Medicine Mensch goes (Poly)Glatt
Number seven in a series.
Visiting Patients, With Dictionary In Hand
By Zackary Sholem Berger
July 1, 2005
Before I became a medical student, I thought I spoke Spanish pretty well. I spent six months after college researching minority languages in Spain and, after moving to New York, I've had many a friendly conversation with miscellaneous Spanish speakers I've accosted: random passersby from Puerto Rico, law students from Colombia, grocery packers from the Dominican Republic.
Having a conversation on the street or a chat in a café about politics or literature is one thing. If you don't understand a word, you can smile or nod and pick up from context what's going on. But say you've been called down to the E.R. to take a history and do a physical, and you find a drunk, toothless man in handcuffs gesturing frantically at something underneath his bed. If you could understand drunken, toothless Spanish a little bit better, it might not take you 15 minutes of sympathetic listening to understand that the man wants his cell phone (which the cops sitting nearby are not about to let him have).
The difficulty isn't simply a matter of decoding the speaker's register (someone from a different socioeconomic class can be hard to understand, even in one's native tongue), nor is it the fact that various dialects of the language are represented at any urban hospital. It's often the words themselves that make things hard. Like every other medical student, I have a command of several different kinds of medical terminology: the mind-numbing jargon of the scientific literature, the half-macho talk of rounds and last but certainly not least important, the normal words people use to talk in English about whatever's the matter with them.
It's this last kind of vocabulary that I lack in Spanish. I can talk a blue streak about genetic predispositions and infectious agents, about endoscopies and anesthesia — these are international terms, much the same in Spanish, English and many other languages. But lay language is different. I've already experienced a certain kind of linguistic blockage more than once. I've started a conversation with a Spanish-speaking patient, we've built up something of a rapport, she's complimented my Spanish, I've figured out why she's come to the hospital. Then, all of a sudden, I need to ask a specific question to narrow down the field of possible diagnoses. I use what I think is the right word, and one of two expressions appears on the patient's face: either outright incomprehension, or a polite glazed-over look that means, "I'm going to keep my mouth shut until I can figure out what the heck this nice doctor is saying." It's then that I have to search my dusty old neurons for a Spanish word I learned once, many years ago, or for a synonym that's used in the home country of this particular patient. During one memorable conversation, a patient and I sat through a long, awkward pause before she figured out that I was asking about her period.
Those familiar with the overscheduled life of the medical professional might wonder what's the point of trying to achieve "medical fluency" in Spanish or another foreign language. For most doctors it might be enough to master a minimal vocabulary, and the extra minutes spent figuring out the Colombian word for "tampon" or "leg splint" can more profitably be devoted to a more extensive history or exam of the other dozen patients that have to be seen today. It's also true that a translator is (usually) available. That's if one wants to take the legal route. Many doctors use the Spanish-speaking janitor, or the patient's sister who's waiting in the lobby; neither alternative would be applauded by medical ethicists.
It all depends on how the doctor sees her practice. If her task is to see clients who are visiting for necessary medical services, they probably can be more efficiently served (not to say "processed") with minimal communication. Many common complaints can be divined from the patient's presentation and demographic with only the bare outlines of a conversation. If this approach isn't warm and personal, it's certainly necessary when there are hundreds of patients to see in a week.
But since I'm still a medical student, I can still afford to let my personal tendencies influence the way I see medicine. I'm a person who doesn't mind sacrificing a little efficiency (or even a lot) to get a good conversation going with the person sitting in front of me. Will that make me a better doctor? Beats me, but I know I'll have more fun this way.
"You can't learn every language," a medical student friend of mine pointed out when she heard about my linguistic ambitions, i.e., trying to learn some Chinese. Many people at Bellevue know some stock Chinese phrases, but if I can avoid it I'd rather not storm into the hospital room of an 80-year old man and blurt out the Chinese version of "Did you piss today?" Most medical students wouldn't be caught dead asking an older person that question in English; clearly there must be another way to do it in Chinese. And I'm still trying to find the Yiddish speaker who doesn't assume that accented English will impress me more than mameloshn.
If you happen to speak English, I will make every effort to accommodate you once I'm a physician. Please realize, though, that since I'll be a doctor, my handwriting will be illegible — in any language.
Still a medical student, Zackary Sholem Berger has a bunch of dictionaries at home, but he never can seem to remember the word he needs. When he's a physician himself, he can have a medical student look everything up for him. Send him questions in the language of your choice at doctor@forward.com.
6/30/05
6/27/05
A new translation of Pessoa: a review
In the way of bloggers everywhere, I'm posting here a review of mine which was rejected by a journal.
Fernando Pessoa: Selected Poems
Translated by David Butler
Every translation of poetry should come with an introduction explaining the approach of the translator. David Butler does this with admirable forthrightness in his recent volume of selected translations of Fernando Pessoa: "I have resisted the temptation to tidy up the English syntax for the sake of readability. . . . The awkward syntax . . . of Pessoa's poetry is intended as a semantic corollary to his overwhelming sense of existential 'thrownness', and is ill-served by imposing definitive structures or meaning on the English." "A great advantage of a bilingual edition," continues Butler, "is that it is far easier for the translator to resist the urge to rewrite," since the original is available to the reader for easy comparison.
Thus on the one hand we can praise Butler for an important service: presenting the nearest English equivalents of Pessoa's existentially knotty Portuguese. But the translator of poetry has another responsibility (which does not necessarily exclude Butler's approach): creating poems in the target language. Translating a poem into Portuguese into a non-poem in English which respects the unclarity and strangeness of the original is a good deed of philology but not yet a poetic accomplishment.
