Afterward, a new relationship evolved. The physician became a person who could help me, and I the person who needed help. Through our conversations, the doctor learned about lupus the illness, and I was learning about lupus the disease. For disease and illness are two different entities. The disease deals with physiology, the laboratory testing and the dispensing of medications.
Illness is how the patient copes with the disease.
Being able to squarely face my doctor, it became easier for me to analyze my feelings and talk about my children, my husband, the dog, the house, the books I read, and the music I liked to hear, while he struggled to help me keep my sense of self and tried to get me out of my glass house. And like Sir William Osler, he tried to understand not only what kind of disease I had but also who I was. He believed with others that the human spirit grew and developed even in adversity, and he attempted to touch that healthy part in me and direct it both towards helping myself and teaching him how to better assist me. In those moments, he was no longer the highly trained physician, but he became the physionom dissecting my soul, looking for whatever healthy part of me was left to help me get out of sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. I knew how to do.