Letter to Joseph upon becoming a Physician's Assistant in Pensacola, Florida

Upon observing the beggars of India, someone asked Mother Teresa,

“what could be worse than to have no food?”;

“what could be worse than being without any money at all?”;

“What is worse than having no clothes?”

She replied, “Loneliness.”

-----------------------------------------------

There are many terrible things that people in the medical field can observe: 

a bald child being treated for cancer; 

a severely burned patient; 

a mother cradling a dead SIDS baby in the emergency room.

But I believe that the most terrible thing that you will see

will be loneliness.

Standing in a doorway or from a hallway, you will see an elderly

man struggling to get himself undressed and into a hospital gown. 

Undressing oneself, especially in a hospital, seems like such a lonely task.

Hospitals are built for loneliness, whether it is waiting for the

dawn to break and the nurses to bring the patient to surgery, or

sitting in a room recovering as the minutes and hours drag by

like a life sentence.

The thing about loneliness is what you will observe in others.

is that you will come as a quick flash. It is your own.

mortality and the day that you too will struggle button by

button to remove your shirt, then your pants, then your socks,

then your soul.

Thank you, Joseph, for you will stop the nakedness of the

institution by reaching out with your understanding to end the

loneliness wherever you are.

That old man who couldn’t quite tie his gown is me. 

The old lady who blushes during the examination is your mother. 

We will always be with you, and you will never be lonely.