Wit, Students, Texts

The hospital where I will have my babies, and where I go to receive care now, is a teaching hospital. Because I am considered "high risk" with the twins, I usually see a main guy staff doctor, who is the chief of the OB department (and thus, more experienced-- not learning as he goes). So that's pretty cool. But for other things, like when I went to the doctor the other day for my "complaint," I see whichever student/resident is on duty. On Tuesday night, it was a young man wearing an "Aggie Ring."

Aggies are the students of Texas A&M, and many of the more "gung ho" students get these rings-- they are distinctive, and a bit of a club membership sort of thing. Texas A&M, if you didn't already know, is also where I am getting my PhD, and where I taught back in 1998-late 1999. I taught freshman comp and intro to literature, which got me first year students and "almost graduating" students, at various times. I probably taught about 100 or so kids in that time period, many of whom have now had time (if motivated) to finish their degrees, and even some of their advanced degree work. So, this young doctor who took care of me the other night, I realized as he was standing there, could very well have literally been my student back when I was teaching there (he wasn't-- but he could have been). It was an odd realization. Made me go "hmmm." What would I do, how would I feel, if I did recognize a student in a situation like that? Once, shopping at the outlet mall, one of my former students slipped some of my purchase into the bag without ringing it up, which I did not realize till after I had left. I didn't know what to do-- go back in and pay for the product and get the student (who meant well, but had a skewed concept of "well") in trouble, or essentially participate in his theft from the company? A real moral dilemma. So what happens when you encounter former students in other capacities?

If you've never seen the movie Wit, starring Emma Thompson as a college professor who gets cancer & is worked on in part by one of her former students, it's worth seeing.* It is a bit of a tear jerker, but it is really well done. Much of the time is spent with Thompson carrying on a dialogue with the camera (us) about how she feels in this situation. She loses her hair, and is in the hospital a lot, partly because she is participating in a cancer study. There's one scene in particular that I was strongly reminded of yesterday while at the hospital to figure out whether my "complaint" was enough to warrant minor surgery (it wasn't).

The doctors got me in to the surgery department really quickly. I was very cordially treated; it was a nice switch from the way you're sometimes treated at other overwhelmed and understaffed medical places (like, say, the pharmacy, or the lab where they draw blood.) Then I met with a student doctor, her boss, and that boss' boss-- the guy in charge. The guy in charge was a nice big bear of a man who took to patting me reassuringly with his large hands while talking. He said "so you're having a real pain in the butt". Ha ha. I'm sure he uses that one almost every day. They took me in to examine me to see the extent of the damage. The main doctor teaching, then three or so other student doctors watching.

The student doctors went out of their way to introduce themselves to me. I, at this time, am lying there mostly naked with one of those fun little hospital gowns that open in the back, on a paper-covered exam table that's a teeny bit too narrow for comfort, with two rolled up towels under my head for pillows. The room is a little too small, really, for all the people that are "observing" so they have to jostle around, but they're all behind me so I only hear them moving around. The doctor in charge explains to me what he's going to do (always important when you're poking people in places they're not accustomed to being poked.)

Now, I actually am very hard to embarrass. I also am, always, a teacher, so having realized the night before that these young doctors could very well be students who I had taught (as far as age goes) I'm sort of laughing to myself about this scene in Wit where the young doctors all go on teaching rounds with the professor (played by Christopher Loyd from Back to the Future fame-- he's still a bit squirrely looking to me). They cluster around her bed throwing out smart-sounding details of her condition, and they miss one very important detail. She lies there quite knowing what detail they're missing. After they leave, she muses about how she, the teacher, is now the "text" being "taught." She says "It's easy for me; all I have to do is lie here and look cancerous."

As the doctor-in-charge was teaching them about what my particular complaint consisted of, they needed to feel for themselves. Not a problem as far as I'm concerned; I'm way past caring. Just make me feel better and whatever. So the first student poked about a bit (causing me to think that really, women doctors are much better suited to this particular specialty-- two words-- smaller fingers). Then as she was feeling the "sort of like a marble, there to the upper left" hemorrhoid, the other student said "what does it feel like?" so of course, the doctor asked me if I minded if she felt, too. No, not at all. Have at it. Is there anyone else you'd like to bring in to try?

I lay there thinking about Emma Thompson's wry realization of becoming the text instead of the teacher. How out of control you are yet how vitally important to the learning process. I actually felt like laughing, hearing in my head as I was being examined Thompson's proper enunciation of the phrase "lie there and look cancerous/hemorrhoidial" (thankfully the second, in my case). I'm sure they would not have, could they have seen my face, quite understood my attempts to hide a smile as they were poking me.

Then, lesson learned, the group trouped away to cluster around a bank of computers. After I got dressed and wandered down the hall I saw them in another room. Perhaps the lesson of me had continued, perhaps they had moved on to something new. I just had to go make my appointment for the follow up visit and head home, to heal without any more intervention from the doctor or his eager young students.

At the same time, though, it is really important for the main lesson of the film Wit to not be lost. While we are, as patients, also sometimes texts, we are finally still human beings, with human emotions and needs. We lie alone in a strange, sterile place, not knowing what comes next, often completely out of control of our own lives while there. At the mercy of other people, for whom this is a job. They might care about us, but we are still their job-- and they need to know that we aren't exactly texts. If I make an offhand comment about a poem by Emily Dickinson being one way or the other, perhaps saying it's not one of her best, the poem doesn't get hurt by my comment. It doesn't matter if a student pokes about in a stanza while another student pokes the stanza in a different way. We are not going to hurt the poem. But the human being-- well, obviously, can be hurt. Can be forgotten about. Can be left alone and scared in a white room with a door closed. Waiting. If I could really teach those students something, that would be the lesson I would want to give.

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*It's currently in fairly regular rotation on HBO, so if you haven't seen it, and you have HBO, you can probably catch it. But have a box of tissues at the end if you, like me, are a movie-cryer. A large box.