Fri., July 9, 2021 - timer 4 min. read
She looked at me across the desk, clear-eyed, resolved. Practical.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t sugar-coat this.”
It was at least 40 years ago. “Angela” (with a hard “g” please) was referring to my efforts to discuss her diagnosis of lung cancer — systematically, slowly, and clearly, or so I thought. It was an effort that had moved (too slowly for her, obviously) from me describing a “finding,” to saying “it looked suspicious to the radiologist,” to using the word “tumour.” I hadn’t actually gotten around to saying “cancer” and we were a long way from describing treatment options, next steps, referrals. I was a product of training in something called “communicating bad news,” and a novice at that.
In contrast, she was an experienced nurse, a quick study, impatient with the step-by-step revelation of her case. She was anxious “to get on with it.” Get on with what, exactly? The process of understanding. The process of moving toward treatment and resolution. Mostly the process of not being the victim, of owning her feelings, of planning her own next steps. A highly desirable outcome.
Although the circumstances are vastly different, it strikes me that the recent revelation of the buried Indigenous children carries a similar message for us. Just a month ago, the disclosure of 215 children’s remains on the grounds of an Indian Residential School in Kamloops, B.C., stirred grief across the country, if not exactly surprise.
We know the background. Beginning in the late 19th century, Indigenous boys and girls across the country were compelled to attend residential schools, forced to leave their families, and forbidden to speak their language, or practice their cultural customs, or pray as their ancestors had. Most of the so-called schools were operated by churches, creating places where abuse of all kinds was rampant. It is estimated that 150,000 children passed through their doors in over a century. With that revelation, the federal government issued an official apology and in 2010 established a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It concluded that at least 4,000 students died while attending the schools, that families often never learned the fate of their missing children and that the process amounted to cultural genocide. The TRC chair, Murray Sinclair, said he believed the number of children who disappeared was “well beyond 10,000” — 10,000! Just let that number sink in.
Since then, there has been a slow drip of revelations — over 700 graves found in a residential school in Saskatchewan, another gravesite found recently in B.C., more stories about the schools every week. There is no doubt there will be more.
It’s here that Angela enters my consciousness, a kind of spokesperson for the manner in which we’ve dealt with the lost children. At the federal level, there have been prime ministerial platitudes, and even tears, genuine enough at the moment they’re issued, I am sure. There have been calls for papal apologies. There’s been the promise of “doing more” though what exactly the “more” is, is unclear. But no urgency, none: the commission’s report was issued in 2015. Six years ago. Let that number sink in.
And yet, in the face of what might be called lethargic leadership, there is honest, palpable pain and victimization — countless Indigenous families await a respectful burial of their relatives; a nation holds its breath, simultaneously in denial and loss (Canada Day was a good example); Canadians like me (and you, I’m sure) are unaccountably sad, unsure of what to do. Outbursts of anger directed at churches, understandable if illegal. In the midst of this, unmarked graves continue to be unmarked, the children in them unnamed and unacknowledged, in some ways perpetuating the tragedy, as great as the original sin which placed the children in harm’s way in the first place. It’s a kind of COVID-19 of the spirit.
What stops federal, Indigenous and provincial leaders from developing a rapid response plan? What stops the creation of a pandemic-like national strategy of residential school examination, using ground radar and other forensics methods? What stops us from using our military resources? What stops us from employing interdisciplinary teams — archeologists, forensic examiners, historians, Indigenous persons? We deployed teams during the pandemic. We can do it now.
What would that take? A sense of urgency. An acknowledgement of the gravity of the situation. A spirit of unity. Heeding the UN Human Rights Office demand that Canadian authorities undertake “prompt and exhaustive investigations” into the deaths of Indigenous children and “redouble efforts” to find their bodies, searching unmarked graves, pursuing documentation. Accent on the “prompt.”
Finally, listening to Angela, who’d tell us to “get on with it.”
The Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line is available 24 hours a day for anyone experiencing pain or distress as a result of a residential school experience. Support is available at 1-866-925-4419.Dave Davis is a retired family doc and medical educator. His award-winning first novel, “A Potter’s Tale,” published by Story Merchant Books, Los Angeles, is available on Amazon in Canada, CA and the US. You can visit him at www.drdavedavis.ca. Look for his second novel, “The Last Immortal,” coming soon.Fri., June 18, 2021 - timer 4 min. read
I swear this is true. One day, sitting at one of our regular in-the-park meetings, I heard one of the group say, “It could be your dongle, you know.”
