DOCTOR, PATIENT, OBJECT, THING
A Story About A Surgeon And A Teacher
by
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The physician was not aware of the earlier and pivotal conversation that I had had with the surgeon, so when she and I discussed the issue of doctor-patient interaction she did not know of his response to my comments about treating people as objects. When the topic came up in our discussion, she gave the same response that he had given, chapter and verse, as if that were the medical school mantra: surgeons lose people, objectifying their patients is the approved way of keeping their focus, of guarding their stress, of keeping themselves from being overwhelmed by the kind of work that they did.
“What a terrible idea:” I said out loud, “Are you saying that if surgeons can turn patients into objects, it is easier on the surgeons if the patient should die? The ultimate insult may be to deny the personhood of another. There must other ways to protect the emotional well-being of surgeons, ways that are not at the expense of the emotional well-being of the patients. If the surgeon cannot save someone’s life, at least give the patient the honor of knowing that it matters to the surgeon.”
I knew my physician well enough by then to know that she could never support the medical school mantra in her own life or in her practice. Indeed, over the next few months every medical professional with whom I spoke knew the mantra in one form or another, but most of them did not like it; they thought that it was required for the system to work, but they did not like it. They tended to lay the issue on the backs of the surgeons. Phrases like “cut and run” and “body mechanic” appeared in some conversations, disparaging surgeons, even as the speakers acknowledged the necessary role of the surgeons in the system.
I found myself thinking that physicians and surgeons had been sold a bill of goods somewhere in their medical training if they were told that it was acceptable, even desirable, for any medical professional to objectify people in order to protect his or her own emotional energy.
“If I had to have five or six emotional sessions a day, I’d quit.” grumbled the surgeon after he read the manuscript of this book. “It’s just too hard. I couldn’t handle it.”
“Yes, you could. You could if you had to.”
“I could,” he agreed as he was on his way out of the examination room.
“What if you knew it made you a better surgeon?”
He shook his head and smiled his charming smile as he closed the door behind him.
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About the Book
“The surgeon bounded into my life uninvited. He was thirty-nine, talented, charming, and a self-proclaimed yuppie. I was sixty-two, a successful academic, popular with my students, and a self-proclaimed teacher. We had little in common, my surgeon and I, except a vulvectomy: a surgery that he would perform and that I would undergo.
The vulvectomy was well done, the relationship was not. This is the story of that relationship.”
Professor Diane Harvey weaves an engaging story about the relationship between a charismatic, confident, competent young surgeon in his late thirties and a popular, award-winning senior professor of philosophy. At first, the young man is her surgeon. As the story enfolds, she becomes his teacher.
The purpose of the story is to share the sensitive surgical journey of a patient with others, especially those who are undergoing or have undergone personal female surgeries such as hysterectomies, mastectomies, and vulvectomies, and to engage the reader in a discussion about the effect on the patient of “assembly-line surgery” in which the patient is treated by the surgeon as an object.
While the emphasis is on personal female surgeries, any reader, male or female, who has undergone or is facing a surgery for life-threatening conditions, will be interested in the relationship between the surgeon and the patient. Certainly, however, this book is a “must-give” to your mother, sister, adult daughter, wife, lover, or partner and to any friend traveling the surgical journey.
About the Author
Professor Harvey holds a PhD in Philosophy from
Dr. Harvey, who also holds a Master’s Degree in International Policy Studies from Stanford, has lived and taught in
Currently Professor Harvey is President of Life Journey Seminars which mentors individuals in small group settings and hosts philosophical salons focusing on ethical, political, and social issues.
Diane Harvey lives in