Jordan Zakarin

A Little Sunday Meta

With no pretension as per my own importance or media penetration, I began this project with intentions aside from its main purpose, which is to keep friends and family updated on my latest bitching and thusly tacitly commanding sympathy.

I also wanted to see if I couldn’t reach out to other patients in an educational and empathetic way, while opening the eyes of health professionals and, if all my ducks really lined up, kinda sorta changing the way people in our vast health system communicate and heal.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised, and even (admitting this very reluctantly) touched by the number of strangers who have emailed me with their best wishes. Some have been perfectly able bodied sympathizers just dropping me a line, or more, offering moral support as I faced down the surgery and then began the healing process.

Because we’re all really just looking for an empathetic ear, I’ve also received emails from well wishers who also confided in me their own health issues, though they invariably minimize them in deference to my larger, more painful ordeal. Of course, I tell them that everyone is allowed to suffer and denying oneself with context does nothing to resolve the pain.

Regardless of their self-denial, though, this has worked out exactly as I had planned — people are lonely and scared and even a stranger that can understand is a very welcomed outlet for such feelings. I’m willing to take it on my shoulders, no matter how sore they are right now.

Most interestingly, though, has been the response from health professionals, and what it says about the way we communicate both with our doctors, and with each other on a larger scale. A number of forward looking, innovative doctors have emailed me, admitting that they have never experienced such an open account of what it’s like to be a patient, from physical pain to commentary on the healthcare delivery system to the emotional side of going through such a large ordeal. Well, I hope this helps.

Yesterday, I received a long email from a nurse in Brazil who has been following my blog. She’s a student, about my age, who spends nearly all her days interning in hospitals, taking care of all sorts of patients. My complaints about the nursing during my hospital stay made her re-evaluate a process that she said too often becomes automatic, far too much so for a compassionate nurse such as herself. She sounds wonderful, though, so I hope she’s not too hard on herself.

I’ve thought lately that perhaps I was too harsh in my review of the help I received while in the hospital — my team of doctors was absolutely fantastic, and while there were a couple of nurses a few compassion strokes shy of Florence Nightingale, that I was home so quickly certainly is a credit to the overall care I received. I suppose honesty is better than sugarcoating, but it is a difficult balance.

I don’t intend to lecture doctors, or to tell them they’re doing their jobs the wrong way, because it’s probably the hardest job in the world and I couldn’t even imagine going through the years of education it takes to get there, but I think this whole experience has been instructive in the sense that we’ve seen that one little blog can open so many eyes and create such understanding between two sides that, for all the closeness of care, don’t really communicate in a way that would be so helpful to treatment and recovery.

Or, not to say that I’ve created some great open forum and infinite understanding, but that the internet offers such a possibility if harnessed correctly. Maybe a patient blog network, where people can reach out to each other with support and questions, and health professionals can read and better understand the sensitive patients they are so often denied the opportunity to explore because of the demands of paperwork and overflowing waiting rooms and the natural barrier that keeps doctor-patient professional and not personal.

This all just thinking out loud, but I’m excited to see where this all goes. It is a project with possibilities infinitely bigger than my complaints and minutiae, but then again, that’s what understanding each other is all about.

Notes

  1. jordansheartsucks posted this
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