Going out in a blaze of glory

My last post was written in response to an assignment on death and dying. We were supposed to reflect and write about our role as a physician in the face of death. I realized that my perspective on death was shaped dramatically by my experience with Grandma. In some ways, I'm still processing her passing. Unlike others who I have known and are no longer here, it feels like I could still go visit her. It doesn't feel like she's really gone.

Yet writing that still chokes me up and brings tears to my eyes in the midst of a crowded coffee shop.

I had another moment of self-realization today in our clinical medicine class. Our professors invited a lady with metastatic breast cancer to be a patient in front of the entire class. A psychiatrist interviewed her, demonstrating for us a proper psychiatric evaluation. She seemed perfectly healthy, but death loomed in her eminent future. It made me think of my own mortality and how I would respond to terminal illness.

My dad used to say if he ever knew he was on his way out, he'd just fly his airplane into the side of a mountain out in the wilderness. I tried to talk him out of it... no reason to waste a perfectly good airplane. He said I had a good point.

He did too, though. I don't want to languish. Faced with terminal illness, I would not want my last years/months/weeks spent in a hospital scraping for life. There are stories of terminal patients smuggling Bibles into closed countries, risking execution to bring good news to the oppressed. That's how I'd want to go out. I don't necessarily want to smuggle Bibles, but something along those lines would be sweet. Our ambitions for greatness aren't always out of pure motives, but somehow, there is a certain romance about giving your all, even if your all will soon be taken anyway.

I suppose it has something to do with this:

"Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." - John 15:13

Grandma

I got the call late one night as thoughts of video games, quantum mechanics and the intricacies of the college-aged feminine mind were dancing through my head. A contented existence devoid of major preoccupations suddenly exploded into a myriad of questions, unknowns and uncertainties. My cousin and her boyfriend picked me up and we were off on an after-midnight outing, destination known, but dreaded.

We didn't know what to expect when we got there, but we needed to be there. I dozed restlessly as the miles passed, waking to cold bursts of air when the truck door would open long enough for Heath to jump out. After a few sprints up and down the highway shoulder, he would jump back in car with a little more adrenaline and drive the next stretch until sleep began to overtake him again.

My Grandad was in surprisingly optimistic spirits considering that his wife was lying in a comatose state just yards away. You could tell our arrival there was a relief however. He seemed tired, yet vigilant, a worn-out wolf guarding over his wounded mate. Grandma looked like death and I had to take another breath before fully stepping into the room. A lively, spunky, pie-making, laundry-doing lady with a heart of gold was transformed into this gray wraith sparsely covered by sheets that served only to accentuate her weakened state.

"Brain stem stroke" "wait and See" "We Don't Know" "We'll Know More..."

Words that meant nothing to me flashed in my head and bounced off the walls shattering in brilliant displays of frustration. And then we gathered around the bed. As we joined together as family to lift up our loved one before our Lord, a sense of peace and healing settled over the sterility of the room that smelled of Purgatory.

And through the calm and unspoken uncertainty, a toe moved.

The next few years were absolute gifts. Grandma never really recovered, but we ate Mexican food together. Grandad cooked for the woman who had prepared his meals for over 50 years, nursing her, helping her fight on, loving her.

She passed one night, moving into the next life with ease and grace. My aunt, who had been a stronghold for Grandma and Grandad in their battle, awoke to a voice at her ear, "I'm free Judy-babe." She got the call an hour later.

The funeral was a celebration. All those who attended remembered not the mourning, but the laughter and the tears, sadness mixed with joy. We do not weep for her. We weep for us, because we miss her and will not see her until we too rise to new life.

Death is not a bleak occasion for me. It is the graceful transition from pain to the final testing grounds where we all will answer for the choices we've made. I anticipate the day when I can look back on my life and look forward to death as a step into freedom.

3rd Year Schedule

And the moment we've all been waiting for...

Pocatello, ID: Pediatrics, July 7th - Aug 15th
Free time!! Aug 16th - Sep 28th
Seattle: Internal Med, Sep 29th - Nov 7th
Anchorage: Internal Med, Nov 10th - Dec 19th
Christmas!! Dec 20th - Jan 4th
Anchorage: Psychiatry, Jan 5th - Feb 13th
Fairbanks: Surgery, Feb 16th - Mar 27th
Anchorage: Ob/gyn, Mar 30th - May 8th
Wrangall: Family Medicine, May 11th - June 19th

That's all for now!

