life with this bit of good news. I am elated for her.
She pulls back from our hug and pulls up her shirtsleeve, revealing a tattoo. It is a tattoo of a heart and it is made of bricks, only it is not finished. She says to me “I started this tattoo 3 years ago when my first ol’ man beat me and I ran away from him. When I get mad an’ sometime when I get hurts I go to the tattoo place and have another brick or two put in. This morning I told myself if I have the herpes I am filling it all in, ev’ry brick, and I am neva gone trust no one again, now I’m not gone do that today. I don’t have that herpes and I am happy. I am also happy not to have to go to the tattoo place cause it hurt when he does it.”
I am also very happy for my patient. She has been spared a life’s tragedy 1 in 4 of us live with every day. Many of us who are now reading this do have herpes and hopefully are making the most out of every day – despite this.
I tell her “I want you to think about not EVER having another brick tattooed onto that heart, not only because I hate to think that your young heart would be that hardened, but also because – doesn’t that mean they win? The person who hurt you and put another brink in your heart will be engraved on you and you cannot be rid of them. You will continue to carry them around with you brick by brick. Do not reward them with a permanent place on your body so that every time you see your tattoo – you remember they hurt you. Does that make any sense? Just think about it.”
I can tell that she is thinking about this. But I can also tell her little head is so full she will need time to digest all of this. She gives me a last little hug, says she has got to catch a bus, thanks me again and is gone. I think about how just 30 minutes ago she was thinking of being dead, of never trusting anyone again and of “marking herself” by her own sorrow.
I think of how much more damage she could have done to herself by possibly having a positive diagnosis of herpes – many have not survived well and did not even have a stranger to help them. These are the one’s that I worry about because that was once me. I was inconsolable when I received my diagnosis of herpes, I felt I had no one to turn to and if my furniture could talk, it would cuss me out for kicking it when I got home from the Dr’s. Appointment where I learned I have herpes. I may have damaged my furniture but I didn’t damage myself – not permanently anyway.
But I felt as if I had the word “Herpes” tattooed on my forehead. I felt as if anyone who looked at me would instantly know I have herpes. I felt “marked” by my life’s circumstance. I could not, in good conscience let this gal think that carving something so permanent and negative onto her skin was a good or productive thing. Life scars us as it is. We all have little battle scars just from living, life is hard sometimes and I felt in her case there was no extra need to advertise further.
I do not like to leave a job unfinished, but in this case, I would make an exception and not finish this heart tattoo made of bricks.
I am hoping she feels the same. I think she did when she left.
This story was written by my friend Amy.
If you’d like to be in touch with Amy her e-mail address is: amypb1129[AT]yahoo[DOT]com
Inspirational Stories
Herpes Help