Just like that. Out loud, in public.
A bit of context: we’ve known our friends-in-the-park, for 40, no wait, 50 years. They are the best of friends. We’ve watched our kids grow up. For Pete’s sake, now we’re watching them have kids and them grow up. Pandemic style, we try to meet one afternoon a week in a park, socially distanced and Doug Ford-compliant. When Doug says we can’t meet in person, we Zoom or something like it. Doug, by the way, would be welcome to join us, though he’d have to bring his own chair.
Why do we meet? There are lots of reasons; food (cookies), laughs (lots of them), support, and yes, conversation. We don’t however, generally comment on each other’s dongles.
Back to the dongle. It, in case you were wondering, is a little whoozit that you plug into your laptop to make it do something that it wouldn’t normally do, like project its tiny picture onto your smart TV. Like that. We should all have one, maybe two. Heck, the next political campaign could have “A Dongle in Every Home!” as its slogan.
Dongle and Zoom, you may have noticed, are not the first new words that have crept into our conversation, causing a new language to flourish. Let’s call it Pandemish, half English, half, well, you get the picture.
Here’s a little example of Pandemish in action. A few weeks ago when it was really chilly (Ontario was deciding whether it wanted to be a winter or spring province), one of our park-friends, said, “It’s going to be too cold to sit outside next week. Maybe we should Zoom.” It was Zelda, the dongle-lady, I’m pretty sure. It doesn’t really matter; all the names are made up.
“Nope, Zoom’s not so hot for us,” Billy-Chuck said, “We could Google Meet instead. That’d be fun. No FaceTime though. We don’t have a Mac.”
“What about Duo?” Wyatt asked.
See the creeping use of Pandemish in that little exchange? Ten years ago, nobody’d know what the heck you were talking about.
Fast forward to the next week and a small example of what one of our Zoom/Google-meet/videowhatever sessions go like. You’ve probably all been there.
Picture this: The park group is squeezed onto separate little boxes on a frame the size of a shirt cardboard. Billy-Bob’s laptop is balanced on his knee, keeps jiggling, finally falls off, showing us his ceiling (it is, I have to admit, a nifty ceiling). Wyatt is lying on his side, since he has us on his phone and — bless its heart — the thing won’t stay upright. Meanwhile, Raoul and Roxanne are too big for the picture and we get one half of each of their heads — Raoul’s left ear and Roxie’s right. They are perfectly fine ears, I’ll give you that. Iona can’t get her sound to work and spends most of the time gesticulating. Later, toward the end of our time, Wyatt can’t figure out how to sign off which sets us all off, him included. And we, the lady and me, are no better — we’re late, looking like two overstuffed cabbage rolls (minus the tomato sauce) sitting on a couch. Well me, anyway.
Welcome to the new, wonderful world of videochatting. It’s where for the first time I heard the rallying cry of Pandemish, a kind of national anthem: “Unmute yourself!”
Pandemish isn’t finished taking over. You don’t need to video-chat with a group, you can also do it just, um, one-on-one. A bit of context here, too: it used to be that if you’d want to talk someone, you’d pick up your phone, look up their number and dial them. Or, this’ll take you back, you could grab a piece of paper and write them a letter. Want to communicate today? You go to dial your phone? Not so fast, Smithers: get ready for an onslaught of Pandemish.
You’ve got lots of choice. You could text or email the person. (Pandemish takes nouns and squishes them into verbs; you may have noticed.) Like the kids and grandkids, you could DM somebody on your Instagram or Messenger. Or you could post something to Facebook and LinkedIn. Or, God help us all, you could tweet them. “Tweet,” for Pete’s sake.
Or, tired of the whole being-with-others thing, you could turn on your smart TV, and livestream something on NetflixPrimoGem or whatever.
Though, come to think of it, maybe you’d need a dongle for that.
