Does " complete strangers until their experience of illness"?

Does " complete strangers until their experience of illness" mean "healthy strangers who are completely strange to you until they experienced illness/became patients"?

Here "complete" means both healthy and completely (strange)"?

Context:

This path also led me by the third year of medical school
into intense experiences involving the care of patients. As
physicians in training, medical students are thrust into some of
the most intimate relationships imaginable with individuals
who had been complete strangers until their experience of ill-
ness. Cultural taboos that normally prevent the exchange of in-
tensely private information come tumbling down along with the
sensitive physical contact of a doctor and his patients. It is all
part of the long-standing and venerated contract between the ill
person and the healer. I found the relationships that developed
with sick and dying patients almost overwhelming, and I strug-
gled to maintain the professional distance and lack of emo-
tional involvement that many of my teachers advocated.