Fourth-year Harvard Otolaryngology resident Alessandra Colaianni, MD, recently published an editorial in the New York Times. This article shares her experience with a patient who had a rare disorder known as toxic epidermal necrolysis syndrome. This condition is a severe skin reaction, most often triggered by particular medications.
Throughout the article Dr. Colaianni describes her experience with this patient and how a reunion between the two of them helped "shed a burden" she didn't realize she carried.
"In my dreams she was a monster out of Greek mythology: eyes unseeing, skin flayed, mouth bleeding crimson; a howling mountain of pure pain made flesh that I alone was to face," Dr. Colaianni wrote. "I would awaken sweating before my 4 a.m. alarm, dreading the day’s tasks, fighting bile and self-hatred on every step of my icy walk across the Charles River to the hospital. During the day, I was the monster, her torturer."