Some days the STUFFlist reminds me to marvel about humanity.
Here I am, traisping in on a Saturday afternoon after some major parting, head full of this or that issue about skirts, why men in Paris insist on paying for things that you can afford better than they can, all sorts of pedantic if occupying stuff.
I danced hard. I revelled in my new leg muscles, a hundred times stronger than even when I was doing 350 lbs on the leg press at the gym last year. THose clever latin dances in the far room at Metropolis (Paris' largest dance club with massive rooms with different DJs in each, even a karaoke room)? No problem. Boogeying down to something fast and sexy, thights bent and straining? First time in years I made it through an entire song.
In any case, while I was out being shallow and party-animalistic, Shane posted something interesting to the stufflist.
People do so often.
This time it was about a doctor refusing patients if they wouldn't stop smoking.
A well-spoken argument ensued, dealing with all sorts of sides. It went on to the politics of smoking, and a thousand other things all the way to doctors refusing patients who practice extreme sports.
It got me thinking, in this tired afternoon, and I love that.
So here's what I posted:
I don't want to get in on the smoking issue, I live in a city that made me *want* to quit, the moment I got off the airplane and people were lighting up in the baggage-reception area, enclosed by glass and putrid stench.Thing is, I *do* agree with the doc in one sense - hopelessness. My mom's a doc, and I've been subjected to far too many stories about patients who continue to hurt themselves in front of her, and she does all she can to stop them, and ends up tired and depressed in the evenings because it's just so hopeless... She tries as hard as she can and can barely do anything to help them or ease their pain.
Granted, she hasn't given up on them, and I understand why she can't.
But the converse is true also - my mother is an adult diabetic. She's fat, incredibly fat. She eats terribly, and knows it. HER doctor has warned her a thousand times, just like me dad's did - he's the poster child for heart problems and is well on his way to his fourth bypass because he's got an irrational addiction to onion rings and anything fried.
So I understand the hopeless aspect from a personal point of view, my mom spent two weeks in ICU after a STOMACH BYPASS that went wrong because part of her stomach lining was rotted.
This terrifies me. Almost as much as my friend's dad who had his throat cut open and speaks through a throat mike because he smoked for fifty odd years and it got him. It might get me. I know that. It might get a hundred of the people that worked in the dusty conditions of my dad's factory. WHat did I do when I was over there for dinner last year though? I went outside for a smoke. Felt guilty as all hell faced with his dad when I came back in, but I did it anyway, knowing how hypocritical it was.
It sucks. The issue is huge and overwhelming - and despairing.
Welcome to the big city, I guess, but the only thing I retain from this doctor's behaviour is that he's trying a new tactic, in the vain hopes that it might help.
Maybe by looking his patient point blank in the face he can show them how desperate the situation is. Maybe he can get through to them the way the media, non-smoking friends, and throat-cancer man couldn't. Maybe being faced down by the person you look to for help might just snap something in your head and make you realize that you've got to help yourself before he can help you.
THing is, it's especially hard for us. We're young (well, relatively for most of you guys ;) and our bodies are letting us get away with it. Granted, I'm overweight too, or at least was a year ago. I don't want to end up down the same road as my mom, and I'm starting to feel it if I really listen. Same for alcohol, smoking, and a sedentary in-front-of-the-machine lifestyle.
That first marathon hurt. So much. Lungs burning, seeing stars, weak in the knees and on the point of collapse, and all these people streaming past me with ease. It's easier now, on a good Sunday if I've been careful all week and there have been no infamous parisian alcohol binges or late nights, I finish in front, pulling someone else behind me. On a bad Sunday I still finish wanting to die. And I know the easy answer is just not to torture myself.
FUck that. If this doctor's extreme methods manage to shock some of his patients and gets better results than he would ever be able to with pharmaceuticals, then he's way ahead of the game. He's trying. He's trying something different. He's fighting the hopelessness.
No, I don't think all doctors should refuse people help, but maybe his statement might make a few people think about helping themselves. Not everyone can, and the older you get the harder it gets... ANd the more desperate.
But maybe he might be saving just a couple of lives this way.
Shite, but I talk a lot.
And I barely addressed any of the issues.
And maybe if all doctors refused patients who were making their own cases hopeless, this might make a difference in the very fabric of how people live their lives, especially in North America where physical education is no longer a mandatory part of college like it still is here.
NOt that I want them to, but I recognize one thing - this doctor is making a statement to make people think. He's being raked over the coals for it, but he did one major thing for me - he made me think, and now I'm all the more motivated to keep up what I've got going now.