Final Exam

The book. Written by Pauline W. Chen.

I picked up this book in an airport. I am not sure which one, perhaps Narida. I didn't have the energy to read it while in flight.

Lack of energy can be a wonderful thing. It means that instead of reading a book that has provoked a million questions and a lot of difficult emotions on a aircraft, half delirious, I gave this book an honest read.

I picked it up because I have always wondered how my father dealt with some of the more serious things in his life.

Dad is a pathologist. Pathology stands for "study of disease", taken literally. He ran the pathology lab at Anderson Hospital in Troy, Illinois for many, many years. I understand intellectually what he did but I do not really understand what he did.

What I do know is that he is utterly unafraid of dealing with incredibly difficult situations involving life and death. It may seem minor, but if he has to put a family pet to sleep, he will do it gently but without tears nor much visible remorse (although you can tell things upset him).

I recently went to a funeral of a very good friend of his. This man, I will call him Jim, was also a pathologist. Jim and Dad had been close friends (Jim and his wife are my God-parents). Jim spent his life doing forensic pathology, investigating child homicides and dealing with the absolutely darkest things a man can deal with.

Jim got a particularly virulent form of bone cancer and died a very, very painful death. I think the thing that troubled my father the most was that his profession could do nothing for one of his best friends; dad never spoke of this to me.

I remember the funeral, and walking around talking to my dad and the family members of the deceased. Dad was not noticeably upset; we spoke about family members who were buried near and the existing family. His face was very drawn during the service, but very few other things were noticeable.

The family handled this event with a grace that I will remember until my death. They had expected this for a while, so I guess they were prepared but they were clearly in pain but yet they could speak about their pain and were honestly amazing people to be around during this time. I don't know any other way to describe it.

Anyway, to get to the point, I have never been quite able to come to terms with death. I have no idea how to handle it gracefully. It scares, disgusts, and repulses me quite a bit. I volunteered for an AIDS non-profit hoping to learn some really hardcore lessons about the subject but all I learned was that AIDS was very treatable at this point and the people who the nonprofit helped had millions of other problems as well as AIDS. I learned that even with a terminal disease, the most important thing in life is life. But that is another story.

I do not understand how my father can deal with death. Doctors have the, uh, __benefit__ of knowing their friends are dying and knowing why, how, and given our current technology the chances of life. How do they handle this?

I had toyed with the idea of medicine for a while. I never forgave people who sued my father for silly reasons. Not all the law suites were stupid, certainly, in 30 years of practice any mortal will make a mistake. Not many of them (for the record, 1), but so did my father. But we got sued many, many times a year. Because of this, I felt that I would never put myself in a position to save someone's life only to have them turn around a sue me for one reason or another.

I hadn't considered the difficulty of dealing with death although now it seems clear to me that it would have presented one of the largest barriers.

It is clear, through the course of the book, that Dr. Chen has an amazingly difficult time dealing with death. She is afraid of it just as the rest of us. But unlike the rest of us she has to get up every day and ask terminal patients if they have prepared for death.

I intend to give the book to my father, and ask him to read. After he has read it I will begin asking him questions about dealing with death and how closely his experience mirrors Dr. Chen's experience.

I said "I intend" because I do not know if I will have the courage to do it. Because just as I am afraid of death, I am afraid of dealing with emotional subjects with my father.

Chris