"the hardest thing in this world is to live in it"
In which I wax rhapsodic about pop culture. Because, I’m a geek.
“It’s risky and invasive…”
“That’s why God invented the long consent form.”
For all this show can drive me up the wall when dealing with chronic pain issues, I really love it. Especially when they just focus on medicine, and the ethics around all that they do.
Occasionally it’s fun read the IMDB trivia page for TV shows. For example, while I’ve long dismissed the criticism that there’s no such thing as a diagnostician team/division of diagnostic medicine in hospitals (while I am willing to accept I sometimes have a creative mind, I’m not yet willing to believe I’ve completely made up people I know, working in hospitals, who are working in that field), I’ve been puzzled by Chase’s title, intensivist. According to IMDB, an intensivist is doctor who specializes in intensive care. This specialty is new and uncommon in the United States, but well-established in Australia, where the character is from. Neat, eh? A good attention to detail, which is something I can appreciate.
(For those who might have missed out, I’m actually working on a project about television, media, medicine and responsibility. And by working on, I mean doing a lot of reading, and debating justifying the purchase of the first two seasons of House, MD…as research, of course.)
A friend and I were chatting earlier this week during the TV show House, and I did a quick math count of the amount of pain medication I have floating around my own house, at the maximum (right after I’ve filled my prescriptions) and what I have on hand currently. I mostly did this to show that the numbers they were discussing on the show weren’t as high as they were implying.
Anyhow, it came up that I really have stopped talking about having and living with a chronic pain problem. I didn’t think this was true until I took the time to look through both journals, and yeah, I guess I have stopped talking about it. I suppose part of it is, really, what do I say? “Woke up this morning. Arm hurts. Got coffee. Dropped yet another mug, because at early’o’clock I can’t seem to remember to use my left arm…” I don’t want to turn myself into a victim, or a pitypoint. Yep, got a chronic pain problem, it’s irritating, it slows me down, next?
It has been implied, however, that this is just a way of holding it in and not dealing with it, or sharing and allowing those friendly towards me to be supportive. I’d argue, but I’ve been told that there are more of them than me, and I’ll lose.
I guess talking about it makes it real, and I don’t really want to make real the fact that things have been rough lately. I had a lot of writing and typing to do in the last week, which has made the general pain worse, and I seem to be having some new symptoms. I’m not certain if it’s related or not, but I’m having dissociation issues, where I can get comfortable, cross my arms or whatever, and a bit later I realize that I have no real sensation of my arms, especially my right one, existing. I can’t feel it under my left fingers, or feel my left arm under my right fingers. On top of that, which always causes a bit of a freak-out when I realize it’s happening, is the pin-pricks of upset nerves. It’s the whole tingling-when-waking-up feeling, racing up and down both arms.
Unfortunately, I suspect this might mean the problem is spreading. However, I am hoping that maybe there’s just some circulation issue going on, separate from the CRPS. I’m going to have my blood glucose checked again, too…
So that’s the health update in a vague nutshell. I’ll try to be a bit better about talking about it, but truth be told, I’m still feeling very self-conscious, knowing people actually read this. There’s the balance of information and privacy that I’m still wrestling with, and so far as the CRPS goes, I’m simply not certain how comfortable I am discussing it on any broad scale. I don’t want people seeing me as anything other than how I portray myself, and it’s hard to not feel like talking about the pain will undermine the portrayal that is out there.
House returns tonight, and I’m politely delaying this post for my West Coast friends. However, y’all are SOL after 12am EST. If you haven’t watched the show yet, don’t read the rest of this entry.
Anyhow, the much anticipated return of House, and perhaps this year I’ll actually start making more thoughtful posts about it. I do seem to start the beginning of school optimistic that I’ll be intelligent and thoughtful about what I’m watching; always seems to devolve quickly. Of course, the difference is that I’m going to be taking a lot fewer credit hours now, not to mention not teaching or doing anything else – this should lend itself more to thougthful analysis. Tonight’s episode, for example, is an excellent illustration of cost benefit analysis and hospital administraion (Cuddy) versus doctor desire for treatment. Of course, since this is a television drama, at the end Cuddy bends and does what’s right – which is not always what is just, ethical, or beneficial – and heals the patient with House’s cure. It was a beautiful, touching scene, and I’m a big softie so of course I cried.
