Five Minute Friday

Today's prompt: Afraid

Afraid. It's a lonely word. You can be fearful with other people around, but the fera itself is personal, so nobody can really know where your head is at that very moment. At least, I don't think they can.

I think it's safe to say we can define fear and we can certainly identify people acting fearfully. We can even quantify fear with things like heart rate, breathing, sweating, and blood pressure. But I don't think we can presume to know exactly what somebody is feeling, we can only measure and quantify indirectly.

I sometimes wondered how much of my patients' physiologic changes were due to pain versus fear. The two probably blur together anyway in drugged hazes. In one particular hospital, each ICU room had a tv and stereo system. On nights, I'd turn the lights down as much as I reasonably could and turn on the local Christian musical station quietly (again, if reasonable). I just hoped that through the sighs, beeps, clicks, whirs, and other sounds of the ICU, they would feel loved and not alone or scared.

Those sounds were comforting to me, but I realize how scary they are to the uninitiated, especially when some of those sounds are directly connected to your breathing, kidney function, and outright heart function.

The heart is complicated.

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