Mark Hansard shares another exploration of faith in Victorian literature. See previous posts exploring Browning and faith and Gerard Manley Hopkins and how aesthetic experience can point to God. [Read more…] about Browning’s “Karshish the Arab Physicianâ€
medicine
Failing Faithfully: Created, Fallen, and Waiting
In the first post of this series, I was ruminating about a patient who had a rapid decline in health and social circumstances, culminating in a recent scan that showed the possibility of cancer even while he was struggling with homelessness. It was a bleak situation that caught me off guard because I was not expecting it and was grieved to think of what it would be like for him to die alone.
He has since died.
There is a picture and a story making rounds on the internet about the grief of physicians. An EMT snapped a photo of a young ER doctor who lost a 19 year old patient. The photographer states that shortly after, the physician walked straight back into the ER.  The picture is a moment of isolation in grief by a caretaker, and the original forum for the image is filled with thousands of comments that range from encouragement to echoes of similar moments by healthcare professionals and family members who continue to grieve death. [Read more…] about Failing Faithfully: Created, Fallen, and Waiting
Academic Justice? (Scholar’s Compass)
Memory Verse
Seek justice, protect the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Isaiah 1:17
Reflection
My wife said it was not going to be easy. I knew she was right.
She was referring to my current research. I am interviewing persons with disabilities in Uganda.
My wife and I have lived in Uganda since 2008 so we are aware of the challenges people face here. We also know that challenges are especially intense among Ugandans with disabilities. [Read more…] about Academic Justice? (Scholar’s Compass)
Failing Faithfully: The Futility of Medicine (Scholar’s Compass)
It was stunning news. I listened with disbelief as my colleague described how a patient of ours, in whom we had uncovered a host of serious diseases over a few years, was now newly diagnosed with cancer after an incidental scan. In addition, his social supports had been eroded and I thought about what it would be like for him to die from a vicious terminal disease while alone and homeless. He would not be the first patient for me to watch die in such a way.
To be a physician is, in many ways, an exercise in futility. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. describes it as a “duty dance with death,†and how can one argue otherwise? It is not as if we fail some of the time or even most of the time. Every human suffers. Every human dies. If we define the success of a physician as the alleviation of suffering and the postponement of death, then every physician, though occasionally and transiently triumphant, is ultimately a failure. [Read more…] about Failing Faithfully: The Futility of Medicine (Scholar’s Compass)
Death and Resurrection
He was a young man, and I could see fear in his eyes as he gripped the railings of the bed and struggled to breathe, sucking in heavily through the plastic mask feeding him oxygen. His body was wasting away from cancer, and the infections that had crept into his lungs were now forcing every compensatory mechanism into extremis. He wanted to fight and live, but there was little left for the ICU to offer. I had been pleading with him for days to consider hospice and a more peaceable passing at home where he could be surrounded by family and friends, but to him that meant giving up.
So we had continued to do everything, and as predicted we eventually came to that point where every biomarker and technological parameter heralded physiologic disaster. “Your breathing cannot hold on its own. We will need to intubate you soon, but your body is so sick that we will probably never be able to take the breathing tube out.” I paused. We had had this conversation before. “Do you still want us to do it? I need to tell you the truth; you will almost certainly die either way. If we transition you to hospice, you can go home and pass away with your family and friends, and we will make sure that you are comfortable. But if you still want us to do everything – intubation, CPR, shocks – you will still die, but it will be here in this hospital, and it will be brutal. Do you want us to intubate you? Do you want CPR?” He nodded vigorously, still afraid, still adamant.
He was intubated. [Read more…] about Death and Resurrection