What the Easter Bunny isn't telling you

My favorite Puerta Rican recently made me aware of a problem with Easter. While I fully support egg-hunting, bunnies, bright colors, fake grass, jelly beans and Jesus rising from the dead to bring life to the world, there is one aspect of this joyful holiday I can no longer endorse with a clear conscience.

I'm warning you right now, if you are female or under the age of 13 and want to fully enjoy the holiday, go read about the latest invention that should be in every Easter basket.

Just so that you're fully informed, this will definitely put on smudge on your festivities.

Last chance.

Ok.

For real.

...

It's the chocolate. (you still have a chance to stop reading!!) I can no longer endorse most chocolate for Easter or any other application for that matter. If there was an official website where you could endorse things officially, I would heretofore withdraw my endorsement of chocolate in most forms.

Here's the scoop. Most cocoa or cacao or whatever you want to call it is grown in Ivory Coast, roughly 40% comes from there. Now while there are many family farms that pass from generation to generation, there are also farms that employ forced labor, offering lucrative jobs to children and then completely enslaving the workers once they arrive on site. They often recruit from other countries in order to completely subjugate their workers and leave them no recourse to protest their conditions. Mali has been especially hard-hit by slave traders. There are countless stories online detail the practice of cocoa slave traders. One boy way promised a bicycle to come work, then inhumanely abused as a worker. Needless to say, no bicycle ever appeared.

What can we do about it? Not a whole lot right now, but the idea of buying a Snickers doesn't seem quite as sweet now thinking that I would be enjoying on the backs of abused children. It actually bothers me a lot that I could still eat chocolate and probably not flinch. I've become dulled to oppressing others by my purchasing and indulging habits. Is it ridiculous to cut out chocolate completely? Probably. But that's the kind of life I have committed myself to when I signed on with Christ. Ridiculous. oh well.

Who's guilty??? Almost all cocoa not specified as "Fair Trade" is bought by purchasers at cocoa markets where cocoa from all over the world mixes. In these markets, there is no differentiation between chocolate produced by just practices and that produced by oppression. This almost guarantees that slave cocoa makes it into the mix of most major brands. Specifically, Nestle, Hershey's, Mars and yes, even Cadbury all purchase "blood cocoa."

There is a spark of hope for chocolate lovers: Fair Trade chocolate. I wouldn't suggest that every single person stop eating all chocolate, but I would request that you would support an alternative to slavery. Start mixing some Fair Trade chocolate into your purchases.

Every purchase you make supports either fair practices or unjust practices.




P.S. I concede that not all children can realistically jump and dance all day in fields of green with butterflies and bubbles, and realize that working is actually a pretty good choice for children in poor countries given the current social conditions. Read up on what's going on in the slave trade and realize that we are supporting unnecessary slavery and abuse with our $13 billion of chocolate purchases every year.

Whoa.

I just read my cousin's latest blog. And it's rad. You've got to check it out. Seriously.

http://shellywillbanks.blogspot.com/

The Clean-up Hitter

Love. It's about love.

There's a series of videos called NOOMA with a guy named Rob Bell talking about all kinds of weird stuff. In one, he poses the following questions:

We'll tell somebody we love them and in the same breath, we'll talk about how much we love a new car, or a certain pair of pants. I mean, I love my wife, and I also love... tacos?

Do you think the word love loses its meaning when we use it for so many things?

Does it affect our understanding of what real love is?

I was talking about the ideas in the blog below (judging and stuff) with a friend and the subject of love weaseled its way into the conversation. You know, the usual stuff like, "What is love? How is it perceived? How do we describe it?" It then hit me like a speeding semi-truck: We (as a society) get so worked up about "judging" because we have redefined love as something conditional.

Western Love When I talk about loving almost anything, I'm talking about how it makes me feel. I love skiing because of the sweet sensation I get in a (mostly) controlled fall. I love fajitas because they set off a brilliant array of delectable explosions in my mouth. I love mountains because of the soaring feeling I get standing on top of one and the sheer awe that surrounds me when I see them rise up to meet the sky.

If all those things lost their sweetness, my love for them would vanish. And so it is that we have defined our love for each other. Words have power and the associations we form with them have power as well. When I say "I love you" to a friend or relative, I could essentially replace that sentiment with "You bring me joy/happiness/entertainment." Still complimentary, but less so. There is no word that means I love you unconditionally because of who you are, not because of the choices you make or what you do for me. Some would argue that our choices define us, but that assumes that we have no deeper identity which lends us greater worth.

Do You Love Me? If loving some one is simply an effect of how they make us feel, then it is easy to see why it could be so upsetting to lose some one's approval. If some one stops pleasing me, I stop loving them. Me not liking your shoes because they're not hipster enough isn't a huge deal. Me not "loving" you anymore because your look clashes could cause some significant emotional pain.

