Perhaps because of the pain they face every day, doctors’ faces are mostly serious and stereotypical, so smiling is almost a scarce expression in hospitals. Although doctors know the importance of optimism to disease, but in a depressing atmosphere, then there is no inspiration to find and use a smile. As a physician, I certainly have not been able to escape from this atmosphere. However, what has happened to a few patients recently has forced me to take a hard look at the appeal of smiling. My job is surrounded by keloids almost daily. These odd-shaped things that don’t kill people but are painful and disgusting set up camp and line up on patients’ faces, foreheads, shoulders, etc. My job is to eradicate them and bring back the old life to those places they have trampled. Any battle to stop them is difficult, especially after they are eliminated, it is even more difficult to make those places that have become rubble come back to life. Therefore, what I look forward to most in every surgery is the smooth healing of the incisions that I have painstakingly stitched together and the restoration of the surgical site to its former beauty to the greatest extent possible. What is strange to me is that this result is sometimes associated with a big smile. This happened to a girl who was treated a few days ago. She had several keloid bumps on both cheeks due to her adolescent acne. The bumps were both small and dense, like small pebbles piled up and scattered to form discordant accents. Removing such bumps was not an easy task, let alone having to leave the skin on the bumps to form a new facial skin. In spite of this, I finally finished the surgery. When I gave her the post-operative precautions, I told her that she should talk less and laugh less in general to avoid facial activities from affecting the healing of the incision. She readily accepted the request to talk less, but she had a difficult time with laughing less, and asked me in a low voice, “I usually like to laugh, so what should I do?” I thought about it and said, “Proper control is good.” Now that I think about it, this is a suggestion that has little actionability. What do you mean by “appropriate”? How do you control laughter? But there are times when doctors have to give such unworkable advice. After the patient left, my heart hung in the air. The skin on the bumps was very thin, so it was hard to peel it off, but could such a thin layer of skin be viable? If she laughed a lot, wouldn’t that add insult to injury and put the already unviable skin in jeopardy? I thought about these questions over and over again, and regretted that I had finally said a non-committal word, leaving a hidden danger to the survival of the skin, when it would have been much better to firmly prevent her from laughing. After the first dressing change to check the wound, my heart hung in the air a little. The thin layer of skin, despite its weak appearance, was faintly red and moist. As with other patients, I had her undergo hyperbaric oxygen therapy as soon as possible. After a week of suffering, on the eighth day after the surgery, it was finally time to see the final results. As I removed the gauze covering her incision, my heart did feel a tightening, like a gambler anxiously awaiting the moment when the dice are flipped. Instead, she lay smiling on the treatment bed, her boyfriend’s comfort next to her seemingly superfluous. As I write this, the answer is actually revealed. Yes, the thin layer of skin that was surgically peeled off was glowing with a healthy redness, and the incision was healing nicely. My heart finally dropped and I excitedly told her the result. She didn’t seem to be surprised, a picture of confidence, not to mention singing an ode to my handiwork, but said flatly that she knew the incision would heal because she smiled every day in the days after the surgery, just as she had before the surgery, and she smiled even more in the days when she had her boyfriend with her. In her opinion, the good recovery after the surgery should have something to do with it. This sounds far-fetched, but compared to another patient not long ago, it does make sense again, except that my fears were superfluous in these few days after surgery. This patient was similar in age to her, also had cheek keloids, and used a similar surgical approach, except that this male patient had larger bumps, like several large pebbles, and several isolated large pebbles with thicker skin on the surface. Since the patient’s local condition was better, the surgery was not suspenseful, and after removal of the keloids, the preserved epidermis was red in color when the incision was sutured. After this type of surgery, the doctor is often in a soothing and relaxed mood, and it is not uncommon to go home humming a little song. However, the final result of such a procedure, which is perceived to be foolproof, is not ideal. The epidermis, which had been viable when the incision was closed, was not a healthy color when the stitches were removed, and his postoperative treatment was no different from that of the patient mentioned earlier. Not only did he not smile, he was also a boy with a heavy heart, a sad face before surgery, worried that the surgery was not successful, worried about recurrence after surgery, after surgery is also careful, afraid that the incision will not grow well, that even a little itch around the incision, the occasional pain, he also had to make a phone call, send a text message to ask if it was normal. If not for the doctor, I might have put his number on the blacklist of nuisance calls, but duty calls, I can only patiently console and guide, hoping that he can relax, but the results are not as expected, even his mother said, this child, no one can persuade, is the psychological pressure, how to say, but also do not listen. Could this be the problem? One case may not be enough, I should list some more patients. But for the sake of the length of the article, I will not repeat them all. In short, the fear of what happens is somewhat idealistic, but similar stories are almost readily available in clinical practice. Fear of incisional infection; fear of incisional dehiscence; fear of recurrence of bumps; ……; the patient seems to be swayed by a nebulous force that is difficult to escape. In fact, there is no force swaying the patient, it is the patient who is swaying himself. Worry and fear are a swaying force; optimism and relaxation are also a swaying force. The former makes people look sad, and the latter makes people smile happily. These two swaying forces will produce two very different results for the body, and the recovery after surgery should not be the same. In 2004, major British newspapers reported the story of Wade and his wife under the title of “Couple performs miracle, travels around the world to heal from cancer”. Wade was suffering from severe coronary heart disease and his wife, Anne, was soon diagnosed with breast cancer, plunging the family into a spiral of pain. After much deliberation, the couple decided to give up everything and travel the world. They gave all their savings to a travel agency and set out on a trip around the world. A year later, they returned from their trip around the world. At this time, Wade’s heart was not in crisis like before, and Annie’s breast cancer was gone, while one of Wade’s best friends, James, who was suffering from rectal cancer, was not able to see his friend who returned triumphantly, although he also went to the U.S. to start his treatment journey after Wade started his trip around the world and also used the latest biological therapy. The same cancer, a complete self-healing, a dead, the reason for which, perhaps only Wade’s words can explain: we two were only lusting after the beauty of the journey, simply did not have time to think about their own physical condition. The one who survived, because he forgot about the disease, just to enjoy a happy life, and the one who died, because still in the original pain!