First, though, to Pessoa. Anyone but the blasé Pessologist will warmly welcome a new selection of his poems, since some of it will be new to the average reader. The effect of his controlled and variegated confusion is that of someone thinking out loud, unsure about everything but his own unsureness: "I write in the midst/Of that which isn't to hand." Is this the modern predicament, or merely a modern version of that pain which we dismiss with the classification "the human condition"? Pessoa (this time under his own name and not one of his famed multiple-personality eponyms) has something to say about this ( p.39):
Autopsychography
The poet's a man who feigns.
He feigns so completely
That he comes to pretend pain
For pain that he actually feels.
And those who read what he writes
Feel also, in the pain they read,
Neither of the two that he had,
But only that which they don't have.
Thus, to entertain our reason,
Round and round in wheel-ruts
Revolves that clockwork engine
That is termed the heart.
The combination of cold mechanics and raw pain is invigorating, Larkin without the censoriousness. Pessoa implicates us in his poetry, a sort of imposter's game or dressing-up of feelings as other feelings – but the poet also points out time and again that only through such playacting do we see what might be true.
A short review of Pessoa would be as inappropriate as a one-page review of the work of Emily Dickinson. Here I'll just something about the translation. Though in agreement with Butler's theoretical possibilities, the reader might find it difficult to find anything poetical in his translations. From Butler's introduction, it seems that this might be what he wants, and the translations themselves seem to bear out this suspicion. The last lines of the poem above, for example, run this way in the original: "E assim nas calhas de roda/Gira, a entreter a razao,/Esse comboio de corda/Que se chama o coracao." The verb gira precedes the noun comboio; in Portuguese, as in other Romance languages, there is nothing particularly awkward or significant about this syntax. Preserving in English this Portuguese syntax ("revolves that clockwork engine") throws the reader off guard and does not allow her to finish reading the poem without thoughts of translation intruding into her attention. This is presumably not the sort of "thrownness" Butler has in mind.
One could go through these translations and quibble with a number of word and phrasing choices (for example, Butler tends to translate Portuguese basta as suffice, a word which in English is confined mainly to upper-register speech), but this is unfair. Translating Pessoa requires concentration and sensitivity, and by and large these are present in this edition. Indeed, these same qualities should be brought by the reader to every poem of Pessoa's represented here, a record of a personality nervously approaching and then withdrawing from the world:
That which pains me is not
What is in the heart
But rather those beautiful things
Which will never exist.
They are the forms without form
Which pass by, without pain
Being able to know them
Or love dream them.
They are as though sadness
Were a tree and, one by one,
Its leaves were to fall
Between the trace and the mist.
In the way of bloggers everywhere, I'm posting here a review of mine which was rejected by a journal.
Fernando Pessoa: Selected Poems
Translated by David Butler
Every translation of poetry should come with an introduction explaining the approach of the translator. David Butler does this with admirable forthrightness in his recent volume of selected translations of Fernando Pessoa: "I have resisted the temptation to tidy up the English syntax for the sake of readability. . . . The awkward syntax . . . of Pessoa's poetry is intended as a semantic corollary to his overwhelming sense of existential 'thrownness', and is ill-served by imposing definitive structures or meaning on the English." "A great advantage of a bilingual edition," continues Butler, "is that it is far easier for the translator to resist the urge to rewrite," since the original is available to the reader for easy comparison.
Thus on the one hand we can praise Butler for an important service: presenting the nearest English equivalents of Pessoa's existentially knotty Portuguese. But the translator of poetry has another responsibility (which does not necessarily exclude Butler's approach): creating poems in the target language. Translating a poem into Portuguese into a non-poem in English which respects the unclarity and strangeness of the original is a good deed of philology but not yet a poetic accomplishment.
First, though, to Pessoa. Anyone but the blasé Pessologist will warmly welcome a new selection of his poems, since some of it will be new to the average reader. The effect of his controlled and variegated confusion is that of someone thinking out loud, unsure about everything but his own unsureness: "I write in the midst/Of that which isn't to hand." Is this the modern predicament, or merely a modern version of that pain which we dismiss with the classification "the human condition"? Pessoa (this time under his own name and not one of his famed multiple-personality eponyms) has something to say about this ( p.39):
Autopsychography
The poet's a man who feigns.
He feigns so completely
That he comes to pretend pain
For pain that he actually feels.
And those who read what he writes
Feel also, in the pain they read,
Neither of the two that he had,
But only that which they don't have.
Thus, to entertain our reason,
Round and round in wheel-ruts
Revolves that clockwork engine
That is termed the heart.
The combination of cold mechanics and raw pain is invigorating, Larkin without the censoriousness. Pessoa implicates us in his poetry, a sort of imposter's game or dressing-up of feelings as other feelings – but the poet also points out time and again that only through such playacting do we see what might be true.
A short review of Pessoa would be as inappropriate as a one-page review of the work of Emily Dickinson. Here I'll just something about the translation. Though in agreement with Butler's theoretical possibilities, the reader might find it difficult to find anything poetical in his translations. From Butler's introduction, it seems that this might be what he wants, and the translations themselves seem to bear out this suspicion. The last lines of the poem above, for example, run this way in the original: "E assim nas calhas de roda/Gira, a entreter a razao,/Esse comboio de corda/Que se chama o coracao." The verb gira precedes the noun comboio; in Portuguese, as in other Romance languages, there is nothing particularly awkward or significant about this syntax. Preserving in English this Portuguese syntax ("revolves that clockwork engine") throws the reader off guard and does not allow her to finish reading the poem without thoughts of translation intruding into her attention. This is presumably not the sort of "thrownness" Butler has in mind.
One could go through these translations and quibble with a number of word and phrasing choices (for example, Butler tends to translate Portuguese basta as suffice, a word which in English is confined mainly to upper-register speech), but this is unfair. Translating Pessoa requires concentration and sensitivity, and by and large these are present in this edition. Indeed, these same qualities should be brought by the reader to every poem of Pessoa's represented here, a record of a personality nervously approaching and then withdrawing from the world:
That which pains me is not
What is in the heart
But rather those beautiful things
Which will never exist.
