If any of you have read Abraham Vergehese's book Cutting for Stone you need to follow it with this one: My Own Country. Where Cutting for Stone was a fictional work clearly inspired by his life as a physician, My Own Country is his story of being the primary physician for many HIV/AIDs patients in a rural community when the world was just learning about this awful disease. It is a fascinating story...he deals with stigmas, prejudices, death, homosexuality, his own families response, his life as a doctor being different...so much stuff.
As I am taking time to consider my own work in the hospital, some of his experiences have touched some places that I struggle with in my job, for instance we have technology but are we always using it to promote life, health and healing or why do we act like physical illness has no emotional capacity that has massive needs. Anyway, here are few passages where he captures these ideas better...
"..much of ICU care has this futile quality, this illusion of purposefulness generated by the trappings of technology and invasive procedures. A novice in medicine sees only the drama...more years in medicine and you see how suffering is prolonged, hospital bills multiplied tenfold, the possibility of dignified death diminished."
"..my training had not really prepared me to be this kind of doctor. We were trained in hospitals not in patients' homes; we were biased toward technological interventions..; words like the "soul," the "spirit" were considered dirty words..."
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