Beth's story was very touching and she masked nothing, there were no falsehoods or exaggerations. Her story was raw, explicit, and very evocative. It made us think about death, rather than just hide it deep in the back of our minds. Which is interesting, seeing as she told us after that, before her husband's death, she hardly though of death and even up to his death it was never spoken of or acknowledged. I think in a way, she was doing what for us what happened to her, she was forcing us to think about death. I, personally, never think about death, not that I'm scared of it, as she said she was, but because it's unpredictable and eminent.
Her story also showed me that you have to be human about it, especially in the hospitals, you have to show them that you're human. You can't just be your disease, these doctors need to understand that you are a human. But that also raises another question; How human can a doctor think you are? At some point they need to maintain a distance and fully remove themselves emotionally. Is it better for a doctor to be cold and calculating or emotionally connected?
What I also took from this was the idea of keeping your loved ones alive through your actions. One seldom sees the cliche line, "they are alive in our hearts" put to work. Beth practices it all the time. She continues to do art workshops that he started, in remembrance of him and in his honor. I think this is amazing and shows us that even though someone may be gone, they are not lost.
Another interesting thing is that when we hear a story of another's loss, we can't help but feel sorry for them, and "fell their pain". As we wrote the thank you card for her I noticed that while most people didn't really get into detail, they all said that they were touched. While they may have just been writing this for the sake of common courtesy, I believe that most of us were touched, we felt for Beth, Evan, and Josh. The human mind loves a happy ending, and when we come face to face with a sad story, our perception of it becomes biased because we feel the pain of those who are directly affected by the loss. Another interesting common practice, is saying "sorry" when we hear of loss, as if we could have stopped it or something.
Overall, I felt Beth's presentation was courageous, but more than anything, it was thought provocative. I think when humans hear of loss, they can only feel sorry for the person. But given time to think about it, we can become more analyctical.
The way you chose to list your insights and experiences was creative. unlike other blogs you intertwined the insights into your paragraphs and explained them with depth and thought. I believe if you connected your thoughts to yourself in more depth your pst could have been more powerful. other then that i really enjoyed reading your work and I look forward to reading more.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I enojoyed reading your post. One of the insights that caught my attention was, "At some point they need to maintain a distance and fully remove themselves emotionally. Is it better for a doctor to be cold and calculating or emotionally connected?" I thought you raised a question that was not only insightful, but a question people don't like to think about. Personally, I don't have a clear answer to that question. I think a doctor needs to maintain a balance between distance and connection with a patient, but that's easier to say than done.
ReplyDeleteYou posed some interesting ideas based off of what Beth said, one idea that stood out to me the most was, "At some point they need to maintain a distance and fully remove themselves emotionally. Is it better for a doctor to be cold and calculating or emotionally connected?" It makes you wonder the tolerance a doctor has for sadness. If they are loosing a patient everyday I can't even begin to imagine the range of emotions they must experience. Constantly feeling a sense of mourning, as you said though, do they become immune to death? Do you think out of all of the human beings on this planet they are the least scared to die?
ReplyDeleteNot a bad post, all-in-all, if a bit short.
ReplyDeleteThe question you pose "Is it better for a doctor to be cold and calculating or emotionally connected?" has quite a bit of validity- should a doctor seek a more personal method of care for his/her patient in order to restore a semblance of humanity to the situation, or should they present you with the simple facts and not try to encroach on your life unnecessarily? It could be a good cause for discussion.
As for the phenomena you're touching on, like "another interesting common practice, is saying "sorry" when we hear of loss, as if we could have stopped it or something." is empathy, how we seem to understand the feelings of another by being able to associate the kind of pain they feel to us.
I'd work on your grammar here- mind where you put your commas and be careful of your word choice. This could be said more simply, with more eloquence.
Good work, boy.
Vin