They are the forms without form
Which pass by, without pain
Being able to know them
Or love dream them.
They are as though sadness
Were a tree and, one by one,
Its leaves were to fall
Between the trace and the mist.
6/24/05
Mazl-tov, Beyle!
Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, Yiddish singer, songwriter, and poet, has been awarded one of twelve National Heritage Awards from the NEA. The Awards are the nation's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.
I haven't written nearly enough about her in this space. Below is my translation of one of her poems. You can also hear some of her singing (you wouldn't be amiss in buying one of her CDs, either).
Let me repeat, with joy: מזל־טובֿ, ביילע! איר האָט עס כּשר פֿאַרדינט. (Mazl-tov, Beyle! It couldn't have been given to a more deserving person.)
Nobody
Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman
Nobody loves the weak one,
quietly modest,
watching and waiting,
the small one.
Nobody loves the one who’s alone,
hid in himself,
lost
in the inner I,
the one alone with himself.
No one loves
the one who loses,
in constant collapse,
one and lonely,
the nobody –
nobody.
Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, Yiddish singer, songwriter, and poet, has been awarded one of twelve National Heritage Awards from the NEA. The Awards are the nation's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.
I haven't written nearly enough about her in this space. Below is my translation of one of her poems. You can also hear some of her singing (you wouldn't be amiss in buying one of her CDs, either).
Let me repeat, with joy: מזל־טובֿ, ביילע! איר האָט עס כּשר פֿאַרדינט. (Mazl-tov, Beyle! It couldn't have been given to a more deserving person.)
Nobody
Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman
Nobody loves the weak one,
quietly modest,
watching and waiting,
the small one.
Nobody loves the one who’s alone,
hid in himself,
lost
in the inner I,
the one alone with himself.
No one loves
the one who loses,
in constant collapse,
one and lonely,
the nobody –
nobody.
6/16/05
Son of Intermarriage
Or: What do we call those pesky non-Jews who insist on hanging around?
Eons ago, when most of midtown Manhattan was covered by a vast inland sea -- I refer to July, 2003 -- I started this blog with a post about intermarriage. My unoriginal claim was that intermarriage is by no means an unmitigated evil for the Jewish community, and that our institutions need to find positions which go beyond preachy boilerplate.
A related conversation (what do we call non-Jews who choose to ally themselves with our community?) is going strong in the J-sphere. Here is some miscellany you might find of interest, most shamelessly filched from friend and commenter Becca.
Perhaps the only newsworthy bit I have to offer is that the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs has prepared a twenty-two page pamphlet on supporting the non-Jewish spouse (I can't seem to find the exact title right now), supposedly meant for circulation to the members of the Rabbinical Assembly for a meeting in July. Since I can't find any information on line about an RA meeting in that month, I wonder if something else might be meant. In any case, the Forward is supposedly going to print something about the pamphlet and reactions to it.
Rabbi Steven Greenberg, in an essay on intermarriage, talks about reinventing the ger toshav for modernity. On the other hand, the authors of the new book A Place in the Tent: Intermarriage and Conservative Judaism (also reviewed here) suggest the term karov* (קרוב, lit. "relative") for any non-Jew who allies herself to the Jewish people without seeking membership.
In a private e-mail correspondence I'm involved with, one of the participants suggested that using the term ger toshav might encourage tradition-minded Jews to give due respect to the roles played by non-Jews in a Jewish community. To this, I replied:
The aforementioned Becca also shared some general comments on the rhetorical tasks faced by liberal Jews in taking account of the importance of their non-Jewish friends and relatives. (Rhetoric shapes our actions, hence the attention I'm devoting to it here.) I'm going to add her e-mail as a comment in my name.
I look forward to all of your views on the issue. Please note that the comments link at the end of each post seems to be broken; if you click on "link" you should be able to use the Blogger commenting feature.
*Which I will, to no one's surprise, pronounce korev. Kadimah Ashkenazistim!
Or: What do we call those pesky non-Jews who insist on hanging around?
Eons ago, when most of midtown Manhattan was covered by a vast inland sea -- I refer to July, 2003 -- I started this blog with a post about intermarriage. My unoriginal claim was that intermarriage is by no means an unmitigated evil for the Jewish community, and that our institutions need to find positions which go beyond preachy boilerplate.
A related conversation (what do we call non-Jews who choose to ally themselves with our community?) is going strong in the J-sphere. Here is some miscellany you might find of interest, most shamelessly filched from friend and commenter Becca.
Perhaps the only newsworthy bit I have to offer is that the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs has prepared a twenty-two page pamphlet on supporting the non-Jewish spouse (I can't seem to find the exact title right now), supposedly meant for circulation to the members of the Rabbinical Assembly for a meeting in July. Since I can't find any information on line about an RA meeting in that month, I wonder if something else might be meant. In any case, the Forward is supposedly going to print something about the pamphlet and reactions to it.
Rabbi Steven Greenberg, in an essay on intermarriage, talks about reinventing the ger toshav for modernity. On the other hand, the authors of the new book A Place in the Tent: Intermarriage and Conservative Judaism (also reviewed here) suggest the term karov* (קרוב, lit. "relative") for any non-Jew who allies herself to the Jewish people without seeking membership.
