What Women Know . . . about Friendship

I had an operation recently that got complicated. A wound infection – something I’d not anticipated, and its effects were far worse than any fear or deformity I’d been left with as a result of the Op. Being a doctor doesn’t always help, when you’re actually ill. I tend to get very introspective, feel like a failure, and become deeply depressed, take to the bed and feel desperately sorry for myself. For several weeks, I didn’t want to talk about my operation to my friends. I didn’t want them to know that I’d been ill. I didn’t want to appear week. No fun. Old. Pathetic. Frail. Disabled. All the stuff I dread. Denial was the way to proceed, I decided. Even my closest friends were excluded from knowing what was wrong.
People started asking questions, naturally. Where’ve you been? Why haven’t you answered my calls? Why aren’t you coming out? When can we meet in town? Why has it been so long since we’ve had lunch? Interestingly, my male friends were more likely to be taken into my confidence than my female friends. I told one male friend who called, that I’d had an operation and was a bit under the weather, and asked him to teach a few classes I had to teach. He never asked me what was wrong, or how I was feeling, but just said he was happy to step in and that was the end of that. I was relieved. He had respected my privacy. I admired him tremendously for not asking me for any more information about my health.
Another male friend phoned and asked me to lunch. I declined, saying I’d just had a little operation and wasn’t feeling well. He sighed, and then asked, “Does this mean I have to come around to your house and bring you grapes?” I shuddered and told him that grapes were the last thing I wanted to see – my husband had filled the hospital ward with them every day while I was in. “He turned it into a grape-crisis centre then?” my lovely male friend quipped, making me roar with laughter, and with that we changed the subject and agreed to meet next month for lunch. I was relieved and grateful for his lack of interest in my health, and the fact that he turned it into a joke.
My female friends were so much harder to fend off. They persisted in asking why I hadn’t confided more in them. Why was I so insistent on keeping things to myself? Didn’t I want them to help? Couldn’t I see that they wanted to do something for me? I felt intensely irritated. Interfered with. More and more depressed. But my wound infection did not heal.
Eventually, one very dear friend whom I hardly ever see ( she’s very busy) phoned me up, and when she discovered that I’d been ill, completely ignored my request to be left alone and turned up half an hour later with cakes and flowers. I was dreading having to see her. I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was crawl back into bed. The house was filthy. The washing-up hadn’t been done. I had nothing in the house to offer her to eat. My friend and I sat in a cold, uninviting kitchen and chatted about very little. I was my usual reticent self about my operation, and she respected this, offering sympathy and optimism, but mostly offering company. I didn’t bother unwrapping the flowers, thinking that she could have saved me a job by not bringing something into the house that would now require me to seek out a vase and clip their stems.
But I felt an awful lot better when she’d left. It was as if I’d had a sort of injection of energy. I clipped the flowers the next day and put them in a vase. I got dressed for the first time in two weeks and went to see a movie. My wound infection looked as though it was beginning to heal. About time, I thought, thinking that at long last, perhaps the corner had been turned.
The next day I stayed in bed, feeling exhausted, cursing my friend for having tired me out so much. But then, another phone call from a life-long friend whom I hardly ever see. She and I hardly ever see each other and I’ve often grumbled to her in the past that she’s far too busy for me. So, when she turned up at my house and sat in my kitchen, I could only feel pleased. The next two hours passed very pleasantly, and at one stage, filling the kettle for the second time, I turned to her and said, “do you know, I feel very happy now?”
My wound looked an awful lot better that night. Another few days passed with no social contacts, no friends, just me and my husband (who’s been an absolute saint). But the wound stalled again in its progress.
Then, I stumbled across an article published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons found that recovery from a major operation, including a reduction in the level of pain felt by patients, can be improved by having friends. Patients with more friends, even fairly casual social contacts, were more likely to recover quickly after major surgery. Friendship heals wounds. It’s not just a metaphor – it’s actually true.
I love it when science proves something that seems so simple that a child could have thought it up, and yet as humans we’ve been so slow to figure it out. I guess that with MRSA and the threat of hospital-acquired infection, visitors to hospitals are being restricted to family only and this means curtailing friends. But on the upside, people are being discharged home earlier and this is where real friendships can take place.
Interestingly the surgeons didn’t find that the presence of a spouse, children or families are what helps healing – and this makes sense to me. A good spouse is a blessing – but lots of women find that their role in a marriage or a relationship with a man is as the one who heals and nurtures, rather than the recipient of healing. And the same goes for kids and parents. Female friends clearly have a unique and important role in healing – and the American College of Surgeons don’t get stuff like that wrong.