Dave Davis is a retired family doc and medical educator. His award-winning first novel, “A Potter’s Tale,” published by Story Merchant Books, Los Angeles, is available on Amazon in Canada, CA and the US. You can visit him at www.drdavedavis.ca. Look for his second novel, “Immortal,” coming soonFri., April 30, 2021 - timer 4 min. read
Like all of us, I’ve been watching the stories of the health-care teams — the doctors, nurses and others — working the overcrowded and impossible ICUs. Like all of us, I’ve been impressed with their bravery and competence in the face of overwhelming odds, and — before the vaccine — huge personal risk, a product of their training and humanity. Like some of us, I’ve searched my memory for similar stories, for example SARS in 2003 and its impact on Ontario hospitals, my own included — the masks and protective equipment, the fear, the monitoring patients by phone, the feeling that “this can’t be happening.” Though of course, it did.
Most of all, I remember this story.
It was a regular office visit, in the days when we could have them. At the end of her visit, Mrs. K said, “I trained in medicine, too, Doctor. You may not have known that.”
I was surprised a bit. I knew Mrs. K as an elderly patient only, not realizing the details of her life story. My fault; I hadn’t thought to inquire.
Her English still flavoured by Polish and Yiddish, she said, “It was in the Warsaw Ghetto in the Second World War. It wasn’t what you’d call an official medical school. A group of physicians decided they should teach others since their numbers were diminishing, and their workload was increasing. I was only 18 and had thought of nursing as a career before the, well, before.”
She looked away for a moment, then continued, “But one of the physicians spoke with me, suggesting that medicine would be a better choice. My parents agreed. I spent a year, maybe more, in the school.” Until, thanks to a friendly German guard, she escaped the ghetto, and fled, ultimately, to Canada.
Thanks to the late Charles Roland, a physician and medical historian, we’ve come to learn about the short life of the medical school. His book, “Courage Under Siege: Starvation, Disease, and Death in the Warsaw Ghetto” tells the story. The school was established in 1941 by the Judenrat (the Jewish Council), approved by the Nazis as a means of combating epidemics, especially typhus. Its secret mission however was a full medical education for its students, a kind of passive resistance against the Nazi regime. It provided a “standard European curricula,” taught by what Roland describes as a distinguished faculty. Ironically, the focus on typhus was self-fulfilling: you try squeezing roughly the population of Hamilton into 10 square blocks and see what happens. And starving them by the way, denying them basic necessities like clean water and sanitation. In the end, the school gave several hundred students a medical education, opening a window into what their lives could have been like. Mrs. K was one of those students.
The story of the Warsaw ghetto speaks volumes about the vile and inhumane actions of the Nazi regime. It is one of the saddest episodes in the Holocaust. I came across it first in reading Leon Uris’ compelling “Mila 18.” From 1940 to 1943, the ghetto inhabitants lived in hugely overcrowded rooms, fighting for survival against starvation and disease. In the end, Warsaw lost the majority of its pre-war population of 400,000 Jews, most of those students included.
“Courage Under Siege” opens a window into the heroic efforts of the doctors, nurses, and the other health and social professionals of the ghetto, providing care compassionately and creatively while they themselves faced the same, huge challenges. Starving themselves, they functioned in a nightmare of hospitals where beds often contained multiple patients, where operations were performed minus gas, electricity, and even running water. Where dead bodies and patients mixed together, filling the hallways.
I’m lucky enough to know another physician and medical historian, a student of the Holocaust, Bill Seidelman. Describing the Warsaw Ghetto medical school, my friend wrote, “Can you imagine, living in hell personified, not knowing if you or your loved ones would be alive tomorrow and studying for an exam, crying if you got a poor mark? Unbelievable.”
I can’t frankly. And yet it happened.
Like all of us, I look for light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. There are many actually. Here’s one of them: although the circumstances are vastly different, something of the courage of the doctors and nurses witnessed in the Warsaw Ghetto has seeped ahead many decades into the training and conduct of our pandemic physicians and nurses. Informing. Heartening. Inspiring.
Dave Davis is a retired family doc and medical educator. His award-winning first novel, “A Potter’s Tale,” published by Story Merchant Books, Los Angeles, is available on Amazon in Canada, CA and the US. You can visit him at www.drdavedavis.ca. Look for his second novel, “Immortal,” coming soon.