Eileen Bygrave’s posting, “The pain was so great, I could not cry!” is the first article in this blog about death and dying. It brings me back to my first encounter with mortality as a third-year medical student.
My first two years in medical school were spent studying the basic sciences. The following three years were spent in the clinics and wards. Our curriculum was disease-focused; we studied diseases science and how to recognize and treat them.
In my first medical posting, I was assigned a 16-year-old schoolgirl with incurable lymphoma. I was expected to take a medical history, examine her, and review all the investigations and treatments. My findings were then summarised for a “case presentation” and recorded in my logbook.
There was no requirement for me to know the human side of the patient. We had to learn how to handle our own emotions and maybe the patient’s emotions. Self-directed learning brought me to the library, and I borrowed a copy of “On Death and Dying” by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.
It would have been “easier” if I treated her as “done with” after presenting her case. Something made me want to stay. With insights from reading Kubler-Ross, I talked to her – as a person.
I remember asking her about her O-level examinations and her friends. There were periods of silence. These periods of silence were learning experiences as I reflected on my emotions. I asked her what she would like to do. There were moments of excitement in her weak voice but also sadness in her eyes. A textbook was by the table, but she had already accepted that she would be unable to be with her friends to take her examination.
My rotation through medical ward 11 soon came to an end. It was time to start my next posting in Surgery. The surgical ward I was posted to was a few floors below the medical ward. A week after settling into my new surgical posting, I went to the medical ward to see the girl with whom I developed an emotional bond. As I walked towards her room, I could sense something different. Peeping through the glass panel of her room, I saw another patient. She had passed away.
To this day, I remember her. She taught me the quiet dignity of how to take one’s leave. I would now and then read the passage I copied from “On Death and Dying” by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.
This blog highlights the joy of living. But there is no meaning in joy without despair; no happiness without sorrow; and in the words of Rabindranath Tagore:
Death belongs to life, as birth does. The walk is in the raising of the foot as in laying it down
Stray Birds CCLXVIIn the meantime, I have come to terms with my own mortality.
Vince
Dr Vincent Chong is a retired Professor of Radiology at Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore.
