Ever since I was given life, it felt like I was just drifting through life and turned into a drone that was chained to the norms of society. It was not until I arrived at college that I was able to break out of my shackles and gain the freedom to express myself. I tried to live life at 24 frames a second in order to extend the time spent for every moment of my life. The most gifted creature on this planet are whales, but more particular the Bowhead Whale that lives double the life span of any current human. With such an elongated life span, one could experience many more spatial and temporal experiences. It’s true that one cannot place a monetary value on any person’s life, but it’s not impossible to determine the worth of a life. I believe the experiences and whether an individual pursues his goals be it influential to other or not are certain factors that deem the value of life. Though it may be subjective, there are a few individuals who have the ability to extend the worth of a life when the opportunity presents itself.
Growing up in this world, I have discovered two passions in my life: cinema and the sciences. The film theorist Sergei Eisenstein uses montage sequences to provoke shock in his audience. Eisenstein’s philosophy was to create a clash between the thesis and antithesis in order to synthesize a new order. In addition, if you are able to control the extremes, then you determine the final outcome. This is the principle that lead to the fabrication of my favorite genre, science-fiction and fantasy. The conflict between our version of reality and ideas that defy the laws of the universe gave birth to such a genre. I would like to have the ability to control these same extremes, but provide a result that would benefit a more real-life application.
One pinnacle in my lifetime was discovering the value of life. I had been volunteering in the Emergency room for a few summers, observing the daily routine of the doctors there. My job was usually the Doctor’s assistant in documenting chief complaint, past history, areas of pain, signs and symptoms of every patient seen. The majority of patients we confronted had either abdominal pain or chest pain and sometimes an interesting psych disorder. However, one day I was about to have a collision with a sense of reality. It was early in the morning, approximately seven o’clock, and the ER just received a call from the paramedics unit saying, “Hey we’re coming in with a 37 year old female, 450lbs, about 5’8” with a cardiac arrest.” Initially, I was excited to see such a rare patient, since it was my first time seeing a cardiac arrest in first person. After seeing various films with intense medical scenes and TV shows, like House, ER, and Grey’s Anatomy, I thought I knew how this situation was going to play out. The paramedics are going to bust into the ER, the nurses will prepare a bed and get IV’s running, and the whole place would be in pandemonium. Then the doctor would say, “Clear!” and jolt the patient with a defibrillator at the last moment, bringing the patient back to life.
When the patient finally arrived at the ER, I was frozen in a state of fear and excitement. First, the paramedics transferred the patient onto two beds due to her immense size and were debriefing the doctor of the situation and dosage of medications they applied while the nurses were gathering vital signs. The doctor utilized an ultrasound machine in order to find her heart because of the excess fat in the way. He did some chest compressions and used the defibrillator. However, the abnormal thing was that this huge woman was undergoing a cardiac arrest and there was a sense of serenity among the staff members of the ER. I was standing there waiting or hoping for that heartbeat to come back after someone’s vital signs flatline. This was the second time death has presented itself in front of me. I had denied the patient’s death at first, but later adhered to the truth. In addition, I tried to comprehend how everyone was so desensitized. The realization hit me that everybody there had been exposed to death so often that emotions attached to it were close to absent. The truth is that the doctor did all that he could according to protocols. Currently, medicine has not advanced far enough to save this patient’s life based on the circumstances. Since the medical field is constantly advancing and becoming more efficient, it would be possible to save such a patient sometime in the future. However, the doctor is currently limited to his time of the arsenal available to treat this patient. Humans are constantly battling the race against death. If this woman had taken better care of her physical body or if there was a person dear to her to motivate her, then the initial problem could have been prevented. It is part of the human condition to extend the length of one’s life. However, I believe that one must attain their goals with the time given. After all, what good is saving one’s life if that individual does nothing with it. They might give off the illusion of life, but in reality they are dead.
Based upon my own life experiences, I would like to take more of a dialectical approach to healing patients. In this regard, I am in support of redefining the conventional doctor-patient relationship towards a new and balanced partnership between the healer and the healed. The fundamental assumption here is that both the physician and patient serve as co-therapists, with the doctor remaining as the repository of health and medical knowledge and the technical expertise that accompanies it. The patient, on the other hand, plays a crucial role as the covalent source of the elements necessary for healing to take place: faith, confidence, optimism, hope, as well as intelligent cooperation. It is clear to me that achieving such a paradigm shift in the way of doing things would be no mean fete. I have no doubt that most of my fellow physicians would be unwelcoming of the idea to abandon their familiar and comfortable authoritarian role. They may also be resistant to recognize their own shortcoming as relates to the ever-changing technology in the medical sector. It will also be uphill climb to bring patients to embracing their share of responsibility by consciously acknowledging the fact that the quality of their health along with incidence of disease is directly influenced by their individual behavioral patterns. To this end, therefore, it is strong conviction that an unconventional way of thinking is bound to benefit the effort to maintain health and cure disease to the greater benefit of the health professional and the patient.
