Читать книгу Life in Rewind - Terry Murphy Weible - Страница 4

It has been many years since I first met Ed Zine at his house on Cape Cod. He suffered from a most severe form of an illness that I had studied and treated for over three decades - obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. Ed was as ill as any patient I had ever met. His story, his suffering and his recovery reveal an inspiring young man who has touched my own life in a way I had never expected.

I met Terry Murphy while I was consulting to a charitable foundation in New York City. I saw some of the brilliant videos and writing that she had done for the foundation. I remember one of the secretaries being reduced to tears when she viewed one of Terry’s videos about the director of the Foundation. She has a knack for poignantly capturing the most pristine essence of a person.

Ed had spoken many times about having someone write his story as an inspiration to other severely ill OCD patients who had given up hope. If he could get better, anyone could. I told Terry about Ed, and she became enthused and offered to work with Ed to write his story.

During the course of writing and working with Ed on his story, she asked me why I became so involved with Ed. She pried into my own motivations and reasons why I would be willing to do things differently from most physicians. I had known from my early years that I was willing to do unusual things to help patients. I had even been criticized during my training for making house calls - ‘Dr Jenike gets overinvolved with his patients,’ wrote one supervisor when commenting on my visits to housebound patients. Since I had been in the military for five years and was older, these comments had absolutely no bearing on how I was going to practise medicine, and to this day I make house calls.

However, Terry astutely detected parallels between my life and traumas and Ed’s life. Her teasing apart these issues has allowed me to understand my own motivations in light of my past life. This book reveals more about me than I would like, but I felt I had to step up to the plate and be as brave as Ed, for the benefit of patients who suffer from this horrible illness, as well as for the dedicated physicians who treat them.

I suppose the bottom line is that we all have our traumas, histories, motivations and accomplishments. If this story touches and motivates you like it has touched Ed and me, then Terry will have accomplished more than I ever expected.