I heard this story for the first time from a medical school intern. After all the years it still resonates with me. A doctor had a patient at the hospital. The old man was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at an advanced stage. The patient could not remember much, as I was told, and needed to be in the care of someone immediately upon leaving the hospital. After a brief few days, they allowed him to leave. As they dressed him and told him he was going home, he had a bewildered look as if he had not a clue where that would be or even what that meant. They told him his wife was coming to take him home. They asked if he remembered her, mentioning her name, and he replied that he did not know who she was. He was visibly upset and standing by the window staring at the road, traffic, and people going by.
Suddenly, to the amazement of the doctor and nurses, he pointed out to a person walking toward the hospital on the street and said, “She is my wife.” The doctor took a closer look and one of the nurses nodded in confirmation as he had remembered the wife bringing him a few days back. The doctor was curious now as to how this patient remembered correctly from a distance of three floors up and across a main street! He asked the patient, “How do you know she is your wife? Do you recognize her? Do you remember her now?”
The old man, never taking his gaze off the woman now crossing the street, said, “I don’t remember her and I don’t know anything about her!”
The doctor asked, “Then are you simply guessing?”
The patient turned to the doctor and said, “I was watching people walking, and when I saw her I felt my heart beating faster while my breathing got heavier and I got more anxious. I could not take my eyes off of her because she is the most beautiful person on the street. I know my heart would never deceive me even as my mind and memory are at this old age.”
Everyone in that room that day viewed true love in its full glory. There was a medical component to the patient’s response as this made logical sense to the doctor, since the patient was able to answer correctly based on information he collected from the heart, or at least another source within him, while suffering from this condition. In a completely different field, the doctor began thinking that truly the only objectivity within us that is incapable of cheating us is through the heart!
