My grandmother was a strong and compassionate Egyptian woman, a mother of three, and a pathologist. On a glass slide, exactly like the ones she used daily, cells from her colon biopsy were identified as undifferentiated, and within days she was diagnosed with Stage IV Colon Cancer.<\/p>\n
Although I am learning how to care for people in sickness and health, someday, the chest compressions will be applied to my chest. Disease knows no discrimination, and death unites us all. Thousands of cancer diagnoses and precise and growing knowledge of cancer cell types did nothing to protect my grandmother from that which she knew so much about.<\/p>\n
In Egypt, cancer is called \u2019the bad disease\u2019, and bad it is. Over the next couple months, we watched as the bad disease took our beloved grandmother away from us. During that time, my family members, and my grandmother, had to make a series of challenging decisions that they were very obviously not prepared to make.<\/p>\n
Medical advancements, although the main reason we are living longer lives, have caused the complexity and variety of\u00a0end-of-life decisions to be ever increasing. Uneasy about the series of decisions that my family had to make and handicapped by my ignorance, I found myself\u00a0reading\u00a0Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. Atul Gawande led me through a vulnerable and imperfect but inspiring\u00a0conversation about death and dying, exposing our medical system\u2019s inability to understand health beyond the one-dimensional, and presumptuously noble, endeavor to prolong life at any cost.<\/p>\n
While reading Being Mortal, I found myself enthusiastically\u00a0nodding along, agreeing with\u00a0the theme of the book: we need to change everything about our simple but\u00a0destructive approach to aging and our increasing elderly\u00a0population. Our singular approach to prolonging life simplifies complex social and\u00a0medical\u00a0decisions. It seems the attitude now is that longer life is all that matters.\u00a0Ensuring nutrition and shelter is our only standard for a viable living environment for\u00a0the elderly. We are failing our parents and\u00a0grandparents.<\/p>\n
Atul Gawande\u2019s presentation of ideas changed how I\u00a0perceive aging and our healthcare\u00a0decisions at the end of life. I became a strong advocate of having\u00a0conversations about the inevitability\u00a0of our\u00a0death and the choices we want\u00a0to be made during our end-of-life care. I was convinced that society and healthcare\u00a0should\u00a0ensure that the elderly\u00a0remain the authors of\u00a0their own stories for as long as they are willing, and actively empower them to do so. Nutrition, shelter, and minimizing fall risk are minimums of care, not acceptable standards.<\/p>\n
The Literature in Medicine Student\u00a0Interest\u00a0Group at my school\u00a0decided to read Atul Gawande\u2019s\u00a0Being\u00a0Mortal, and I could not be more excited. In the middle of our meeting discussing the book, as I was passionately\u00a0sharing my ideas, it\u00a0occurred to me\u00a0that although I was\u00a0full of strong opinions, I had done absolutely nothing to be a part of the solution. My grandfather had come to live with us after his wife of 55 years, my grandmother, passed away from colon cancer, and my only roles\/concerns in his care have been to ensure food, sleep, and meds. My strong opinions had not inspired my actions.<\/p>\n
Nodding along to Atul Gawande\u2019s criticisms of our medical system is easy, but having an honest\u00a0conversation with my grandfather about his priorities and end-of-life care preferences\u00a0as he reaches 90 years of age is not so easy. How might I empower my grandfather to continue to be the author of his story?\u00a0Believing\u00a0that healthcare is a right and not a privilege is easy, but carrying out the responsibility that this belief invokes is not so easy. How might I work to help provide all my neighbors with equal access to high-quality care?\u00a0Practicing the invaluable intervention of presence is not easy, and working day after day to hone my abilities at the\u00a0art of empathy is not easy. How might I overcome my\u00a0doubts, fears, and insecurities, and avoid being frozen into lack of compassion?<\/p>\n
Too often my strong opinions do not inform my actions.\u00a0Too often my hate for dysfunctional and unjust systems overshadows my love for the people in the systems. I call myself to love my neighbors more than hate the systems, for love is actionable and hate is stifling and tiresome. Let love fuel the tank, for compassion-based activism is the only kind that goes the distance.<\/p>\n