tell your story with your whole heart

If you were asked to write a piece for a narrative medicine journal, which story would you choose to share?

If you're a healthcare provider, would you tell us about a difficult or tragic case you cared for? They are sometimes the stories that stay with us the longest because of the way they affect us. They highlight the frustration we feel when our best efforts fail. The uncertainty we encounter when the patient gets worse despite our best efforts. The shame and guilt we shoulder when a patient slips away. 

I could write about the young mother we lost during childbirth, and what we told her husband when we presented his healthy newborn daughter to him in the aftermath. Forty years ago. Or I could tell about a patient who planned to commit suicide by ingesting rat poison (which we could have treated...) but instead, accidentally drank a mislabeled bottle of hydrochloric acid. He died in a medically induced coma as the contents of his thoracic cavity dissolved away. Stories that we embody because they are dramatic and unpredictable and unfathomable.

"O, what an untold world

there is in 

one human heart."

~Harriet Beecher Stowe~

On the other hand, I might choose to tell you a humorous or happy story, like the one about the resident who smuggled his puppy into the ER one night so he could stitch up the cut on his pet's back leg. I could tell you about the surgical resident I worked with who orchestrated his own hernia repair under self-hypnosis. No anesthesia, thank you very much. Or I could describe what it felt like to see a patient open his eyes for the first time after six weeks in a coma...three days after his family arranged to bring his dog to their son's bedside in the ICU.

"Dog is God

spelled backwards."

~Duane Chapman~

I could tell you about a normal delivery, a successful operation, a cancer survivor. 

And you? What story would you tell? 

"Tell your story

with your whole heart."

~Brene Brown~

Perhaps you're not in the business of health care at all. Maybe you're the patient. Perhaps you can tell us what you thought the first time you smelled cigarette smoke on your doctor's breath. It may have offended you when he asked you whether there were guns stored in your house, when he asked you about drug and alcohol consumption, or about your opinion on vaccination. You thought he was being judgmental or critical when he was simply inquiring for your own safety and well-being. You may have resented him for it...until he showed up at your mother's funeral even though she wasn't a patient of his. What did you think then?

Maybe you are healthy and strong. Tell us what went on in your mind when the home pregnancy test you ran came back positive. Or negative. What were you thinking the first time your wobbly toddler scraped his knee, and you had to clean it up and put the bandage on it? Tell us about the chances you have taken. Unprotected sex? An unbuckled seat belt? A bike helmet collecting dust in the garage? 

Oh, you have a story to tell, all right!

"Write about what disturbs you,

what you fear,

what you have not been willing to speak about.

Be willing to be split open."

~Natalie Goldberg~

There are millions of untold stories burning holes in the veil we wish to hide behind. We are so sure we have nothing new or important to say, when in fact our shared stories connect and empower us, and ultimately help us heal. 

"Telling our story does not merely
document who we are.

It helps make us who we are."

~Rita Charon, M.D.~

jan