In a private e-mail correspondence I'm involved with, one of the participants suggested that using the term ger toshav might encourage tradition-minded Jews to give due respect to the roles played by non-Jews in a Jewish community. To this, I replied:
The benefits of the term "ger toshav" are also its dangers -- well, maybe "dangers" is an exaggeration. Call them "downsides." Most tradition-minded Jews who are knowledgable enough about the term "ger toshav" in order for it to mean something to them (and, even more, with enough familiarity to create a less-negative reaction to intermarriage) will also realize that there is a long halachic history behind the term. None of you have to be told that Rambam holds forth at great length on the privileges and responsibilities of the ger toshav. While it might be comforting to some to know that the GT is not a new category, they might be less comforted to know just how different our allied non-Jews are from the (frankly) subject population envisioned by medieval halachists.
It's Elliot Dorff, I think, who points out in one of his biomedical essays that sometimes halachic categories do not correspond to present realities - sometimes they're so out of joint that no amount of shoving will make things fit. He mentioned this in the context of goses and terefah, but I think for the liberal Jew it applies as well for the status of women, and, in our case, for non-Jews within the (liberal) Jewish community. That's why "karov" seems like a good try. Pretty vague, true, but then perhaps what's needed is not a formal naturalization for allied non-Jews, just (as was pointed out previously) a rhetorical acknowledgement of their positive existence.
The aforementioned Becca also shared some general comments on the rhetorical tasks faced by liberal Jews in taking account of the importance of their non-Jewish friends and relatives. (Rhetoric shapes our actions, hence the attention I'm devoting to it here.) I'm going to add her e-mail as a comment in my name.
I look forward to all of your views on the issue. Please note that the comments link at the end of each post seems to be broken; if you click on "link" you should be able to use the Blogger commenting feature.
*Which I will, to no one's surprise, pronounce korev. Kadimah Ashkenazistim!
6/9/05
MEDICINE MENSCH
Making Rounds: A Hospital Drama
By Zackary Sholem Berger
There is a drama performed in hospitals that is as essential and unchanging as davening, or eating breakfast. It's the doctors' twice-daily bedside perambulation, known to everyone as "rounds."
Whenever a medical student walks into a patient's room, it's an act for both concerned. Perhaps the metaphor is inexact. Each actually wants to tell the other something that is necessary to know; real life is going on here, not just a staged meeting. But performance anxiety is also a crucial element of the interaction. The student wants to demonstrate confidence in front of the patient, in the hope of hitting on a juicy finding to feed the intern; then the intern, thus fortified, might look good in front of the resident, who would be nice to the intern — who would then, in turn, the student devoutly hopes, be nicer to her.
The patient has his role, too. There are as many different sorts of patients as there are people in general, but many would like to be the "good patient," the one whom resident and attending alike mention with a smile or, at least, without an eye roll and a barely suppressed groan.
Patient and doctor meet on this sort of medical date thousands of times a day in hospitals everywhere, each hoping that, for the other's sake, the two of them will hit it off.
But what is it like to go on rounds? It's a performance with its own special set of characters, among them the Patient (lying in bed, trying to sleep), the Medical Student (short white coat, bleary eyes, clipboard), the Intern (long white coat, even blearier eyes, folded sheaf of paper, look of a hunted woodland creature) and the Attending (long white coat, very little paraphernalia, confident and well rested). Morning rounds are executed in two acts. The first, featuring the Medical Student and the Patient, is transcribed below. (The Patient's responses are omitted — because, among other reasons, he's tired, talking through a sheet pulled over his head and wishing the Student would go away.)
ACT I
The place: A raucous urban hospital.
The time: 6:45 a.m.
Enter Medical Student.
Medical Student (to Patient): Good morning! Did you make a bowel movement last night? ...
I realize it's a quarter to seven in the morning. I need to ask you a number of questions about how you're feeling. Someone else asked you a bunch of questions this morning when she took your temperature? That was the nurse. And another person asked you questions earlier this morning? That was the intern. Sometimes he likes to get here early to get a jump on things without me. I'm a medical student, and I have my own questions to ask you. ...
Why can't we all coordinate the questions we ask? That's a good question. I wish I knew the answer to that. I'll get back to you on that one. ...
I'm glad you're answering my questions, sir, but please don't say that I can "practice" on you. My resident tells me I'm a vital part of the team. ...
So, about those bowel movements. Made any? Great! That's good to hear. What about gas? Urinating? How's your pain? Where would you rank your pain on a scale of zero to 10? Any other complaints? Okay — I'll speak to someone about the food here. And, what's that? Too many people asking questions? Your sense of humor is very healthy, sir. ...
Now I'm going to examine you briefly. First your abdomen. Where does it hurt? All right. Let me just look. I'm sorry! I know it hurts. I know, but I wanted to see for myself. After I'm done examining you, I'll just check your incision. Let me listen to your heart and lungs now. Breathe deep, please. ...
Okay, thanks a lot! Any other questions for me? ...
Normal food? I think you'll be eating normal food by tomorrow, but I'm not 100% sure. I have to ask the doctors, who are coming by a little bit later. Have a good day.
END OF ACT I
* * *
The second and final act of Morning Rounds happens a little bit later, with the Attending presiding. The curtain rises:
ACT II
The place: The same.
The time: 7:30 a.m.
Enter Attending, Intern and Medical Student. The Intern and Medical Student are silent, attentive, almost worshipful.
Attending (to Patient, while moving very fast): Good morning! How's the belly?
(Attending performs a thorough examination of the patient's abdomen in 25 seconds, during which time the Medical Student drops his pen cap, which rolls under the bed; makes a split-second decision to go after the cap, without success, and finally resolves to use only ballpoints like everyone else has, which click in and out. During this same period the Intern makes notes on 10 patients, tries to guess what time he's going home tonight and wonders what the hell his student is doing under the bed.)
Attending: Great! Okay, I'll see you later. Keep on feeling better. (Directs a stream of instructions to intern.)
(Attending, Intern and Medical Student leave the room and head down the corridor.)
Patient (shouting after them): Can I eat tomorrow?
