empathy

Day 665

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Another chapel.
Another service.
Another departure without a good-bye.
Another bunch of people in grief and black.
Another room full of sniffles and sorrow.
Another beautiful smile forever loved and missed.
Another reminder of indiscriminate randomness.
Another family’s future laid to rest.
Another opportunity to remember what’s important.
Another place to experience deep love.

Despite never having met any of M’s( a friend from work) family before, I could guess who’s who just by looking at them. Her hubby and her boys absolutely fitted her descriptions. Her youngest graduated this year without his Mum by his side. I found myself in juxtaposition with him. I could feel their shock from her sudden departure and could also see the strength they derived from one another. It was a familiar place. Through the people and conversations I got to know her so much better. I could recognise her sense of humour in the eulogies. It runs in the family.

On so many occasions we agreed that we should meet outside of work but that somehow never happened. Every time we made a plan, something got in the way. I wish…

Her sisters told me how much my friendship with M meant to her. It meant a lot to me too but I never really told her that in so many words. I wish…

I love you M.
Thank you for being my friend.
It has been an absolute joy and privilege to know you.

Bye-bye Miss American Pie!

Day 650

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A brain surgeon, Paul Kalanithi got diagnosed with terminal lung cancer at the age of 36. Suddenly he found himself on the other side of the table. He wrote a ‘rattling, heartbreaking, beautiful’ book about his life as a doctor and then as a patient before he died. It is called “When breath becomes air’. In it he tactfully dissects the walls that exist between doctors and patients. Having found myself on either side of the table – first as a physician and then as the mother of a severely ill child, I can completely relate with this excerpt below.

“The reason doctors don’t give patients specific prognoses is not merely because they cannot. Certainly, if a patient’s expectations are way out of the bounds of probability – someone expecting to live to 130, say, or someone thinking his benign skin spots are signs of imminent death – doctors are entrusted to bring that person’s expectations into the realm of reasonable possibility. What patients seek is not scientific knowledge that doctors hide but existential authenticity each person must find his or her own. Getting too deeply into statistics is like trying to quench a thirst with salty water. The angst of facing mortality has no remedy in probability.”

“I had to face my mortality and try to understand what made my life worth living and I needed Emma’s (my doctor’s) help to do so. Torn between being a doctor and being a patient, delving into medical science and turning back to literature for answers, I struggled, while facing my own death to rebuild my own life – or perhaps find a new one.”

I cannot imagine what one’s options would be when diagnosed with a severe/ terminal mental illness. Saagar was unable to access his own life as he knew it and perhaps chose to find a new one.

Day 647

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”No history of self harm” said the discharge summary from the Home treatment team to the GP. This sentence was one amongst many on the four page long letter.

Saagar was seen by at least 3 psychiatrists – 2 senior trainees and one Consultant and they all missed it. Did they ask him and he didn’t tell them the truth or was it an omission? The scars could easily be seen on his left forearm. They were clearly visible. Did they find the scars and questioned him about them? Did he make up a convincing story for them as he did for me? Or were they missed altogether? No one asked me about his history of self harm. He was mentally ill at the time and I don’t think I was.

At the Coroner’s inquest when this question came up, the psychiatric team said that the remark was made because Saagar never presented to the Emergency department with self-inflicted injuries. Is that a valid criterion?

Self harm is a personal and often a very private act. Given it is an important clue to the extent of a person’s emotional suffering, we as carers and professionals cannot afford to miss it.

“The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.”
– Karl Marx

Day 642

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What makes a good life?

An answer to this age-old question was attempted by a huge study at Harvard. It followed 724 men from their teenage years for a period of 75 years. Half the men were students at Harvard and the other half were disadvantaged inner city boys of Boston. They all went on to pursue various fields of work – brick-layers, teachers, solicitors and one even became the president of America. Every year, each one of them answered a paper questionnaire and was interviewed in person. Bloods tests and brain scans were performed on them and a large body of data was collected and analysed.

What did they find?

Loneliness is toxic. Loneliness kills.
The way to health and happiness is through good relationships.
Cholesterol level is not a predictor of good health but the quality of one’s social connections is.
Good relationships protect the brain too. People who have friends and relatives they can count on retain their memory for much longer than the ones that don’t.
So, while relationships can be messy, difficult and trying, they are worth leaning into, be it with family, friends or a community.

How can this be done in real terms?

  • Replacing screen time with people time?
  • Doing something new – going for a long walk, gardening, volunteering, watching a black and white film, trying a new recipe?
  • Calling an old friend you’ve been thinking of for a while?
  • Putting a grudge or mistrust aside and reaching out?
  • You know best.

“There isn’t time for bickering, apologies, heart burnings, calling to account. There’s only time for loving. An instant for that.” – Mark Twain.

Good life = Good relationships.

 

Day 629

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Yesterday I was deeply skeptical about the imminent release of Chilcot Enquiry report. I suspected it would be a play of words desperately trying to bring solace to the families of the young men lost in combat while staying on the right side of the political machinery. Today I was relieved to see the clarity with which it has stated its findings.

13 years ago, on July the 17th, the weapons expert, Dr David Kelly was found dead in the woods. The Blair Government and its compliant media tried its best to convince us that he had ended his life by his own hand. This was not believed by a large portion of the public and more particularly his own family. Among prominent doctors who had raised doubts based just on published reports of the death, one physician and barrister, Dr Michael Powers QC, has not accepted the published postmortem and toxicology report and maintains that questions remain about the amount of blood found at the scene and the number of pills taken. Powers expressed scathing criticism of the lack of rigour of the Hutton inquiry, and asserted that the officially stated cause of death was highly implausible.

Given the reluctance the govt has to acknowledging the crisis of suicide, it is frustrating how quickly and easily the death of someone in such an influential position as David Kelly is ascribed to suicide. So much so that there is a term to describe this phenomenon of being ‘suicided’ -being exterminated and the death made to look like suicide.

I cannot imagine how treacherously painful that must be for those near and dear to him..