Once upon a time, on the day after my birthday, I had a doctor's appointment to examine a growth that had cropped up beside my nose near the corner of one eye. It was right about where the nose piece of my glasses hit, so it wasn't really noticeable, but it wasn't supposed to be there and had developed rather quickly. Thus, I had decided to see the doctor about it.
My sister and her husband were in town for my birthday the day before and were still here, so my sis accompanied me to the appointment. Honestly, I didn't think I needed that much support, but then I had no idea what was to come.
The first thing the doctor did was to shoot that part of my face with lidocaine, or whatever it is that they use to numb tissues. I won't lie: those injections hurt on their way in. I think my eyes watered, but in short order, the whole side of my face was numb. Couldn't feel a thing. Likewise, I couldn't see what they were doing while they were doing it, which was probably merciful. Then, the doctor shaved off the growth level with the skin and whisked the sample off to the lab to be biopsied while I layed on the table, waiting for the results before I could know what would happen next. Shari and I chit-chatted until the doctor returned with the news that the bump was a squamous cell carcinoma. Skin cancer. I'd had a cancerous lesion removed from my nose years before, so I wasn't really concerned. Besides, there aren't many options. If you have a cancerous lump on your face, you have it removed. Period. Worry about the rest later.
To this day, I'm not sure how it all worked. The doctor removed the area around the bump in order to get it all, then he had to "borrow" skin from the rest of my face to cover the hole. He followed the line of my nose to the best of his ability, stitched me up, put a bandage patch that covered part of my left cheek and up over my nose, then sent me home with a prescription for pain killers. I didn't even get a look at what had been done until the next day when I removed the bandage. Yikes! I had ten very black stitches running from the corner of my eye and down the side of my nose, for about two inches. I had gone to the doctor looking like a normal middle-aged school teacher and came out looking like Frankenstein's monster!
I was happy to be rid of the cancer, but I'm a woman. Much of how I feel about myself is based on how I look. I mean, I have to be out in the community with my students, their parents, and my fellow teachers. I hadn't given anyone any warning about how I would look when I returned to school because I'd had no idea the day before. In fact, I'm not sure anyone knew that I was taking the day off for a doctor appointment. Thus, I was traumatized. The stitches on my face were an affront to my self-esteem. I didn't cry, but I sure felt like hiding, so I took the day after the surgery off, just for reasons of vanity.
By the second day after surgery, when I returned to school, my left eye was nearly swollen shut and bruised. I looked awful, and I knew I looked awful, but I wasn't in pain. Although I had filled the prescription for the pain killer, I never took it because even after the numbness wore off, the area didn't hurt. (I don't know why I am blessed like that. I've had some serious surgeries before that just didn't cause physical pain during the healing process.) I was concerned enough about the appearance of my eye that I stopped at the doctor's office on my way home from school just to ask if the reaction was normal. He declared that it was somewhat atypical but nothing to be alarmed about. He gave me a cortisone shot in the area, and home I went. The swelling and bruising went down quickly. Before long, all I had were the stitches to reveal that anything had ever happened to me.
And just how did people at school react to my looks?
1. I ran into the principal in the hall. He asked if I'd been in a car accident. (He had been in a really bad one many years before so was sympathetic to what he imagined had happened to me.) When I told him that it was all just due to a medical procedure, we both just went about our business.
2. My high school students were curious but seemed not to care much. I had one student who hid her eyes and said, "I can't look at you! It looks like it hurts!" I assured her that it didn't, so we got down to the lesson of the day.
3. In the hallway, I talked to colleagues about various questions and issues at hand. Interestingly, none asked what had happened to my face. Their reactions came in three categories.
Category A folks talked to me, all the while pretending that they didn't see anything different about my appearance. What's up with that? Do I normally look so bad that they didn't feel the need to mention it? Did they think that mentioning it would remind me of the trauma, so they were trying to be merciful? Or did they just not know what to say so said nothing?
Category B folks were the ones, when told the story of how my face came to be all stitched up, looked at me and said, "Oh, it doesn't look so bad." Whaaat? Are you kidding me?? Okay...in that case, let's put these stitches on YOUR face and see if you still think it doesn't look so bad!
Category C consisted of one--ONE--reaction that came from one of our down-to-earth, older educators who took one look at me and said, "OMG, Peg. They really did a number on you!"
Can you guess which of the category responses I appreciated the most? Ding, ding, ding! Yep...it was Category C, the one that acknowledged how bad I looked (and how much like a victim I surely felt). She didn't pretend that nothing was different about the way I looked, nor did she attempt to minimize it by suggesting it was okay. She took one look and called a spade a spade, which validated how I was feeling. I just wanted to put my head on her shoulder and blubber, "Yes, they did! They hurt me!" But I didn't. I wrote it down in my mental book of memories, never to be forgotten.
A month after my surgery, everything was back to normal. The scar, which is now simply a white line, can be successfully covered with makeup and my glasses. No one even notices it. At all. And the cancer has never come back. Win!
I have written about this before. Why, then, am I writing about it again? Two reasons. One is the fact that my daughter had some unexpected minor surgery on her bottom lip yesterday. She went to the doctor about a lump that came up on her lip after some dental work. The ENT specialist determined that it was a mucocele and decided to remove it. Thus, she has stitches on her lip and the tissues just on the back side of it. Her lip hurts and is quite swollen, and today she has some appointments that will take her out in public feeling like a freak. Oh, I do so understand!! The other reason has to do with the lessons I learned, both as a victim and as an observer, in dealing with people who have experienced some form of emotional trauma. What should you do? What should you say?
My experience is that people--good people--want to express their sympathies to those who are grieving some kind of loss. (Yes, having your face carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey counts, even if only a temporary condition.) The problem comes in knowing what to do or say to help. Perhaps talking about the incident or the death of a loved one will cause the sufferer to hurt more. Perhaps it is best that they just try to forget about it. So they say nothing, or very little. Perhaps the sufferer will take comfort in knowing that what happened to them or their loved one is for the best. Maybe telling them that the scar doesn't look so bad or the deceased person is in a "better place" will ease those awkward moments of not knowing what to say. (I don't think so, but I would be a rich person if I could collect money for every time I heard that. I jokingly mention to people that they should not suggest that I'm in a better place after I die because they don't know what type of life I've lived!)
It's actually good for people to talk about their feelings in a traumatic situation. It's probably better to say SOMETHING rather than nothing at all, but it is insensitive to suggest that a person suffering from trauma isn't justified in feeling as they do. People often feel relief when a suffering loved one passes, but they also understand that their lives will never be the same again. They are scared and hurt, and worried about how things will happen in the future. Telling them that things are "for the best" may very well be true, but it doesn't help.
When I was a sophomore in high school, my French teacher's husband died suddenly from a heart attack. Mrs. Saroka was Jewish. I had heard that people of the Jewish faith "sit shiva" for seven days, accepting visitors into the home of the deceased. I wanted to pay my respects to Mrs. Saroka. I took a friend with me and showed up at her apartment just to tell her that we missed her at school and hoped she was well. (I'm not even sure that I called to say I was coming!) I had no clue what else to do or say. I was a kid. I just knew I was one of her students, and I wanted her to know that I cared. I will never know if my visit was appreciated or just annoying, but I did something.
I guess that's the answer to the question about how one should treat those around them, especially those who are suffering. You may not be able to change the circumstances, but the person will always remember how you came and sat with him/her for awhile. Listen. You don't have to say much, but say something. Don't ask for them to contact you if they need anything, because they won't. If you know there is something you can do for them, do it. Do something. It can--and will--be you sitting in the sufferers place some day.
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