DB 2- A Trip to the Doctor

((The Student Services Building, where UHS is located))
After getting another terrible night of sleep from coughing, yesterday morning I finally decided to call the University Health Services to set up a doctor’s appointment. Although it was eight in the morning, a time that I think many college students are either still asleep or in class, I was put on hold for forty minutes. Since my coughing woke me up early, I had the time to spare, but I can imagine that many rushed and sick students do not have the luxury of time. Thus a sick person’s experience with a doctor begins in a negative way as he or she tries to navigate a confused medical system.

((Medicine and Compassion: more than just entertainment at the doctor’s office))
So after our World Lit class yesterday, I grabbed a quick lunch then rushed over to the University Health Services center to get to my one o’clock doctor’s appointment. My overall experience was a positive one, but I spent a lot of time just waiting around. To occupy myself while I waited, I pulled Medicine and Compassion out of my backpack and began reading. I could not help but to compare my entire experience at the doctor’s office with what I read in the book.

I found the proper check-in location easily, and waited for only about ten minutes to see the doctor. Doctor Key was very friendly and personable, and she appeared to be the youngest a doctor could be having gone through all the years of school. My nurse, on the other hand, brusquely shuffled me around and she was not mean, but she was not nice either. I could tell that she made some attempts to be friendly. For example, she asked me what I am majoring in but then left the questions at that. After about an hour, the nurses must have switched shifts, and it amazes me what a different experience I had with my second nurse. My second nurse energetically explained the procedures and equipment she was using, and animatedly asked a few questions about my life and answered all of my questions. I ended up being at the Health Services center for two and a half hours because my bronchitis had developed into a breathing problem that needed to be treated immediately.

((The cranberry juice made me feel that the doctor wanted to comfort me))
According to training on how to be a bodhisattva, one needs the first virtue of generosity. A doctor should have the “willingness to give whatever is necessary—not just the medicine or treatment, but to be there in a way that comforts a sick person” (Medicine and Compassion 104). My doctor yesterday expressed this first virtue in the way she handled my breathing problems. After making a shocked exclamation when she listened to my chest, she proceeded to tell me that I needed to take a breathing treatment which meant I breathed in medicine for ten minutes. After those ten minutes, when she came to check up on me, she asked if I was doing okay because she noticed that my face was flushed and my hands were shaky. Although it is a doctor’s job to pay attention to a patient’s body signs, I felt that she truly cared about how I was feeling. She then continued to give “whatever” was necessary when she administered a second breathing treatment because the first one actually made my breathing worse. She kept in mind that I had reacted badly to the first treatment, however, and asked the nurse to bring me some cranberry juice. Upon hearing that this second treatment made my hands and face tingly and numb, she seemed genuinely concerned and told me she would not continue them. Instead she made sure to set up an appointment for Friday.

Furthermore, when Dr. Key deliberated about which medicines to prescribe me, I think she displayed the second virtue of “pure ethics.” My mom was sending me some medicine I had left at home in the mail, but Dr. Key was worried that it would not get to my dorm soon enough. She decided to “do the right thing on the spot” (Medicine and Compassion 104) and told me she could not ethically wait to make sure my medicine arrived in the mail. She gave me detailed instructions on how to take the various medicines and sent me home to rest. Dr. Key remained clear and kind throughout my visit. The first nurse did come off as either of those things, however.

Perhaps the first gruff nurse I had actually was only tired. I can easily understand that it was the end of her shift and she was ready to go home, but I think it is interesting how big a difference it made in my experience. Maybe the nurse had already “seen too much suffering” that day and “suffering people no longer affected [her] in the same way” (Medicine and Compassion 139). The nurse’s tiredness and coolness may have come off as lacking compassion.

I also reflected upon my own attitudes toward health in the doctor’s office. Since I had the ideas of Medicine and Compassion in my head during my visit, I made a special effort to be friendly and thankful to everyone who helped me. I felt that making myself seem more human would make the people around me want to treat me better. Afterall, if a person seess someone as a human rather than an illness or an object, he or she will feel greater compassion.

((Health and communication are a two-way street))
This also brings up an interesting relationship between patients and the medical system. Just as Rinpoche asserts, “the person on the receiving end [of help] also need to be qualified” (Medicine and Compassion110). In any situation involving help, the helping action does little good if a person is not willing to receive it. Communication is a two-way street and so is medical care. We can choose to participate in our own health by the choices we make and the preventative health measures we take. In fact, I think that everyone holds some responsibility to society to try to take health precautions so that the rest of society will not unnecessarily have to carry the cost (through taxes, etc) of costly health procedures.

