LET IT GO!

Last week, a patient presented to me in the hospital with a myriad of symptoms. 
For over a period of one year now, she has found it difficult to sleep at night. She has also lost about 7kg of body weight over time. More worrisome to her was the gradual loss of memory and the feeling that something was moving all over her body in a tactile manner.

Over the past one year, she has been to several health institutions, ran series of tests, the results of which came out as normal. Yet she was sickly! At a point, she was beginning to believe that she was suffering from a spiritual attack. She visited a spiritualist who prescribed 'spiritual birth' for her in the middle of the night at the mountain top.

After doing all of these, the symptoms would not just go away. It didn't get worse, but it didn't go away.

We met casually at a social function where I was the guest speaker and exchanged pleasantries. The following day, she called and booked an appointment with me in the hospital. She came with a gamut of the results of the investigations she had done over the past two years. From hematological, urinal, sonographic to radiological investigations. Even those ones that the doctors did not request for, she did on her own accord and the results all read "normal"!

I saw worries in her eye balls and despondency in her spirit. I reckoned that she needed more than the conventional tablets, capsules and injections to get well.

After taking a detailed history and conducting a thorough examination on her, I inferred that her complaints were not in line with my findings, vis-a-vis the result of her investigations all of which indicated that there was no underlying organic disease entity.

But how do I tell a visibly 'sick' woman that she was not ill?

I paused for a while and decided to explore her social history. Perhaps I might just be able to come up with something useful. 
My patient had been married for five years with two kids. The husband worked in a financial institution while she is a civil servant. They were financially comfortable and met their daily needs. What that meant was that she was not passing through any major financial stress. I know that inadequate finance is a major social stressor that could present with myriads of vague symptoms.

I went on to probe her relationship with her husband, vis-a-vis their sex life. According to her, she didn't have any major problem with the husband beyond the 'normal' occasional frictions that exists in every home.

Seeing that enquiry into the home front was not giving me the lead I needed, I shifted attention to her place of work. I asked to know if she was having issues with her boss or any of her colleagues, to which she answered "no". I wanted to know if she had been transferred from her office to another office against her wish. Again, she said "no".

Then I asked to know if anybody had just been transferred to her office? At that point, her eyes balls propped out and I saw a discomforting look all over her face. 
A young lady had just been transferred to her office about a year ago who bore the same name with the kid sister of my patient. Whenever anyone called this lady by her name in the office, the system of my patient gets completely disorganized and she became sickly!

My patient has a kid sister who goes by the same name as this newly transferred staff. 
The immediate junior sister of my patient, was a student in a tertiary institution in Akure who took up residence with my patient, since her school was just a stone throw from where my patient lived with her husband and two kids.

Sadly however, my patient was informed by neighbours that her husband was having a romantic affair with the lady. My patient found it hard to believe but carefully watched them. Then came one Monday morning; she had taken the kids to school and left for her place of work, only to return home two hours later, to find her husband on top of her kid sister, on their matrimonial bed!

She couldn't stand the site and simply passed out. The husband hurriedly carried her in his car and conveyed her to a private hospital where she regained consciousness, minutes later. Of course, her kid sister did not wait for her to return home before moving her personal belongings out of the house.

Since that time, my patient hated her kid sister sore and swore to have nothing to do with her or anything in her shadows.

So, when a new staff who bore the same name with her kid sister was transferred to her office, there was an excavation of the incident afresh each time someone called that name to her hearing thereby precipitating a psychiatric condition known as psychosomatic disorder.

Psychosomatic disorder is a medical condition where certain incidents which happen around us affect our mind and present in our body as a tangible disease entity, manifesting with quantum symptoms. There are many people out there who suffer from this condition unknowingly. They would run from pillar to post, thinking that someone somewhere is using spiritual powers to torment them, since medical science would seem not to be able to explain the organic basis for their ill health.

So, having succeeded in getting to the root of the 'problems' of my patient, I told her to forgive her kid sister. That same day, she called her on phone and there was a physical re-union after a year of deep hatred.

Interestingly, my patient did not have to take any drug. As soon as she forgave and re-united with her sister, all the symptoms disappeared! 
I have her permission to publish her story, without mentioning her name, so that others can learn from her experience.

If you must enjoy a state of psychic and bodily well-being, you must learn to let go. If you continue to hold people who hurt you in your mind, you will end up doing more harm to yourself, for people will never cease to hurt you.

When people hurt you, learn from the experience and move on. Some people came into your life to give you a blessing, others came to teach you a lesson. Both categories are invaluable in the course of your sojourn to the promised land. Pick the lesson and move on. Do not hold them down in your mind!
For as long as you hold people down, you stay down with them.

Dr. Thomas-Wilson Ikubese 
Akure.