Doctoring -- Heart of the Matter

Yesterday fellow blogger Yan (http://yancorner) forwarded me a MUST READ story. After several postings comprising mainly rants and ravings about the political shenanigans and flip-flops involving politicians, the media people which now extend to Bloggers -- the latter like to think they belong to the 5th estate, as usual initiated by the heavyweights in the United States of America - I believe a good respite from the political life is good for the body and soul.

The heart of today's post revolved around a medical doctor's life, from an actor-doctor's point of view. Alan Alda acted as a "composite" doctor in the famous M*A*S*H series starting some three decades back, based on the daily challenges confronting a doctor caught in the Korean War two decades earlier. Matters of the "sick or wounded" body and heart don't change much through the passage of time -- it's only the circumstances that have changed, the nature and spirit of the medical world's challenges in the ward and operation or war theatres have many commonalities. Whether in Vietnam, Uganda, Korea or Malaysia, or in the US itself, in peacetime or wartime, the doctors' oath sworn to service all telescopes into the daily quest dedicated to the mission of healing and caring for the sick or wounded, and maybe, the supreme test of saving a human life.

It was the year of 1979, and Alan Alda was invited to give the commencement speech to a graduating class of a prestigious US medical school. He prefaced by saying maybe he was invited based on his claim of having as least "played" a TV doctor as Capt Benjamin Franklin Pierce, more popularly known as Hawkeye Pierce. He deemed his calling as an actor playing a TV character delivering laughter was indeed important and complementary to the real medical doctor dispensing medicine.

Alan said Hawkeye was indeed very much a "real" person, and a remarkable one at that, and he told the graduating students "if you have chosen somehow to associate this character with your graduation from medical school, then I find that very heartening because I think it means you are reaching out toward a very human king of doctoring. In fact, it's because he's based on real doctors that there is something especially engaging sbout him.

"He (Hawkeye) has a sense of humour yet serious, impertiment yet feeling, he's human enough to make mistakes, and yet, he hates death enough to push himself past his own limits to save lives.

"In many ways, he is the doctor patients want to have and doctors want to be."

Alan said yes, just as succesful actors getting huge rewards, doctors too instil a tremendous sense of awe in the people's mind, and financially they reap rewards well above the average guy, deservingly so.

However, he advised the graduands: "Possess your skills, but don't be possessed by them."

Three-decade-old gender bias still very much alive today

Alan also highlighted a finding, still relevant more than 30 years later in Malaysia today. He reported that questionnaires filled out at 41 medical schools US-wide revealed a distressing pattern. The women were either still ignored in class or simply not taken seriously as students. Among other distressing episodes, they would be shown slides of Playboy nudes during anatomy lectures -- to the accompaniment of catcalls and wisecracks from male students.

"I'm dwelling on this because it seems that the male-female relationship is still the most personal and intense test of human behaviour. It's a crucible for decency."

Here I recall the recent incident when the most honourable MP for Jerai (BN), Badruddin Amiruldin had taken liberties with a female MP by asking: "How long can the YB's husband stand her?", taking a potshot at the cili padi Fong Po Kuan (DAP - Batu Gajah) who later demanded for an official retraction and apology. (Refer desiderata's Creativity, cili padi and crows, April 2, 2005).

More MP jesters recently made fools of themselves debating Malaysia Airlines air stewardesses' uniforms that were too sexy (not supported by facts), hence arousing male passengers' desires (from the waxing lips of male MPs, or is it M(C)Ps?), to the point of going out of control, or leading to erection? Or ejection? Read a fellow blogger's hilarious account at http://kennysia.com (desiderata disclaims all accountability for kenny's creative accounting, April 20.)

Alan, who had by 1972 co-written scripts for the popular comedy-drama series for seven years, concluded his address with an observation and advice which he said could only come from a non-doctor, and he hoped his young audience would remember: The head bone is connected to the heart bone -- and don't let them come apart.

I end this sharing with another poem from Max Ehrmann:

I journeyed from university to university,

and I saw everywhere the

past rebuilt before the eyes of

young men and young women --

Egypt, Greece, Rome; language,

architecture, laws -- saw the earth and

sky explained, and the habits

of body --

Everywhere chairs of this and that,

largely endowed.

But nowhere saw I a chair of the

human heart.