And then Cuddy didn’t tell House, per Wilson. Because Wilson feels House needs to learn “no”, and this is the way he will – by not having an evidence-based reason for treatment, being told no, and learning that he must always have a scientific reason, nevermind that his entire job is predicated upon seeing clues no one else does, and he not even always understands. Ahem.
I’m not certain I’ve ever been clear just how conflicted the character of Wilson leaves me. He’s an oncologist, he should understand chronic pain. And yet he has, for the past three years, scorned House his pain, refused to help, challenged him to go without medication, and generally been a complete ass. Yet at the same time he’s endearing – a funny sense of humour, wry, sarcatic, and the perfect foil to House. But over the last year, they’ve started making Wilson into something I don’t quite like, and this episode seals it. Thankfully, it looks like the following episode will blow it right open.
There is a scene about 50 minutes in to the episode that I ache in resonance to. House is running, trying to enjoy the feeling, the floating, the freedom that comes when you’re not in pain. He overheats, and stands in a fountain to cool down. But he’s finding that high, the bliss, the feeling of adrenaline and endorphins that, if you have nastyass chronic pain, you get when you’ve pain relief and no other way.
I can’t remember the last time I felt that way without the assistance of chemical aid. The last time I’ve been able to push my body to extremes and feel joy, instead of fire.
Medicine or Miracle?
2006-05-30
A recent episode of the television show House titled “House vs. God” dealt with the idea of faith healing, something that comes up a lot these days in medical journals.
What is the power of prayer? Does faith healing work? Can miracles happen?
As many are aware, there have been multiple studies that attempt to look at these subjects, the strongest being that of the effect prayer has on people.
Unfortunately, even the people running these studies will tell you they are not well designed, and potentially flawed.
This came to light recently when one of the most comprehensive studies on the power of prayer showed that prayer for post-operative cardiac patients actually appeared to have a slightly detrimental effect on the patient.
Perhaps this is a reflection of my interdisciplinary training, but I think the much more interesting questions to ask are why miracles can’t happen and prayer can’t heal.
Some would say that it’s because there is no higher power, deity or God, but do we need such a being to exist for prayers and miracles to work?
After all, couldn’t you argue that a miracle is just that which we don’t understand?
You could quite often say the same thing about our medicine. The typical example is a cell phone in the rain forest, although I’d argue there’s an awful lot of technology and medicine that might as well be (and probably is) “magic” based on how well we understand it.
There is simply the belief, the faith that it will work, because someone is being told it will work.
How is that so different than hearing a faith healer tell you the same?
Of course, we of the rational, medical type say we have medicine. We can take the time to understand how technology works. We can figure it out and we can do the math.
But we cannot and do not fully understand how the body works; we keep finding new things.Miracles keep being rationalized and understood, filed away into things to learn and knowledge to distill.
If we have learned one thing, it’s that the body is an amazing thing.
In the episode of House I refer to, the patient — a young teenage boy — hears the voice of God, and believes God wants him to be a faith healer. Dr. House takes the case on after the boy collapses in the middle of a church meeting, and eventually discovers the boy has a tumor in a certain part of his brain, the result being that he experiences hallucinations — hallucinations he believes to be the voice of God.
Who is to say that the power of the placebo effect isn’t enough to help some people?
After all, we know scientifically and medically that positive thinking does positively affect our health, including helping us recover from illness.
Does it even have to be a placebo? We understand so little of how the brain works, is it so genuinely inconceivable that there are still processes left we don’t understand?
We don’t want to entertain the notion that something can be both real and invisible, quantifiable yet mystical, so it gets filed away as faith-healing fakery and fraud.
But in 10 years, perhaps it will have a Latin name and a textbook, diagnosis and belief, some way to reconcile disbelief and faith (or evidence).
That’s the way knowledge goes: a part of life for both miracle and medicine.
Why should we limit our view of the world to that science we already understand, instead of enjoying the magic and mystery behind those things we don’t?