Today’s blog is inspired by hands – the act of touch, which is one of our five senses. Most of you women have only one concept when you think of a man touching long hair.. I read what people write on the forum, on profiles and it is true that a lot of menwant to touch a woman’s long hair because it arouses them in some way ; usually in a sexual way. These are usually men who daydream in their offices, or factories, about their sexual hair fantasies. Ok, so we all know that, but there are other ways and meanings in touching someone, so I’d like to share three different experiences of using my hands.

Two days ago, at work, one of my patients was a 78-yr-old woman, who suffered from dementia, psychosis and schizophrenia. I will call her patient D. She was very aggressive, very loud, very rude, but all of this behaviour was due to her illnesses, and I understood this. Patient D kept urinating all over her bed, clothes and body as well as defecating everywhere. Faeces was on her hands and she rubbed some on her face and hair. Obviously, we could not leave her like this, so my colleague and I fetched a bowl of warm water, soap, shampoo and clean bed linen and a night gown. We removed the dirty clothes and started to wash her. During this, she screamed and swore at us, but as I said, this kind of behaviour from a psycho patient is normal, so we made sure she could not bite us, scratch us, punch or kick us. When we finished cleaning her body, we wanted to wash her hair. The smell, let me say, was extremely foul, but no matter – she needed to be clean. My colleague held her arms and spoke to her softly while I started to wash her hair. In this situation, speech and touch are both important. I washed the faeces from her hair, dried her with a towel and then I combed her hair. Small gentle actions like this can relax a person, even a confused old psycho. Patient D closed her eyes, we tucked the blanket around her and let her enjoy some well-needed sleep. Touch in this situation melted away her anger and confusion – temporarily.

Last week, I worked with a soldier, who had been seriously injured in Afghanistan. In the media, we hear about soldiers who are killed in explosions, but we don’t hear about the soldiers who are injured, but still live. Patient J was one of them. When I saw him, he had no legs, no right arm, three fingers missing on his left hand, no eyes, but the top of his head was ok – no injury there. This poor man was only 19 ; a teenage soldier who thought it would be a good idea to join the army and fight in Afghanistan. All the high-tech western military equipment could not stop a very simple bomb made by the Taleban. He was still my patient though, and I had responsibility to care for him in the best way possible. At meal times, we had to put his food into a blender so he could drink it. He needed help with this and as I fed him I stroked his head softly. He had a typical military haircut – shaved – but his hair was already 1cm long. Maybe holding his hand would have been my first instinct, but if he had no hand, and hardly anything on his other hand, all I could do was to stroke his head and tell him that we were there for him and that if he needed anything we would be there immediately. Touch in this situation reassured him.

Finally, baby Mohammed – 8 month old angel from heaven – who I will never forget. It was with this little angel that I saw death in hospital for the first time. He was suffering from a very terrible skin disease – epidermis bullosa. I use the word angel because he was born into a criminal family and it seemed so unfair that he was born with this awful disease. His father and whole family on his father’s side were criminals and one of the worst criminal families in my city. Mohammed’s disease was also the worst kind he could have. Our skin regenerates to replace the millions of skin cells that fall off our body, and inside our body. In Mohammed’s body, the skin cells fell off but his body could not make new skin cells. Slowly, he was dying in front of us. The doctors told his mother that he would not survive beyond 3 months, but he was already 8 months when he was my patient. Everyone in the department found it very upsetting to hear his cries. He was in constant pain, so we gave him oral morphine every few hours. We wrapped his whole body in bandages because he had no skin on his legs, back and nothing on the top, side and back of his head. He looked like raw meat, or as if someone had put him in boiling water and all the skin melted off. Strangely, his face was still ok, and he had a beautiful face. Touch in this situation was impossible. We had to hold him so delicately and we needed to change his bandages every few days. It hurt him when we changed his bandages, but we gave him extra morphine. Unfortunately, he died a couple of weeks before Christmas. I never had to be so gentle with my hands and fingers as with this little baby. I won’t forget him and I won’t forget how I had to use my hands.

Touch can be sacred. That is my opinion after having these experiences, plus so many other daily situations where I must use my hands.