Saturday, January 25, 2014
The day we got the microwave back
Today was a big day. After almost a week of being sans microwave, Michelle and Dad were able to best the 20 year old beast and our new (last year's) model and swap them out. Not that I'm complaining about the 1990s space age heater biting the dust (it was time) but it's amazing how utterly inconvenient it made life. I had to think ahead about what to make for breakfast--while cereal, waffles, eggs, and bars were all options, all I really wanted was oatmeal--the microwave kind. And I had to boil water on the stove for my French press (#firstworldproblem). And--the most inconvenient--I didn't have a way to warm up my rice bag for my sore hamstrings after my grueling 3 mile run. But have no fear, the microwave is back and better than ever. At least I hope so...I haven't actually tried it yet...
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
The world is charged...
Photos from my silent retreat. Glad to have quiet time for walks, prayer, naps, meals, reading, and enjoying God's presence in so many ways.
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| These were everywhere...but the birds were usually in the bushes |
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| Frozen fountain |
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| Friends accompanying me on my after-lunch walk |
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| Moon rising over the Resurrection |
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| Nice color contrast; crappy resolution |
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Cultural incompetency
I just finished reading "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down", which has been on my list for way too long.
I can't remember the last time a book infuriated me so much. It's hard to explain. The basic setting for the book is a Hmong girl who developed seizures in infancy and the struggle between her American doctors trying to do what was best for her and her parents, who wanted to practice traditional animistic medicine and distrusted modern healthcare. The results of the clash (or maybe just the results of her illness) were catastrophic and difficult for everyone involved. The book also recounts the history of the Hmong people, their constant persecution, and mass migration to Laos and then the United States following the Indochina and Vietnam Wars. (And thus raised a lot of issues in general about welfare and assimilation, but those are for another time, or maybe never.)
As a practitioner of Western medicine, I identified deeply with her doctors, frustrated that the parents weren't giving her medicine, that they couldn't seem to understand why certain interventions were deemed necessary, and that they thought the doctors were trying to hurt her--concepts that were almost always lost on her parents despite using interpreters (for example: when she had to be transferred to a bigger hospital with a pediatric ICU, the parents just thought her doctors were sending her somewhere else so they could go on vacation themselves, even though the whole discussion was had with a Hmong interpreter). It made me so mad to think of a girl who might have lived a somewhat normal life if her seizures had been adequately controlled and her parents had trusted the doctors, but instead ended up a total vegetable with her entire community pitted against the hospital.
I might have done many of the same things, right up to the point of asking social services to take the girl and place her in foster care so she could get the treatment she needed. Because what good is staying with your family--no matter how loving--if you end up not even being able to speak to them or interact? If an English-speaking, fully American family intentionally lied about giving medicine and refused to do it to the detriment of their child and at extreme cost to the taxpayers, wouldn't we claim medical neglect and do something about it?
It was also baffling to learn of some of the Hmong beliefs about health and illness--that you only have a finite amount of blood in your body and if the doctors take too much, they take your soul; that eating the wrong thing when pregnant may cause your child to have a congenital defect and trying to correct that defect would insult the spirits and cause death; that having to take a medicine your whole life means that the medicine is trying to kill you, because otherwise it would have worked faster. It made me want to shake someone and say, "What do you mean your child can't have surgery to remove a tumor because it will make their reincarnated soul incomplete?" "What do you mean you're going to commit suicide if we take more of your child's blood? They will make more!"
And yet, as someone who holds beliefs that some may consider equally archaic--that as part of the Mass we consume Jesus' body and blood, that God can intervene and work miracles as a result of prayer, that not all suffering is evil and to be avoided--I understand what it's like, even on a small level, to be misunderstood. It seems like a small task to figure out a patient's impression of their illness and what their priorities are. For example, with terminal cancer, some people want time and some people want comfort, and neither is wrong. And yet, I'm not (to my knowledge) endangering my life or the life of anyone else because of my beliefs. So where do we draw the line? In this case, it was a cultural battle, but there are lots of avenues for conflict in medicine. When do parents have a right to refuse treatment for their children? Or what happens when someone declines treatment until the point they are in an emergency and then expects medicine to offer a quick fix?
I hope you can see why I was struggling as I read this book. And I don't think there are definite answers. I think each patient teaches us to be a little more aware, a little more understanding, and yet it's far too easy to go into autopilot. Just today I had a mom break down in the room over what I thought was a fairly minor issue, and it was only after she took me aside outside of the room and told me what her fears really were that I was able to go back in and reassure both the patient and her mom in a way that was meaningful and conducive to healing for both of them. But what if the mom hadn't come out? Or what if I had been too busy to really listen? Things might have turned out differently, just like they probably do in offices and hospitals around the country. It's a struggle to remember that there is not just one way to healing and not one right response to illness or suffering.
