Memories

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the fact that so many if not all doctors shut themselves off from their feelings in order to successfully practice medicine. My mom has been in and out of the hospital a lot lately. I remember a time when she was getting her blood drawn and the nurse carelessly stuck the needle in and probed around underneath her skin to find a vein, resulting in a huge patch of bruising on my mom’s arm. Many instances like this have happened (even though it wasn’t a doctor in this case) and I keep thinking I can be different. I will treat everyone like my own parents and grandparents and their pain will be my pain. But then… I realized that I honestly don’t know if I can. I’ve never been through the experience of going through hundreds and hundreds of suffering patients, never been through the experience of reconciling with myself that there was nothing I could do to save someone’s life, never been through the experience, really, of facing death at all. Who am I to say to that I will for sure keep my feelings and my head intact as a doctor?

I decided to start volunteering at CT Hospice because of that. It’s a hospital for the terminally ill who have less than 6 months to live. People say its hard to deal with those who live their life on the other end of the life spectrum, to get to know people, listen to their stories and their aspirations, and then one day realize that they are gone. Rationally, and imaginatively I suppose, I know it’s hard to face death. But  my emotions–I don’t know where they will take me.

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Here’s a poem Mrs. Huie sent:

Cutting toenails at 82

I have forced my feet

To shuffle beside his

Down the faded halls

Of the Wade Park VA

Where his colored cane.

Like the lights of an ambulance,

Screams—I’m blind, out of my way.

He is an old big rig man

Who is now driven by my eyes

As I escort him to the podiatry clinic

Where he will culminate

His day of a basal cell biopsy

With a clipping of toenails—

How embarrassing, he says,

To have another man clip your nails—

While I, the medical student his grandson’s age,

Try to tell him it’s all okay

As I watch the toenails fall to the floor

And wonder when my clippings

Will begin to steal a part of me away.

Jason David Eubanks

Willoughby Hills, OH

I feel uncultured.

My friends throw out a random reference or name, for example Paul McCartney, and I have no idea who he is or why he’s important. 1860s–everyone knows that’s the period of the civil war, except me. Somehow, despite being born and raised in the U.S., I have managed to live under a rock my entire life and remain almost completely unaware of the political, historical, and social context around me. I’m embarrassed, frankly, and can’t help but be reminded of the infamous recluse and intellectual female Emily Dickinson, also heralded as the greatest woman poet in the English language (wikipedia). Living, or once living, proof that one can bury oneself under a rock and still be intellectual, cultured, and representative of “American.” Plato imagines a group of people who have lived chained in a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. I must be one of them.

Conclusion of the day: I spend too much time speculating on my petty emotions and the small bubble that is my world. (Too much introspection, for sure.)

Where is my Aladdin?

In order to make others happy, you must be happy with yourself first.