PERSONAL TOUCH

    We often read news papers or magazines . There are some stories that touch us and then there are some which we read and forget . We tend to remember some stories where we know the characters.  Things that we find 'funny' ,may not be funny if they happened to us . So our personal knowledge of people make the stories ' good ' or '  ' funny ' or memorable . The story that I am going to tell is one such .
    It was about 11 am on Wednesday .I was done with the majority of the patients. For a change  I was on time . I had couple of more patients remaining. The patient that I was seeing was a 68 years old female . I always start with a line ,"so what's going on ?"The line does not mean anything except it is my way of saying hello. Martha , had been a smoker and had mild COPD , related to her smoking . I had diagnosed her with a lung cancer about 15 months ago . Fortunately she was in early stage and we could cut it out . She was in such an early stage that she did not need any additional treatment with radiation or chemotherapy. I had done  follow up CT scan and there was no evidence of cancer . So all the things were good . But as the conversation went on she did not look happy or in to the conversation . I was not sure as to why she was not usual happy person . So finally I asked her , 'so what is bothering you, you are not yourself today . ' She answered with a question. "Did you read news paper today?" I said no , why . When I left the home it was 6-45am and I had to see some patients in ICU before I started i the office . She said ," There is a story on the front page , about a murder . " and she told me the story . She lived  with her daughter . When she woke up at 5 am and came down from her bedroom , she found her daughter in her living room . The daughter had gone out and she did not know when the daughter came home and when was she murdered . She was fast asleep when some one murdered her daughter in her own living room . . I did not know what to say .
   We read stories about murders and don't pay much attention to them as  we don't know the people in the stories .But when we 'know ' them it suddenly hits home .