My first impression on the essay was that I was happy to see that medical schools are engaging their students in trials in which they can practice their “bedside manner”. Usually having competence is so emphasized in traditional medical schools, that skills in bedside manner are not touched upon a lot. What I liked about Jamison’s account was that it was personal; how she retraced different accounts of her memories, her life moments, with the reader. I couldn’t help but notice a common pattern that was scattered throughout the text. This pattern was the thought of empathy: what it really was, and what it takes to have empathy. Jameson first describes to the reader of her struggle with going through an abortion: how she felt confused with her emotions, helpless, and lonely. All these feelings were initially toward her significant other, Dave. She says, “I think he told me he’d been thinking of me all day, and couldn’t I trust that? Why did I need proof?” (8). Jamison needed proof because empathy needs to be felt. Empathy is, as she puts it: “a penetration, a kind of travel. It suggests you enter another person’s pain as you’d enter another country, through imagination and customs”(5). It seemed as if she didn’t truly feel a sense of empathy throughout her medical processes. Personally, I was able to connect with Jamison’s experience with Dr. M. I have many allergies, and many severe ones. This requires me to see my allergist a lot. I have never liked my allergy doctor; she reminded me of Dr.M. My allergist is very blunt and impersonal, and I feel as if she is in some authority over me when we are both in the room. At one point Jamison refers to Dr. M as a “stranger”, and this is how I feel about my allergist. I feel, just like the author did, that I cannot tell my allergist all of my past medical histories, like that one time I ingested peanut oil chips by accident. I keep things from her, and I am sure I am not alone. I just think of of the things that would become uncovered, and how much easier medicine may become.
I love the quote you chose from Jamison about empathy being like entering another person’s pain like entering another country. It is so true. I just heard an interview on NPR the other night about a man who spent the year with several elderly people and wrote a book about getting older. He said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that if we think of getting older like another country, we shouldn’t have people who’ve never been there making decisions about it.
Also, I think there is a lot to learn about your experience with your allergist. Great insights there. At the very least, maybe it’s time to find a new allergist?