When Patients Don’t Get Better
It is deeply fulfilling when a patient improves through the choices they make for their own health. I believe they tap into an inner healer — one accessible through their own intuition and agency. I often tell them, “Now you’re making your doctor cry happy tears,” when they share their victories with me.
And then there are the other moments. The ones where our beloved patients do not get better.
Despite how hard they fight, some grow worse. Witnessing another person’s suffering is its own kind of pain. I stretch myself searching for answers, trying everything I can think of — and sometimes, after all that effort, they still decline. Learning to hold myself steady in those moments has become essential. There is exasperation, too, when a body seems to react against everything we offer. I feel deep compassion for the physicians who finally say, “I have nothing left to give.” Because there are times, I feel exactly that.
In those moments, I listen. I let them pour out the pain of living in their darkness, of seeing no way through. I sit with them as they teeter on the edge of sanity and what they can bear. I return to my breath. I keep my own nervous system grounded. I am learning to hold myself as I hold space for that weight.
We can do everything right — and they can still suffer more. There are no clean answers for that. But here is what I do know: sometimes the most profound act of love is simply witnessing someone’s magnificence in the middle of their struggle. Listening, even when it is almost too much to hear, is among the greatest gifts we can offer. Love takes many forms, and this kind demands that we not look away when looking away would be so much easier. It means seeing their beauty when they have forgotten it entirely.
The only way I have found to do this is by first learning not to look away from myself — in my own trials, my own darkness, my own survival. That may be the only medicine we can offer, and it is simple, honest, and enough.
