A Letter

 Dear Doctor,

 It would seem that I'm here for the same thing I was here for a decade ago, when you said it would be fine, that it's very manageable, just do these things and don't worry.

Those things didn't work. Well, they did work! But I didn't do them consistently, so my body didn't learn and grow, so they didn't have the desired work.

I know this is frustrating for you. You have all of the research and training of your profession available to you, pointing to the pattern of healing that best fits my circumstance. With such a clear path, you still watch me come back asking for help after not really taking it.

Take a deep breath. Feel the frustration, the rage, the impotence. Let it flow. Let it pass.

Then walk with me.

On this path we should be out of shelling range. Do you see these trenches? The gnawed, chewed, desolate no-man's land? The emplacements? Their complements on the far side? Here, you can borrow my binoculars.

The line hasn't moved in ten years, yet we fight. Wave after wave of all the little packets of executive function I can muster, mowed down day after day. These, my men, trained, ready, willing, enough to hold the line but never enough to move it. A field of corpses of days, weeks, months, years past, but no progress, just piles.

Walk with me again.

It's hot here. The jungle thrives on the heat and the moisture. They say that our objective is that hill, just over there.

As we walk, notice the tenuous grasp we have. Forest and plains gear rots in the jungle's stew, so we improvise everything. Every foot of paved, level, or open ground cost so, so much. Lives, opportunities, truncated futures relegated to never being, entire barges of materiel.

Up here is a trail into the jungle towards the hill. Note the ruts, the gravel, the slashes and paint on the trees. Out here it's seems like barely a walking trail, yet if you stub your toe don't look down. The sunken truck shoring up this square foot mocks you with its empty, dead eyes, only a bit of fender and bumper and cowling reminding you that there are no masters in the swamp, only the swamp and what the swamp decides to swallow. I think the driver escaped this one. Maybe. Don't dig.

The missions into the swamp sometimes come back with interesting stories and close calls or even strange discoveries. The others find unmarked graves to record their progress...and their inventory.

Yet X marks the spot, and as we can, we try. Occasionally the jungle provides, but usually it sides with the swamp.

So as you cradle your grief that a patient didn't follow the golden path to healing, please find it in your heart to cry for me too. Only recently did we figure out machetes that don't blunt after two strokes, and the promise of air support whispers in the wind. There may even be peace one day. One day the golden path will be clear.

It is not clear today.

Sincerely,

Your Patient