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There was first of all the feeling of helplessness - a serious disease in itself.
There was the subconscious fear of never being able to function normally again...
There was the reluctance to be thought a complainer.
There was the desire not to add to the already great burden of apprehension felt by one's family;
this added to the isolation.
There was the conflict between the terror of loneliness and the desire to be left alone.
There was the lack of self-esteem, the subconscious feeling perhaps that our illness was a
manifestation of our inadequacy.
There was the fear that decisions were being made behind our backs, that not everything was
made known that we wanted to know, yet dreaded knowing.
There was the morbid fear of intrusive technology, fear of being metabolized by a data base,
never to regain our faces again.
There was the resentment of strangers who came at us with needles and vials - some of which put supposedly magic
substances in our veins, and others which took more of our blood than we thought we could afford to lose.
There was the distress of being wheeled through white corridors to laboratories for all sorts of
strange encounters with compact machines and blinking lights and whirling discs.
And there was the utter void created by the longing - ineradicable, unremitting, pervasive - for warmth
of human contact. A warm smile and an outstretched hand were valued even above the offerings of modern science,
but the latter were far more accessible than the former. - Norman Cousins
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