(Medical Student does not answer. He will ask Intern later in the day, after rounds. The answer will be furnished by the time they all round again in the evening.)
Patient: Hello?
(Tries to go back to sleep.)
END OF ACT II
CURTAIN
If you missed the first performance, don't worry. The cast will be waiting by the elevators at 5 p.m. for a return engagement. Bring your clipboard.
Zackary Sholem Berger plays the part of the Medical Student. He's lost many pen caps on morning rounds while much of the city is still sleeping.
Making Rounds: A Hospital Drama
By Zackary Sholem Berger
There is a drama performed in hospitals that is as essential and unchanging as davening, or eating breakfast. It's the doctors' twice-daily bedside perambulation, known to everyone as "rounds."
Whenever a medical student walks into a patient's room, it's an act for both concerned. Perhaps the metaphor is inexact. Each actually wants to tell the other something that is necessary to know; real life is going on here, not just a staged meeting. But performance anxiety is also a crucial element of the interaction. The student wants to demonstrate confidence in front of the patient, in the hope of hitting on a juicy finding to feed the intern; then the intern, thus fortified, might look good in front of the resident, who would be nice to the intern — who would then, in turn, the student devoutly hopes, be nicer to her.
The patient has his role, too. There are as many different sorts of patients as there are people in general, but many would like to be the "good patient," the one whom resident and attending alike mention with a smile or, at least, without an eye roll and a barely suppressed groan.
Patient and doctor meet on this sort of medical date thousands of times a day in hospitals everywhere, each hoping that, for the other's sake, the two of them will hit it off.
But what is it like to go on rounds? It's a performance with its own special set of characters, among them the Patient (lying in bed, trying to sleep), the Medical Student (short white coat, bleary eyes, clipboard), the Intern (long white coat, even blearier eyes, folded sheaf of paper, look of a hunted woodland creature) and the Attending (long white coat, very little paraphernalia, confident and well rested). Morning rounds are executed in two acts. The first, featuring the Medical Student and the Patient, is transcribed below. (The Patient's responses are omitted — because, among other reasons, he's tired, talking through a sheet pulled over his head and wishing the Student would go away.)
ACT I
The place: A raucous urban hospital.
The time: 6:45 a.m.
Enter Medical Student.
Medical Student (to Patient): Good morning! Did you make a bowel movement last night? ...
I realize it's a quarter to seven in the morning. I need to ask you a number of questions about how you're feeling. Someone else asked you a bunch of questions this morning when she took your temperature? That was the nurse. And another person asked you questions earlier this morning? That was the intern. Sometimes he likes to get here early to get a jump on things without me. I'm a medical student, and I have my own questions to ask you. ...
Why can't we all coordinate the questions we ask? That's a good question. I wish I knew the answer to that. I'll get back to you on that one. ...
I'm glad you're answering my questions, sir, but please don't say that I can "practice" on you. My resident tells me I'm a vital part of the team. ...
So, about those bowel movements. Made any? Great! That's good to hear. What about gas? Urinating? How's your pain? Where would you rank your pain on a scale of zero to 10? Any other complaints? Okay — I'll speak to someone about the food here. And, what's that? Too many people asking questions? Your sense of humor is very healthy, sir. ...
Now I'm going to examine you briefly. First your abdomen. Where does it hurt? All right. Let me just look. I'm sorry! I know it hurts. I know, but I wanted to see for myself. After I'm done examining you, I'll just check your incision. Let me listen to your heart and lungs now. Breathe deep, please. ...
Okay, thanks a lot! Any other questions for me? ...
Normal food? I think you'll be eating normal food by tomorrow, but I'm not 100% sure. I have to ask the doctors, who are coming by a little bit later. Have a good day.
END OF ACT I
* * *
The second and final act of Morning Rounds happens a little bit later, with the Attending presiding. The curtain rises:
ACT II
The place: The same.
The time: 7:30 a.m.
Enter Attending, Intern and Medical Student. The Intern and Medical Student are silent, attentive, almost worshipful.
Attending (to Patient, while moving very fast): Good morning! How's the belly?
(Attending performs a thorough examination of the patient's abdomen in 25 seconds, during which time the Medical Student drops his pen cap, which rolls under the bed; makes a split-second decision to go after the cap, without success, and finally resolves to use only ballpoints like everyone else has, which click in and out. During this same period the Intern makes notes on 10 patients, tries to guess what time he's going home tonight and wonders what the hell his student is doing under the bed.)
Attending: Great! Okay, I'll see you later. Keep on feeling better. (Directs a stream of instructions to intern.)
(Attending, Intern and Medical Student leave the room and head down the corridor.)
Patient (shouting after them): Can I eat tomorrow?
(Medical Student does not answer. He will ask Intern later in the day, after rounds. The answer will be furnished by the time they all round again in the evening.)
Patient: Hello?
(Tries to go back to sleep.)
END OF ACT II
CURTAIN
If you missed the first performance, don't worry. The cast will be waiting by the elevators at 5 p.m. for a return engagement. Bring your clipboard.
Zackary Sholem Berger plays the part of the Medical Student. He's lost many pen caps on morning rounds while much of the city is still sleeping.
6/1/05
Election Day!
In Kiryas Joel.
It's the Aharonites vs. the Zalman Leib-ists, round twenty-seven, as KJers go to the polls to elect a mayor and two members of the village council. The Times Herald-Record's crack KJ reporter, Chris McKenna, has a good roundup of who the candidates are and why they hate each other. McKenna writes:
I don't know what these figures are supposed to show, but I gather the claim is that the Alliance is getting stronger in KJ. I doubt it. I bet they'll get clobbered today too.
Update: This is why I don't make my living as a political pundit. The Alliance made a very strong showing (though they still lost).
In Kiryas Joel.
