Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/33

 band to make a new adjustment to single life, and the children to face the whole series of difficulties which confronts those who are homeless and orphaned.

Sickness involves a twofold adjustment, the adjustment which the patient must make to his disease and that which his family and his friends must make to him. In either case the crux of the problem is much the same. What is he able to do and what is he unable to do? What exertion is wise and what is not wise? When should he yield to invalidism and when should he refuse to listen to the suggestion of ill-health? When should he reconcile himself to a continuance of nursing and when should he resume activity? When should his friends take care of him and when should they expect him to take care of himself? It is a problem that the diagnosis of the physician cannot always solve, for it has as much to do with the spirit as with the body. Often, the commiseration of friends and their desire to pamper is a more insidious foe for the patient to overcome than the bacteria of his disease.

Sometimes sickness affects the attitude and expression of the invalid so that he becomes a different person from what he would wish to be. Then