Hate is one emotion I am thankfully not very familiar with. There are things and people I don’t much care for, but I don’t dislike anything sufficiently to rouse an emotion I would describe as hate. Maybe because I don’t feel hate myself, I rarely see hate in others. But an encounter with a patient earlier this week brought me face to face with it. The experience was so disturbing, yet so powerful that I felt compelled to share it.

The patient, an elderly Polish woman with a touch of an accent, had come for a routine exam. She was new to our office. Our extern began the exam, but soon called me in to evaluate what he thought were narrow angles. He was right, and anterior segment OCT confirmed the right eye was easily occludable and the left eye not far behind. With asymmetric and elevated pressures and an abnormal GCC in the OD, transient narrow angle closure seemed pretty certain. I explained the condition to the patient, cautioned her about narrow angle attacks and told her that a referral for an LPI was indicated. She was clearly nervous, and I had the feeling she would likely ignore the recommendation.

As I often do with anxious patients, I tried to calm her. I asked what city she was from and joked that I, too, had Polish roots at least part of the time. When she asked what I meant by that, I shared what my father had told me about his country of origin. When I asked where he came from, my dad would always reply “sometimes Russia, sometimes Poland.” The area he was from had changed hands so frequently pre-WWII that his native country depended on the day of the week. The patient laughed at my story and started to open up.

She admitted that she was concerned about the cost of a procedure because she had lost half of her pension after retiring from her state government job. I reassured her that insurance would cover most, if not all, of it and asked why her pension had been cut. She told me that it was because of a woman who hated her. She explained that this bureaucrat had cut the pension and then showed up at every hearing to make sure it wasn't restored. When I asked why this woman hated her so, she looked straight at me, her eyes now filled with a bitter, angry glint that I’ve seen only a few times in my life and she said, “because she is a Jew, and Jews hate the Polish.”

I paused for a brief second before I said loudly, “I am a Jew, and I don’t hate Polish people. I don’t hate anyone.” The look in her eyes turned to panic, then shame and as I gained my composure. I told her, “You shouldn’t blame an entire people for the actions of one individual.” She quickly apologized and shared a story of how her grandmother would smuggle food to help Jews fleeing from Russia during WWII. I nodded as I listened, knowing that her story couldn’t possibly be true. My family was so decimated by the Nazis that my father could never bring himself to speak of it. Sadly, I know that history all too well.

Shaken by what had just happened, I walked the patient to the front desk to arrange for the referral. The woman was clearly embarrassed and when I turned to leave she said, “You must hate me.” I looked right at her and I said, “No, this is not a place for hate, only love,” and I walked away.

Editor’s Note: It is with great sadness that I report the passing of Dick Wallingford. Dick was a friend, a past AOA president and one of the nicest people I ever had the pleasure to know. I worked alongside him as an AOA volunteer, and our paths continued to cross when he joined Vistakon. Dick served the profession with incredible strength despite personal health issues and was a model of what an AOA president should be: selfless, caring and humble. He will be sincerely missed.

Arthur B. Epstein, OD, FAAO Chief Medical Editor artepstein@optometricphysician.com