When I was reading Lucy Grealy’s account on her emotional journey that started with her tooth cancer and was carried along through numerous surgeries, I was shocked about how alone she was. It seemed that there was no one that she could share her emotions with, even through her very first experience with her cancer, as she says, “…i began defining myself this way, equating strength with silence.” (2). It seemed as if she was thrown into a bunch of procedures as a kid; knew no more than to sit quiet while adults spent all day poking and prodding her. As I read Grealy’s account further, she continued to suffer alone through her unbearable surgeries and her emotional journey of accepting herself as a “normal” society member, even after becoming cure of the disease. This reminds me of a time last year in which I had to give a presentation on Seborrheic Dermatitis, a disease that causes severe dandruff, leaving the sufferer self conscious of their place in society. I explored that although this disease is non life-threatening (and even sometimes painless) in a clinical manifestation, it served a great amount of distress just by the way society placed these patients. A lot of what accounts for a patient’s distress with an illness is determined by society, how the patient views themselves with the disease, upon many other variables. Grealy proves this to be true because even after she was free of the disease, she was left in much long term suffering that took over her life. My question is, if the doctors or medical professionals not only treated the clinical aspect of the disease, but in turn, took time to listen to her and allow her to share her emotions with them, would she still suffer to extent that she had?