I can't remember the last time a book infuriated me so much. It's hard to explain. The basic setting for the book is a Hmong girl who developed seizures in infancy and the struggle between her American doctors trying to do what was best for her and her parents, who wanted to practice traditional animistic medicine and distrusted modern healthcare. The results of the clash (or maybe just the results of her illness) were catastrophic and difficult for everyone involved. The book also recounts the history of the Hmong people, their constant persecution, and mass migration to Laos and then the United States following the Indochina and Vietnam Wars. (And thus raised a lot of issues in general about welfare and assimilation, but those are for another time, or maybe never.)
As a practitioner of Western medicine, I identified deeply with her doctors, frustrated that the parents weren't giving her medicine, that they couldn't seem to understand why certain interventions were deemed necessary, and that they thought the doctors were trying to hurt her--concepts that were almost always lost on her parents despite using interpreters (for example: when she had to be transferred to a bigger hospital with a pediatric ICU, the parents just thought her doctors were sending her somewhere else so they could go on vacation themselves, even though the whole discussion was had with a Hmong interpreter). It made me so mad to think of a girl who might have lived a somewhat normal life if her seizures had been adequately controlled and her parents had trusted the doctors, but instead ended up a total vegetable with her entire community pitted against the hospital.
I might have done many of the same things, right up to the point of asking social services to take the girl and place her in foster care so she could get the treatment she needed. Because what good is staying with your family--no matter how loving--if you end up not even being able to speak to them or interact? If an English-speaking, fully American family intentionally lied about giving medicine and refused to do it to the detriment of their child and at extreme cost to the taxpayers, wouldn't we claim medical neglect and do something about it?
It was also baffling to learn of some of the Hmong beliefs about health and illness--that you only have a finite amount of blood in your body and if the doctors take too much, they take your soul; that eating the wrong thing when pregnant may cause your child to have a congenital defect and trying to correct that defect would insult the spirits and cause death; that having to take a medicine your whole life means that the medicine is trying to kill you, because otherwise it would have worked faster. It made me want to shake someone and say, "What do you mean your child can't have surgery to remove a tumor because it will make their reincarnated soul incomplete?" "What do you mean you're going to commit suicide if we take more of your child's blood? They will make more!"
And yet, as someone who holds beliefs that some may consider equally archaic--that as part of the Mass we consume Jesus' body and blood, that God can intervene and work miracles as a result of prayer, that not all suffering is evil and to be avoided--I understand what it's like, even on a small level, to be misunderstood. It seems like a small task to figure out a patient's impression of their illness and what their priorities are. For example, with terminal cancer, some people want time and some people want comfort, and neither is wrong. And yet, I'm not (to my knowledge) endangering my life or the life of anyone else because of my beliefs. So where do we draw the line? In this case, it was a cultural battle, but there are lots of avenues for conflict in medicine. When do parents have a right to refuse treatment for their children? Or what happens when someone declines treatment until the point they are in an emergency and then expects medicine to offer a quick fix?
I hope you can see why I was struggling as I read this book. And I don't think there are definite answers. I think each patient teaches us to be a little more aware, a little more understanding, and yet it's far too easy to go into autopilot. Just today I had a mom break down in the room over what I thought was a fairly minor issue, and it was only after she took me aside outside of the room and told me what her fears really were that I was able to go back in and reassure both the patient and her mom in a way that was meaningful and conducive to healing for both of them. But what if the mom hadn't come out? Or what if I had been too busy to really listen? Things might have turned out differently, just like they probably do in offices and hospitals around the country. It's a struggle to remember that there is not just one way to healing and not one right response to illness or suffering.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Pope Francis' 2014
Leave it to Pope Francis to come up with my New Year's Resolutions for me. While not technically a set of resolutions, these 10 things are themes of Francis' preaching since his election, and are as good a place as any to start living the Gospel more fully. So, may I present--my resolutions for 2014:
1. Don't gossip--“Every time we judge our brother in our hearts or worse when we speak badly of them with others, we are murdering Christians,” Francis says. “There is no such thing as innocent slander.”--enough said
2. Finish your meals--this isn't literally about being a member of the Clean Plate Club, but about waste in general and being mindful of those without. To me it means grocery shopping with purpose, not on a whim, so that food won't go bad in the fridge, planning to eat leftovers, using the nonperishables I already have instead of making something else.
3. Make time for others--this one's pretty self-explanatory too. Not being selfish of my time and thinking of others before they ask.