It's the Aharonites vs. the Zalman Leib-ists, round twenty-seven, as KJers go to the polls to elect a mayor and two members of the village council. The Times Herald-Record's crack KJ reporter, Chris McKenna, has a good roundup of who the candidates are and why they hate each other. McKenna writes:
[The KJ Alliance -- that is, the Zalman Leib faction in KJ] has established
itself as a significant voting bloc of its own but one that still occupies a
distinctly minority position.
In 2001, its candidates lost by 600-vote margins of more than 4,100 cast.
In 2004, when approximately 4,500 voted, the margins were closer to 800.
I don't know what these figures are supposed to show, but I gather the claim is that the Alliance is getting stronger in KJ. I doubt it. I bet they'll get clobbered today too.
Update: This is why I don't make my living as a political pundit. The Alliance made a very strong showing (though they still lost).
5/31/05
5/30/05
The Bridge
Anna Margolin
(from Yiddish: Z.Sh.B.)
The Williamsburg Bridge naps
in the heavy gold of the day.
The city's wild heart
is breathing quick and weary.
In the day's heavy gold
the ferry's a blue cord.
Feverish and sharp
the accompaniment of the cars.
The heavy gold of the day
is brilliant, between iron ropes
nets cast out
to capture happiness.
But I don't want happiness.
I want my pain and secret.
I am a golden bridge
over the steel city.
Anna Margolin
(from Yiddish: Z.Sh.B.)
The Williamsburg Bridge naps
in the heavy gold of the day.
The city's wild heart
is breathing quick and weary.
In the day's heavy gold
the ferry's a blue cord.
Feverish and sharp
the accompaniment of the cars.
The heavy gold of the day
is brilliant, between iron ropes
nets cast out
to capture happiness.
But I don't want happiness.
I want my pain and secret.
I am a golden bridge
over the steel city.
5/12/05
Public and Private
And sick and well.
Medicine Mensch 5 is below. Enjoy!
MEDICINE MENSCH: A Tale of Two Hospitals
By Zackary Sholem Berger
May 13, 2005
Fancy Private Hospital is conveniently located in Upper Manhattan, a few blocks away from a subway stop. If you like, though, you can stroll to the main building along Madison Avenue, perhaps stopping at some of the boutiques you'll find along the way. A few other students and I took such a relaxed trip to FPH for a recent rotation. On our first day we went to a well-appointed office in an embassylike building of white stone, with an interior decorated in brass and wood. We settled into plush chairs and waited for the administrator. When she arrived, she gave us all a big smile as she handed out our orientation packets. "Welcome to Fancy!" she said. She gave us each a sheaf of meal tickets ("Hold on to these. They're just like money!") and told us where the swimming pool was.
Needless to say, we all had had somewhat different formative experiences in Raucous Urban Hospital, another one of the health care facilities operated by my university. There you're not so much welcomed as acknowledged. The elevators don't work, efficiency is not rampant and budgets are tight — but all this has come to be expected by the people who work there. Otherwise, it wouldn't be raucous and probably wouldn't serve as much of the public.
Both Fancy and Raucous are teaching hospitals where medical students (not yet doctors) and residents (doctors at the beginning of their training) learn to perform procedures and make diagnoses on real patients — you and me and our relatives. Everyone would love to be treated by the expert in whatever malady she's currently suffering from, but there aren't enough experts to go around. So people are treated by teams, the long chains of white-coated big-and-little-fish the patient sees snaking into and out of the room. Although a couple of people in that big group are more responsible for what happens to the sick person, no single person carries out all of a given patient's care over the course of a month.
That is, once in a hospital, every sick person realizes that he or she is one of dozens treated by a team of interlocking personalities. The patients at Fancy Private and Raucous Urban deal with this realization in ways that are superficially different. Some at Fancy Private, used to the best in everything in other areas of their lives (or merely the upper-middle-class certainty that they will be properly accommodated — be it at the hairdresser's, their favorite boutique or their local restaurant), will insist that they be treated only by their personal physician or at least an attending physician — no residents for them. Little does the patient know that when the attending physician gets word of this request, she'll probably roll her eyes, pick up the phone and have a good laugh about it with one of the residents, the ones she relies on to carry out the day-to-day work of patient care in a hospital with hundreds upon hundreds of patients. The Raucous Urbanites, on the other hand, tend to address everyone on the team — from lowly medical student to seasoned attending physician — as "Doctor," and impute to each of them the same level of training and responsibility. According to strict accuracy and ethical practice, the medical student should remind his patient that he is not, after all, a doctor. But how many times can you remind someone of this, especially when it's eminently possible that the person doesn't want to be reminded?
Public and private patients have something very basic in common: the wish to know who's treating them and the illusion that they have detailed control over their daily care. Of course they have control over the general decisions relating to their medical treatment: Informed consent is one of the pillars of current medical practice. (How "informed" this consent really is, however, is another matter entirely.) But once the patient makes a decision about medical care, then the team takes over, general decisions are transmuted into professional jargon like liters of lactated Ringer's solution, and a view of the forest is lost as trees are thickly planted at the patient's bedside.
That's why I try to introduce myself to every patient and have something approaching a conversation so that the patients at least have some personal contact with someone on their team, even if it's only the most insignificant and least important member. The Raucous Urban patients get my best doctor imitation, while the Fancy Private patients, if necessary, get my solemn oath that I won't go near their bed. Both of these behaviors are not quite in good faith, but they make everyone involved feel better. Perhaps one day I'll have all the public patients up to Fancy Private for lunch so that I can use up my leftover meal tickets.
Zackary Sholem Berger is a medical student at both public and private hospitals, depending on his rotation. He is doing surgery now, but don't worry — he won't be operating on anyone anytime soon.
And sick and well.
