Smiles...

So today I made a patient smile. Not in the tell a stupid joke and get a half hearted laugh kind of way, but in the pure joy kind. You see, this patient had a choroidal melanoma many years ago for which she underwent radiation and plaque therapy. She lost all vision in that eye. We had been following her for quite some time for a persistent anterior uveitis and increased intraocular pressure that would cause severe eye pain. In other words, she had cancer in eye that was treated but left her blind and in pain. For many months I followed her, increasing her steroid medication, then decreasing it, and increasing it again; but was having no luck in consistent pain relief. This is when I started talking to her about enucleation, or removal of the eyeball. Scary, right? She was not interested, but after much counseling, she agreed. She underwent surgery to remove the eyeball and the entire tumor came out with clean margins, so the cancer treatment had worked. But now she was left with an empty socket.  I suggested she try a prosthetic and I did some research into ocularists. She went and got a prosthetic eye and came back to my office today for a follow-up. I walked into the room, expecting to see the same patient I had seen from so many previous visits; however, she was different; she was smiling. This is the first time I have ever seen this patient smile. It warmed my soul over a hundred times. She was happy, joyfully happy. She told me today that her son wanted the name of the ocularist that I sent her to. When she asked him why, he told her because he wanted to thank the doctor that gave him his mom back. This is why I do what I do. I did not diagnose the cancer, nor did I treat the cancer. I treated a woman who was broken with kindness and love and today she smiled.