Skin Deeper

It bemuses me how unlike myself I feel tonight, freshly showered at an unusual hour, with the unfamiliar scent of brand new shampoo and soap drifting around me. It's like being in the skin of a stranger, and I'm surprised every time I move and the air stirs. I catch myself breathing deeply and looking over my shoulder before I remember, again, that the unfamiliar feeling is nothing more than a trick of my senses.

I received a text from an unfamiliar number yesterday. My patient, the one who was in several weeks ago, is back in the hospital--I'd given my contact info to her granddaughter in case that happened, and so I went in to see her this afternoon. She is diagnosed with esophageal cancer, now. I sat and talked to her for half an hour, and she held my hand the whole time. She's so tiny...lost a great deal of weight. My heart breaks for her. It isn't very often that you meet people who just seem good, but she is like that. You can tell it in the way her family surrounds her and the way they interact. It's good, and strong and loving, and she's decided that I'm also just another one of her kids--told me that, today. And then she followed that I needed to make sure and remember to take care of myself. It put a warm spot in my heart. Of all the patients I see every day, everyone I interact with, she got under my skin and it looks like she's there to stay. I'm pretty happy about that.

We use that phrase, "getting under my skin", to describe something that slides past our defenses to the core of who we are underneath, where it matters. Much of the time it's a negative connotation and comes with a lot of pain attached. I know that in my more self-effacing moments I tend to wonder if mine is too thin, but in the end it just turns out that I'm no good at defending myself against people I love. I just won't do it. I carry them under my skin all the time, as close to my heart as I can, where the most damage could be inflicted if they so choose; but where, in turn, that love is a shield, a strong, warm, living guard against the pain that is a byproduct of living. I've got such a strong family, and such good friends. I feel quite loved tonight.

Also, I am lying in my bed smelling my hair because it is new and different and ridiculously soft. This new shampoo stuff...wow. I smell delicious.  What can I say? It's the little things.