She's come undone

This is my second post of the day, inspired by what happened not 30 minutes ago. In my line of work, I meet all sorts of people. Not just people of different nationalities...yea, I've seen English, Africans, Maldivians, Cypriots even Kazakhs...What I mean is people of different attitudes and differing outlooks in life. Ok, also some disturbed patients which is really what this post is about.

A young lady I haven't seen in a while, showed up suddenly today in the clinic. From the beginning we have all realised she's different. Yea, we can all recognise the desperate housewife kinda patient...they are normally also a little strange...but this young lady is different. She has the demeanor of an adolescent, a young girl of about 11, although she is in her 30's. Very sensitive to sounds and drills, its hard to treat her...but we've managed in the past. Today however, was not one of her good days...a brief talk revealed a difficult week for her. Life has not been easy for this lady. I can only hypothesise that she has been through a lot of mental and emotional strain in the past, making her regress to a state in her life when things were a lot simpler, like her youth. I think she almost broke down today and all I could do was be gentle, reschedule her appointment. I really don't know if she will return.

Her fragile state of mind brings me to question what and where society is going. It seems to me that the pressure of work and to a certain extent of surviving is increasing drastically. I see many people headed her way...the stress and anxiety ( not just from the fact that they are seeing a dentist) is very apparent. I have patients who see me just because they feel comfy enough on the chair to talk to someone, who listens...strange isn't it? One would think the dental chair wouldn't be that comforting. If we look carefully, we can see that many people in society today have some sort of emotional disturbance or other...all those mental health campaigns were justified.

How many of us out there ever had times when we felt the world caving around us? Or that we just couldn't take it anymore? One more push and we'd just break? I somehow think that in my parents time, life was indeed much simpler. The stress to earn more just to survive was not really there. Traffic then certainly wasn't stressful and people back then were definitely more tolerant of each other. The crime rate was lower and they'd never heard of people being blown up now did they?

I'm reading this book by Wally Lamb called She's Come Undone which is the tittle for this post for good reason. It aptly describes a young woman who has gone off the deep end. Though in this story, her childhood is blamed, I can empathise and I think many of us can as well, with what she goes through. A good read.

As for the patient of mine, I hope she finds the strength to pull through and carry on with life and I hope i have the strength, never to fall over the edge.