Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Examined Life

2004; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 26; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1097/00132981-200407000-00008

1552-3624

Edwin Leap,

FigureA few nights ago, I found myself sitting in the physicians' lounge reading poetry not long after intubating an elderly woman, not long before telling a wife that her husband would die from his brain hemorrhage. I enjoy poetry because it helps me to feel not so alone in the chaos of life, even when I am. Poems like Titanic by David R. Slavitt or Waving Goodbye by Gerald Stern remind me that other people are out there trying to put words to the pain and delight of their few short decades. Poetry reminds me that in the search for explanations and permanence, in the pilgrimage that I try to walk every day, I have brothers and sisters. Some of them write poems, and some of them are the subjects of poems. But we are a family. I think poems give me fortitude to face the situations my career requires of me. They certainly give me five or 10 minutes of escape from patients and decisions. I'm not ashamed that I enjoy escape. This thing we do in emergency departments and on battlefields, on highways and in ambulances around the world is enormously moving. I could have said stressful and been right. But I think that what's stressful about illness and injury and dying is that it could be us. And will be us. Worse, we know it could be and finally will be someone who makes our life here worth living. So medicine forces all of us to think about birth, death, separation, pain, loneliness, injustice, poverty, and a thousand other things in addition to thinking about the maddening technicalities of medicine itself. In our interaction with other humans, we face the eternal questions every single day that we work. The only choice we have is whether to reflect on them; whether to take them inside of us intentionally and try to find answers. This can be a great burden. But the burden brings with it a gift. And that gift of medicine, hidden beneath all the trouble, is that we have a backstage pass into the great drama of human life. Our profession allows us into every situation imaginable, and in the process, we are privileged to see things that no one else is allowed to see. And there is a gift within the gift. Our immersion in the human experience gives us lifetimes of raw material for great art. Aspiring artists throughout history have looked far and wide for inspiration. They have starved and banished themselves, they have lived alone or among the unhappy masses, they have been diseased and drunk and have sought out the chaos of war or the anesthesia of drugs. All we have to do any given day is go to work, pick up some charts, and pay attention. And we don't even have to starve or die in an asylum! (Unless some of you were already planning to go to an asylum, in which case good luck! Nobody has psych beds anymore!) All around us are images and stories. How many times a day do we see a face that would be a perfect portrait of beauty or age or sorrow? How many times a week do we hear the story of a happy life gone to hell because of cocaine or neglect or outbursts of violence? How many days are we surrounded by a rhythm of life and death that could be set to music by someone with that gift already waiting? If we ignore these, we throw away things of inestimable value. So what do we do? Physicians with the interest and talent should be artists. Those who hear the necessary words in their heads should write stories and poems. Those who see shapes and forms and colors that the rest of us cannot comprehend should be painters, sculptors, or photographers. Those who hear the world in 2/4 time, in quarter and half and whole notes of assorted scales, should share it with the rest of us. Mind you, these works of art don't have to be medically related. Physicians are notorious for writing stories about the glory and pain of saving and losing patients, about the struggles of a difficult career, or the particular terrors of assorted diseases. And that's fine. But physician artists can do more by simply making art of the stories and situations they experience, from the home life of an orphan to the loneliness of an abandoned spouse. There's no reason to limit art arbitrarily along professional lines, and no shame in creating moving art that steps beyond the high secret walls of medicine. Remember that the creative effort that we apply to our art does more than expand our individual and collective understanding of life. It also can go a long way toward easing the pain and frustration of our daily struggles. All physicians have demons to exorcise. Art is a kind of holy water that is far more effective than chemicals, affairs, or expensive toys. So take it all and transform it. Take your fear and your anger, and put it to music. Take your guilt, and your frustration and set it on paper. Embrace all of your bitterness and holiness, your joy and your blessings, and paint them into dark and bright, shape them into statues. Do it, and you will create something that will lift us all higher, and that will remain a while after you go and no one remembers that you were a physician after all. So here's the point to this essay. Michael Burg, MD, is starting a new section in the American College of Emergency Physicians to “allow emergency physicians and other ACEP members a forum in which to explore the humanities.” His vision is that emergency physicians can come together as artists to “further the creative aspirations of ACEP members.” I think this is a wonderful idea. A section needs 100 members to be recognized. Currently, the Section of Medical Humanities has around 50. To sign up, contact Dr. Burg at [email protected]. If you have an interest in this arena, please join. We have a fascinating career. Amazing art of every variety can, and should, be born from within it.