4. Choose the more humble purchase--at last, vindication for my twin bed! I love that the Holy Father is calling attention to this. Yes, it's fun to have the latest stuff, and yes, one could argue that as long as you're still tithing and being generous, who cares how you spend your money. But seriously? Do you NEED the Otter Box, or the 60" TV, or the heated leather seats? What if we lived what the pope calls a “sober and essential lifestyle" and focused our attention instead on Christ and His work? The more stuff you have, the more you worry about it. I'm going to try to translate this attitude into my "splurge" purchases--the fun pair of socks, the grande latte, the craft brew--which, while not expensive, still give me an attitude of entitlement, like "I deserve this."
5. Meet the poor in the flesh--one of my goals for the new year is to find a volunteering project that I can commit to. Welcoming suggestions that would allow for my inconsistent schedule.
6. Stop judging others--way too easy to let this one slip in as righteous indignation or "sharing the truth"
7. Befriend those who disagree--in the past, I've run from these discussions, when someone at work brings up the "stupid" requirements of Catholic marriage preparation, or that cloning is okay "as long as you're not Catholic" or that we should have socialized medicine. Maybe it's time to engage. Yikes!
8. Make commitments, such as marriage--Now, it's not like my goal for 2014 is to run to the altar and say "I do." But I do think it's important to cultivate a culture of commitment instead of convenience. “I ask you, instead, to be revolutionaries, to swim against the tide; yes, I am asking you to rebel against this culture that sees everything as temporary and that ultimately believes that you are incapable of responsibility, that you are incapable of true love."
9. Make it a habit to ask the Lord--see--prayer once again makes it into my resolutions. Guess I just get to keep working on this one.
10. Be happy--“Sometimes these melancholy Christians' faces have more in common with pickled peppers than the joy of having a beautiful life. Joy cannot be held at heel: it must be let go. Joy is a pilgrim virtue. It is a gift that walks, walks on the path of life, that walks with Jesus: preaching, proclaiming Jesus, proclaiming joy, lengthens and widens that path.”
1. Don't gossip--“Every time we judge our brother in our hearts or worse when we speak badly of them with others, we are murdering Christians,” Francis says. “There is no such thing as innocent slander.”--enough said
2. Finish your meals--this isn't literally about being a member of the Clean Plate Club, but about waste in general and being mindful of those without. To me it means grocery shopping with purpose, not on a whim, so that food won't go bad in the fridge, planning to eat leftovers, using the nonperishables I already have instead of making something else.
3. Make time for others--this one's pretty self-explanatory too. Not being selfish of my time and thinking of others before they ask.
4. Choose the more humble purchase--at last, vindication for my twin bed! I love that the Holy Father is calling attention to this. Yes, it's fun to have the latest stuff, and yes, one could argue that as long as you're still tithing and being generous, who cares how you spend your money. But seriously? Do you NEED the Otter Box, or the 60" TV, or the heated leather seats? What if we lived what the pope calls a “sober and essential lifestyle" and focused our attention instead on Christ and His work? The more stuff you have, the more you worry about it. I'm going to try to translate this attitude into my "splurge" purchases--the fun pair of socks, the grande latte, the craft brew--which, while not expensive, still give me an attitude of entitlement, like "I deserve this."
5. Meet the poor in the flesh--one of my goals for the new year is to find a volunteering project that I can commit to. Welcoming suggestions that would allow for my inconsistent schedule.
6. Stop judging others--way too easy to let this one slip in as righteous indignation or "sharing the truth"
7. Befriend those who disagree--in the past, I've run from these discussions, when someone at work brings up the "stupid" requirements of Catholic marriage preparation, or that cloning is okay "as long as you're not Catholic" or that we should have socialized medicine. Maybe it's time to engage. Yikes!
8. Make commitments, such as marriage--Now, it's not like my goal for 2014 is to run to the altar and say "I do." But I do think it's important to cultivate a culture of commitment instead of convenience. “I ask you, instead, to be revolutionaries, to swim against the tide; yes, I am asking you to rebel against this culture that sees everything as temporary and that ultimately believes that you are incapable of responsibility, that you are incapable of true love."
9. Make it a habit to ask the Lord--see--prayer once again makes it into my resolutions. Guess I just get to keep working on this one.
10. Be happy--“Sometimes these melancholy Christians' faces have more in common with pickled peppers than the joy of having a beautiful life. Joy cannot be held at heel: it must be let go. Joy is a pilgrim virtue. It is a gift that walks, walks on the path of life, that walks with Jesus: preaching, proclaiming Jesus, proclaiming joy, lengthens and widens that path.”
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