Presence in the Practice: A Reflection on Embodiment, Illness, and the Clinical Encounter

he year following my second cancer almost broke me in a way the cancer itself never had.During treatment, I had something to fight.My body was a combat zone, but I understood the terms.The days brought nausea and abnormal labs, surgeries, chemo, and radiation.My sternum was so destabilized after surgery that I learned to sleep sitting up, because lying flat made the two halves grind together.My hair fell out.I hardly recognized myself in the mirror, but I had a battle to win, a timeline, and a reason to get up.The year after was much quieter and far more difficult.I came back to work, discharged from treatment but far from healed, and found that the world had not waited.My peers had built skills, relationships, and clinical instincts while I was away.I watched them, trying to close the distance.Some days, I felt like I was watching my own career through glass.My body, which had been the center of everything for so long, suddenly felt irrelevant.I fell into a deep depression, and I did not see a way out.I could not have foreseen how my path back would appear.It arrived one midnight, in a hospital room, in the form of a patient I will call Carol.