The posters on the walls of the health center encouraged just that. They especially focused on stress and sleep patterns which are both central to college life. Many pamphlets were dedicated on ways to reduce stress, increase sleep, and lead a healthier lifestyle. Indeed, just as Rinpoche stresses, doctors think that we should all be “doing something to let our mind be healthy as well” (Medicine and Compassion 122).

Through our focus on different religions, nature, and ideas of meditation ,World Lit does just that. Indeed, mental and physical health are intrinsically linked, and it seems that the life advice given in Medicine and Compassion really do apply in a medical setting.

Discussion 1: SAT's, Unity, and Experience

((SAT: a test of intelligence or endurance))
Recently I was discussing the SAT with friends and we came to the conclusion that it is more a test of endurance rather than intelligence. Spending hundreds of dollars and hours preparing for this standardized test, students across the country feel pressure to perform well in order to get accepted into a good college. I think that everyone I know took the test at least twice. I even know someone who caught a cold each time she took the SAT. Those colds could have been coincidental, but she always blamed them on the mental strain induced by the monotonous and tiring test. Now, as Plan II students we all probably scored relatively high on the SAT. I did not do poorly (please excuse the double negative) and when I think about it, the questions on the SAT were straightforward. Nevertheless, I felt as if my scores—supposed measurements of my knowledge—never measured up to the scores of my academic peers. This brings to question not only the validity of such a test but also the meaning behind the copious attention given to scores. Parents and teachers drive students to score as high as possible and sometimes disregard the importance of other activities. Many colleges address the errors of only viewing one side of a person (test taking abilities) by including essays and interviews in the application process. As I was applying to schools my senior year, however, I constantly saw that I was viewed as a test score and I sometimes wondered if my grades, GPA, and SAT score mattered more than my passions. This pressure to produce satisfactory numbers seems to parallel the strain medical students feel when they see that “demonstrating that you can manage the workload is far more important than showing that you can be compassionate”(Medicine and Compassion 3). Too little time and too much work produces more than just stress. It creates an environment in which inherent compassion and caring for others becomes difficult.
((Compassion involves uniting the left and right brain, or intelligence and loving))
It appears that the problems doctors encounter in bringing compassion to medicine also stem from uniting all parts of life. Last semester we concluded that both the left brain and right brain are necessary to experience life fully. And this semester Chokyi Rinpoche points out that “if we could have a better balance between the development of intelligence on one side and the development of a loving [. . .] frame of mind on the other, this world would be far more harmonious”( Medicine and Compassion 22). The rest of Medicine in Compassion contains further instances of balancing different aspects of human nature. We can practice in conceptual and non conceptual ways, and try to separate the perceived and real. We must move away from dualistic thinking and free ourselves from attachment. We discover that the key to compassion is emptiness. At first this idea of emptiness seemed contradictory to the unity that the balancing encourages. I now see that emptiness actually means that we accept everything in a natural way.

Beyond the need for unity to have compassion, I also notice a small need for experience. In discussing suffering during class and in the Ram Dass discussion boards, many stated that we have not experienced much suffering. I think that it can be difficult to relate to a suffering individual if we have not actually experienced similar pain. Afterall, “everything we perceive is the result of some prior condition or confluence of circumstances” (Medicine and Compassion, 65). Of course, this limitation of perception is where sympathetic imagination kicks in. We can use other experiences of pain or suffering to imagine what kind of suffering someone feels, and we can use the imagination to feel true compassion. That is why I said a “small need” for experience. . . to a certain extent some experience can come through the sympathetic imagination.

((Touching different textures of fabrics is a childish but enjoyable way to increase experiences))
I think that this need for small experience is why humans are so curious. Babies and young children burst at the seams with their questions and curiosity in exploring the world. While some of that childhood wonder is lost as people mature, people still thirst for knowledge and new things. Even today, for instance, my friends make fun of me for needing to touch the all the different fabrics of clothes when I go shopping. Maybe it is because “the moment [I] see something lovely, there’s an impulse to touch it, to become involved and fascinated” (Medicine and Compassion 43). Now I can justify my love for fabric textures as a way to increase my experiences. Nonetheless, I do not need to justify a silly habit. Instead I can use the wisdom in Medicine and Compassion to further my journey to become a better person. . . and maybe one day be a compassionate doctor.