Medicine Mensch 5 is below. Enjoy!
MEDICINE MENSCH: A Tale of Two Hospitals
By Zackary Sholem Berger
May 13, 2005
Fancy Private Hospital is conveniently located in Upper Manhattan, a few blocks away from a subway stop. If you like, though, you can stroll to the main building along Madison Avenue, perhaps stopping at some of the boutiques you'll find along the way. A few other students and I took such a relaxed trip to FPH for a recent rotation. On our first day we went to a well-appointed office in an embassylike building of white stone, with an interior decorated in brass and wood. We settled into plush chairs and waited for the administrator. When she arrived, she gave us all a big smile as she handed out our orientation packets. "Welcome to Fancy!" she said. She gave us each a sheaf of meal tickets ("Hold on to these. They're just like money!") and told us where the swimming pool was.
Needless to say, we all had had somewhat different formative experiences in Raucous Urban Hospital, another one of the health care facilities operated by my university. There you're not so much welcomed as acknowledged. The elevators don't work, efficiency is not rampant and budgets are tight — but all this has come to be expected by the people who work there. Otherwise, it wouldn't be raucous and probably wouldn't serve as much of the public.
Both Fancy and Raucous are teaching hospitals where medical students (not yet doctors) and residents (doctors at the beginning of their training) learn to perform procedures and make diagnoses on real patients — you and me and our relatives. Everyone would love to be treated by the expert in whatever malady she's currently suffering from, but there aren't enough experts to go around. So people are treated by teams, the long chains of white-coated big-and-little-fish the patient sees snaking into and out of the room. Although a couple of people in that big group are more responsible for what happens to the sick person, no single person carries out all of a given patient's care over the course of a month.
That is, once in a hospital, every sick person realizes that he or she is one of dozens treated by a team of interlocking personalities. The patients at Fancy Private and Raucous Urban deal with this realization in ways that are superficially different. Some at Fancy Private, used to the best in everything in other areas of their lives (or merely the upper-middle-class certainty that they will be properly accommodated — be it at the hairdresser's, their favorite boutique or their local restaurant), will insist that they be treated only by their personal physician or at least an attending physician — no residents for them. Little does the patient know that when the attending physician gets word of this request, she'll probably roll her eyes, pick up the phone and have a good laugh about it with one of the residents, the ones she relies on to carry out the day-to-day work of patient care in a hospital with hundreds upon hundreds of patients. The Raucous Urbanites, on the other hand, tend to address everyone on the team — from lowly medical student to seasoned attending physician — as "Doctor," and impute to each of them the same level of training and responsibility. According to strict accuracy and ethical practice, the medical student should remind his patient that he is not, after all, a doctor. But how many times can you remind someone of this, especially when it's eminently possible that the person doesn't want to be reminded?
Public and private patients have something very basic in common: the wish to know who's treating them and the illusion that they have detailed control over their daily care. Of course they have control over the general decisions relating to their medical treatment: Informed consent is one of the pillars of current medical practice. (How "informed" this consent really is, however, is another matter entirely.) But once the patient makes a decision about medical care, then the team takes over, general decisions are transmuted into professional jargon like liters of lactated Ringer's solution, and a view of the forest is lost as trees are thickly planted at the patient's bedside.
That's why I try to introduce myself to every patient and have something approaching a conversation so that the patients at least have some personal contact with someone on their team, even if it's only the most insignificant and least important member. The Raucous Urban patients get my best doctor imitation, while the Fancy Private patients, if necessary, get my solemn oath that I won't go near their bed. Both of these behaviors are not quite in good faith, but they make everyone involved feel better. Perhaps one day I'll have all the public patients up to Fancy Private for lunch so that I can use up my leftover meal tickets.
Zackary Sholem Berger is a medical student at both public and private hospitals, depending on his rotation. He is doing surgery now, but don't worry — he won't be operating on anyone anytime soon.
5/11/05
Helping a Chadian defender of human rights
A friend writes:
Many have been active in various efforts to call attention to atrocities in Sudan and Darfur. I'm writing to introduce you to a human rights defender from that region, and to ask for your assistance in helping with his medical needs.
I work at Human Rights Watch, where I currently have the great fortune of sitting in the office next to one of the most extraordinary people I've ever met, Souleymane Guengueng, a Chadian human rights activist who worksclosely with several colleagues. He's an amazing, kind, warm and brave man, who is in the U.S. now for medical treatment for injuries suffere dafter being unjustly imprisoned and tortured in the 1980s. My office has raised most of the money for his treatment, but needs to raise some more.I'm writing to share this appeal for funds -- please share it with others, as appropriate.
Reed Brody, the attorney who has been working with Souleymane, sent me the appeal below. If you're interested in learning more about Souleymane, see these articles.
Please contact Reed Brody, brodyr@hrw.org, for further information.
From Reed Brody: Request
We are seeking to raise the last $10,000 needed for medical treatment forSouleymane Guengueng, one of our 2002 Human Rights Watch Monitors (total $40,000).
Souleymane Guengueng
Souleymane is the founder and Vice-President of the Chadian Association ofVictims of Political Repression and Crime (AVCRP), and is the main force behind the landmark effort to prosecute Chad’s former dictator Hissène Habré. As the New York Times said in its moving portrait of Souleymane, "on acontinent where ordinary men are tortured, killed and forgotten without asecond thought, Mr. Guengueng has done something extraordinary: fought back. After being unjustly imprisoned and tortured for two years in the late 1980's, he spent the next decade gathering testimony from fellow victims and their families. The evidence provided critical material forChadian and international human rights organizations to pursue a case against the country's former dictator, Hissene Habre."
