The one other than the patient

When you come close to the illness of close-ones, there are several things that come to your mind.

The first is the diagnosis. How to identify the malady and plan the best medical course of action. But when these first steps are taken, you come across the more subtle, next ones.

You then turn your attention to the person who is in the immediate vicinity of the patient. Yes, the suffering of the patient is not in question. But, the immideate caregiver sometimes goes unnoticed. He/She is also mentally burdened by the weight of the situation. If it is a serious disease, then he faces into its eyes almost as much as the patient. Maybe even a little more so, since the responsibility of choosing a sound plan of action is often trusted upon him rather than the sick and weak.

Humans are humans. Yes, even the closest ones are only that. One can only hope that the conditioning through life and the values that one is taught through his formative years will truly come into light in such hardships. Love, affection and moral responsibility are the pillars on which the caregiver's efforts to stand by a patient rest on. Disease breaks the routine and challenges the steady flow of life. It takes strong moral conditioning on his part to keep everything on the side and focus on the job at hand, to stop the unrelenting march of the disease.