The Parable, Continued

There’s a sequel to yesterday’s entry, Bush, and I have to tell you a little bit more about it. Not the details, of course, because my daughter deserves her privacy; but the part about the doctors. Because, unhappily, it has a lot to say about us men in our relationship with women.

To remind you: I mentioned yesterday that the doctor in the emergency room was all medical data, that he showed no interest or understanding of what Sarah was experiencing, which was pain. Because he could not find a scientific basis for it, either in her records or in the test results when they came back from the lab and the CT scan department, he simply dismissed it as not being real—as being, in fact, a figment of her imagination. He sent her away, after hours of the kind of fear and agony you experience in the emergency room, with a flea in her ear. She felt humiliated. Distraught would not be too strong a word. And distrusting the evidence of her own mind.

Well, Bush, yesterday, the day after our miserable day in the emergency room, she came over to our house and we spent the morning trying to assure her, basically—thanks to this doctor—that she wasn’t crazy. Then her cell phone rang. The doctor. No apology, of course, but further examination of the CT scan results had led to the discovery of “something”. She should come back to emergency right away for further tests.

So how would you feel, Bush, if you were in her shoes? On the one hand, I myself would feel vindicated, and on the other, pretty damn scared about what the tests might have revealed. I guess that must have been how Sarah felt. Angry, to have been so mistrusted and dismissed. Glad to have very possibly been proven right. And scared.

Well we all went back, the three of us, Ellie, myself, and Sarah, and spent the best part of another day in the emergency room. To our common relief, after a good deal more agony of uncertainty, the problem appears to be… well, manageable, put it that way. The nature of the problem is none of our business, Bush, so I won’t go into it.

What’s important, though, is the doctor’s role in all this, and what we can learn from it about ourselves. Because we all too often listen to our own agenda, Bush, rather than the reality that stares us in the face. This doctor’s agenda was the medical facts. Fair enough, but they blinded him to the reality of my daughter’s pain. I don’t like to generalize or stereotype—though I guess I do it often enough, Bush, don’t I?—but I think we men are so little attuned to our own emotional lives that we tend to distrust or dismiss the emotional reality of others. For this doctor, Sarah’s pain was simply not a reality he was prepared to accept. It wasn’t a part of his agenda.

I’m sure this is not an exclusively male trait, but it does warrant some thought. Ask your Laura about boys, Bush, and whether she thinks, as I do, that we mis-educate them on this score. We teach them from a very early age to mistrust and disguise their feelings, particularly fear, pain, sadness. Our cultural trope is to teach them that the manly thing is to be in control of the emotions.

So, Bush, here we are. You’re the one in power. My sincere request to you, this Saturday morning, is to make a practice of looking beyond your own agenda, and of listening to the realities that others see and experience. And that practice can be applied to every situation: to Social Security, here at home (what are the people really saying to you on this issue? Are you listening carefully, and with respect to the reality in which some of the less fortunate of us are forced to live?); and there, across the seas. Wars, different cultures, different religions, different agendas... So what I'm saying is, forget your own agenda, Bush. Or even, no, don't forget it, just keep it in the perspective of knowing that there are others, equally real, equally compelling. Just don't forget to listen to the pain. And listen to the need.