Back to the Basics Back when love was invented, it wasn't based on a "give-and-take" system. It was more of a "give" system. A reputable source claims that the greatest display of love is to give up your life for another. Hardly a pleasurable activity. That kind of love doesn't say "You please me," but rather, "Your worth to me is immeasurable, infinite." It is that kind of love that is unconditional, seeking the betterment of the other and not the pleasing of self.

There is no word in our language to express unconditional love which is rooted in loving some one because of their innate value. In fact, many times we don't assign value based on the right stuff. Everyone reflects the image of God. We all have a chunk of perfection that we can uniquely illuminate to the world. We are all sons and daughters of the King. THAT'S worth loving. And if we start loving people because of the worth of their deepest identity, I have a feeling they wouldn't feel quite so rejected when we tell them their shoes are ugly. They might even smile. 'Cause they know they have our love, regardless.

No one is into all kinds of music

But everyone says they are. Is it an unwillingness to admit our own personal preferences that drives this phenomenon? Perhaps just social laziness? When I ask some one what kind of music they like, and they say, "I'm into all kinds of stuff," I immediately judge them as being noncommittal. I don't want to, it just happens.

There's a lot of talk these days about judging and not judging people. It's the social equivalent of painting yourself with honey and going bear-slapping to bust out a particularly judgmental phrase. And no, I'm not going to give examples. And here it comes, the elephant in the room...

Everyone judges. But that doesn't mean they hate you.

Having opinions and expressing yourself in various ways is intrinsically a form of judgment. By making one choice over another, you're evaluating that option as more valuable, thus naturally demonstrating your preferences. I'm about to order a mocha, NOT a latte, because a mocha is a better choice for me right now. When Ted just ordered his iced mocha, I judged that choice. I actually thought, "Wow, that looks really good, I wish I was more like Ted right now."

Now if he'd made what I would consider a bad choice, like ordering a cappuccino, I would have thought, "Dang, that looks like drinking bitter foam." And been quite content with my own choices.

Neither one of those hypotheticals would diminish the friendship or respect that I have for him, and this is the point I'm trying to make. It's okay to disagree with, or even disapprove of the choices other people make. It's okay to express that. It's honesty. I think what people are really adamantly opposed to are the judgments that say, "Because you made this choice, you're a terrible person." Yeah, not cool.

So here's my goal, to keep our preferences apart from our acceptance of people, but on the same token, not insult each other by pretending we don't actually have any preferences.

I almost didn't post this because it's kind of abrasive, but it's a topic that seems important to me, so feel free to call me out if I'm in left field on this one.

Meeting amongst friends

He described the first sensation as a warm buzz that he immediately wanted to experience again. He did experience that buzz, many times over and many times stronger over the years to come, but that one experiment, that 11-year-old curiosity, that open bottle of wine was the spark that ignited a blaze of alcoholism culminating in a 25-year-old high school graduate dragging himself, drunk as a skunk, into his first AA meeting.

My first AA meeting was a class requirement. I went to observe what it's like to admit you're totally out of control and cannot change yourself. Actually, it's a lot like me. Actually, it's a lot like you.

It's smiling faces,
It's raucous laughter,
It's taking a big bite of chocolate cupcake and almost snorting frosting up your nose at a buddy's joke.
Sitting tiredly waiting for the one to finish,
Secretly wondering if, when your time comes, you'll spill the beans
The whole can of beans
Not just the top that looks nice and tasty,
The dark bottom where the squished beans reside,
Where it's cold and agglutinated.

But smiling face after smiling face
Urges you on,
You sip some ground-filled coffee and remember all the times you spilled the beans
And the relief and the joy
And the freedom
It's curtains for your fears
As the words pour out
Acceptance, pure acceptance

They don't even break stride when you tell them you did coke
Are they paying attention?
Sure, they've just heard it all
They walk on the razor edges
Another round
With cream and sugar to boot

This is real
Real, shaky, life
With all its uncertainties exposed, no one is a stranger
Drifting in, drifting out
Week after week
Month after month
Decade after decade
It's like finding an old restaurant with a crabby waitress. The food's not great. The coffee always tastes burnt. And don't get started on the smell. The table wobbles, but you keep coming back. Even though the table wobbles, you keep coming back.

It must be something in the coffee. Or maybe the cup. But probably the hand the pours it for you. It's 'cause that hand's attached to some one who understands you. 'Cause, really, they're a lot like you. A lot like me.