illness & health

“Health is not a commodity. Risk factors are not disease. Aging is not an illness. To fix a problem is easy, to sit with another suffering is hard. Doing all we can is not the same as doing what we should. Quality is more than metrics. Patients cannot see outside their pain, we cannot see in, relationship is the only bridge between. Time is precious; we spend it on what we value. The most common condition we treat is unhappiness. And the greatest obstacle to treating a patient's unhappiness is our own. Nothing is more patient-centered than the process of change. Doctors expect too much from data and not enough from conversation. Community is a locus of healing, not the hospital or the clinic. The foundation of medicine is friendship, conversation and hope.” —

—David Loxtercamp [sic], author of A Measure of Days: The Journal of a Country Doctor, as read in his interview with NPR’s Liane Hansen.


source: Dr. Jay Parkinson's tumblr

Hospital snafus & other perplexing problems

I went to the hospital I am studying at for the first time yesterday. I had been in previous contact with the hosptial to explain my objectives and experimental design. There does not seem to be any real problem with the study itself, but there are a few more hoops to jump through, which I wish had been brought to my attention sooner. I'm at a frustrating stand-still and can't even get out and explore. I guess I'll just use this time to polish up the details and make sure everything runs smoothly as possible.

I had spoken to my original point of contact on the phone and arranged to see him "anytime before lunch" which turned out to be "I'll show up when I have time, so please wait in my office for an hour." Fine. Going to the hospital was the #1 reason I came to India, so I can wait. There was confusion as to what my purpose was, but they were impressed with my credentials and the fact that I had just traveled across the world to see them. There really should n't have been any confusion, as I had emailed the heck out of them with copies of my grant proposal, approval, and IRB synopsis. Still, it became clear that there was still confusion over what I was there to accomplish.  I got bounced around to several doctors with the introduction "This young lady is here from the U.S. and would like to do some..ah...anthropology......" to which I had to conceal my amusement. I had to explain several times that I was not there to study at the hospital, but rather study the hospital at. wait I mean study the hospital itself. I now have to prepare a powerpoint for their review board before I can start Nancy Notebook-ing around.

To pass the time, I have been re-reading some anthropological literature, including Kleinman, my favorite Byron J. Good (and his--sigh-- wife, Mary Jo Good), and Kiran Narayan's How Native is a Native Anthropologist?  One of my favorite quotes comes from her ethnography:

"It's not that you shouldn't study," he said, voice low and kind. 'You should gain
wisdom. But you should realize that in the end this means nothing."

on the topic of academics obsessing too much over analysis. I have also been reading Bossypants, since I've finished the Tao of Wu. I keep mixing up details of the RZA's life with Tina Fey's awkward years.