empəTHē/
noun
the ability to
understand and share the feelings of another
All the political intrigue and infighting going on about healthcare in America
reminded me of the last time I had health insurance* (when I was in the hospital
in ’14).
I volunteered to go to the emergency room when I realized something was terribly wrong. Doctors
came to my side for hours trying to figure out what the problem was. It was
well past midnight when they transferred me to a bed, and it took over a week to
figure out what the problem was.
Since it was a teaching hospital, doctors came by with
interns doing rounds. They do ask for your cooperation. You are not required to participate. I am student-friendly and allowed interns to examine me, ask
questions, and make homework of me.
I was very popular. There were consults with a number of
department heads, each one trying to determine the nature of my pain. Everybody
got to prod, prick or send me into cold rooms with loud machines. I was
treated well, but not everybody showed empathy. Empathy requires understanding
and action; it is more than words, there must be intent to soothe the soul of
its pains as well.
The head of oncology was a lovely man, tall and imposing, but also very polite and transparent. After our first visit and a
round of tests, he did a personal consult to inform me that the problem was not
cancerous in nature, and asked if I’d allow him to return with his students
on rounds. I agreed.
Mom happened to be visiting when he rolled around with his interns.
She was sitting back, catching her breath after a hot and humid commute on a
slow bus. I was laying back in the Wonder Woman socks Barbara sent me, playing
WWF with La Belle Dame de Baton Rouge, while he lectured the interns on what
they could expect on a worst-case scenario (with varying degrees of horrific
details).
Somehow, Mom missed a word or two of the intro; and, when I looked up,
she’d blanched to the point I think she was ready to drop (whether faint or to
a stroke was unclear). It quickly dawned on me what was happening.
“No! No, Mom!!! That’s just for them, not about me,” I tried to explain
but words got twisted in the delivery.
The doctor stopped, and both he and a dozen students turned to watch my
mother’s eyes watering, her skin pallid, her breath clearly gone.
{Houston, we have a problem: complete meltdown in three,
two, one…}
“Mom?” She couldn’t hear me. Her eyes were fixed inward in the horror
of the words she had just heard—
She just heard a man tell a bunch of strangers her
baby girl was dying!
A good number of the interns were still taking notes or trying to
digest the gist of their mini-lecture on differential diagnoses. The doctor, on
the other hand, immediately realized the problem, stepped forward toward Mom,
and shielded her from the students’ view.
“I apologize,” he said. “The worst case scenario I just mentioned is
for academic purposes only, not at all the case with your daughter. The problem
with her pain is not an oncology problem.”
He dismissed the students and asked that they wait outside. He hugged
Mom and reassured her. His voice was soft, the delivery self-assured and
authoritative…
“We have a few very capable teams on the case,” he told her. “She is a
strong young woman and I’ve no doubt you’ll have a diagnosis soon.” He spoke to
her for a few minutes, and offered to answer any of her questions. Despite not
having concrete answers, he gave her enough of a foundation for hope by simply
addressing her personally.
He stopped short of promising her they’d fix me, but his moral support
implied it. That was all she needed. Slowly her color returned to her lovely
face—though she was tired and worried still.
Empathy and excellent bedside manner can be an elixir in
itself. Even if applied to someone other than the patient herself.
In writing that scene, with no other details, I wonder
if the empathy is palpable on its own. Perhaps it was a combination of the
doctor’s no bull approach coupled with an Old World genteel civility. Maybe
that was all that it took to perceive empathy. Or perhaps we desperately wanted
to see one of these authority figures to possess empathy.
Showing empathy can be tricky in writing—you always run
the danger of making it all exposition. And while I don’t necessarily condone
profiling, I bet those who literally felt
the empathy knew how unusual the main
character here is from the archetype of an institutional doctor who is also an
administrator (I wrote the anti “House”).
*For the record, I have health insurance, although I did spend about two years without, and am likely to lose it again soon enough, but that's another story and there is no empathy involved.