France’s Liberation remarked that “a surprising tug of war pits this modest civil servant against the ex-dictator who bathed his country in blood.” Souleymane, falsely accused of supporting Habré’s opposition, lost much of his eyesight and almost died of dengue fever during two years of mistreatment in Habré's prisons, and watched hundreds of others succumb tomalaria, exhaustion, malnutrition and torture. When Habré fell, Souleymane and other former prisoners founded the AVCRP and gathered testimony from 792 victims, widows and orphans, hoping to use them to bring Habré to justice. When the new government recycled many of Habré's accomplices, however, Souleymane hid the files underneath the mud-brick home where he lives with the 24 members of his family, including nine children. That is where the files stayed for eight years until Souleymane handed them to a Human Rights Watch researcher in 1999. Since then, Souleymane has been the driving force behind this case. He has devoted all of his free time to the case – indeed his life is devoted to the case. He was recently fired from his civil service job because of this work.
Suleymane’s medical condition
When we brought Suleymane to the United States in late 2002 for the Human Rights Watch dinners, we were also able to get him two very successful eye operations and Souleymane can now see like a normal person. Thanks to our friends at the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, we were able to have the operations done extremely cheaply.The bad news is that he was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, probably the result of a transfusion years back. The good news is that he has the strain that has an 80% chance of responding to a 6 month course of interferon treatment, which is what the doctors have strongly urged him to do to prevent potentially serious liver damage.
Souleymane Guengueng has become beloved to the staff of Human Rights Watch,and we have brought him back to carry out the difficult and debilitating interferon treatment. He has responded well to the first months of medication, though he had developed anemia, for which the doctors have prescribed additional medication.The total estimated budget is $39,860, or which we have already secured $29,000.
Checks should be made out to Human Rights Watch -- memo line "Souleymane Guengueng" -- and sent to Reed Brody, Human Rights Watch, 350 Fifth Avenue 34th Floor, NY, NY 10118.
A friend writes:
Many have been active in various efforts to call attention to atrocities in Sudan and Darfur. I'm writing to introduce you to a human rights defender from that region, and to ask for your assistance in helping with his medical needs.
I work at Human Rights Watch, where I currently have the great fortune of sitting in the office next to one of the most extraordinary people I've ever met, Souleymane Guengueng, a Chadian human rights activist who worksclosely with several colleagues. He's an amazing, kind, warm and brave man, who is in the U.S. now for medical treatment for injuries suffere dafter being unjustly imprisoned and tortured in the 1980s. My office has raised most of the money for his treatment, but needs to raise some more.I'm writing to share this appeal for funds -- please share it with others, as appropriate.
Reed Brody, the attorney who has been working with Souleymane, sent me the appeal below. If you're interested in learning more about Souleymane, see these articles.
Please contact Reed Brody, brodyr@hrw.org, for further information.
From Reed Brody: Request
We are seeking to raise the last $10,000 needed for medical treatment forSouleymane Guengueng, one of our 2002 Human Rights Watch Monitors (total $40,000).
Souleymane Guengueng
Souleymane is the founder and Vice-President of the Chadian Association ofVictims of Political Repression and Crime (AVCRP), and is the main force behind the landmark effort to prosecute Chad’s former dictator Hissène Habré. As the New York Times said in its moving portrait of Souleymane, "on acontinent where ordinary men are tortured, killed and forgotten without asecond thought, Mr. Guengueng has done something extraordinary: fought back. After being unjustly imprisoned and tortured for two years in the late 1980's, he spent the next decade gathering testimony from fellow victims and their families. The evidence provided critical material forChadian and international human rights organizations to pursue a case against the country's former dictator, Hissene Habre."
France’s Liberation remarked that “a surprising tug of war pits this modest civil servant against the ex-dictator who bathed his country in blood.” Souleymane, falsely accused of supporting Habré’s opposition, lost much of his eyesight and almost died of dengue fever during two years of mistreatment in Habré's prisons, and watched hundreds of others succumb tomalaria, exhaustion, malnutrition and torture. When Habré fell, Souleymane and other former prisoners founded the AVCRP and gathered testimony from 792 victims, widows and orphans, hoping to use them to bring Habré to justice. When the new government recycled many of Habré's accomplices, however, Souleymane hid the files underneath the mud-brick home where he lives with the 24 members of his family, including nine children. That is where the files stayed for eight years until Souleymane handed them to a Human Rights Watch researcher in 1999. Since then, Souleymane has been the driving force behind this case. He has devoted all of his free time to the case – indeed his life is devoted to the case. He was recently fired from his civil service job because of this work.
Suleymane’s medical condition
When we brought Suleymane to the United States in late 2002 for the Human Rights Watch dinners, we were also able to get him two very successful eye operations and Souleymane can now see like a normal person. Thanks to our friends at the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, we were able to have the operations done extremely cheaply.The bad news is that he was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, probably the result of a transfusion years back. The good news is that he has the strain that has an 80% chance of responding to a 6 month course of interferon treatment, which is what the doctors have strongly urged him to do to prevent potentially serious liver damage.
Souleymane Guengueng has become beloved to the staff of Human Rights Watch,and we have brought him back to carry out the difficult and debilitating interferon treatment. He has responded well to the first months of medication, though he had developed anemia, for which the doctors have prescribed additional medication.The total estimated budget is $39,860, or which we have already secured $29,000.
Checks should be made out to Human Rights Watch -- memo line "Souleymane Guengueng" -- and sent to Reed Brody, Human Rights Watch, 350 Fifth Avenue 34th Floor, NY, NY 10118.
5/9/05
4/20/05
4/14/05
Why I kiss my child in shul
When I'm not davening, that is.
Gil "Musin' Man" Student, aka the "Bal-Hirhurim," has an informative and learned post about not holding one's child while davening (but see Josh Waxman's demurral). The comments on that post mention the prohibition in the Shulchan Aruch of kissing one's child in shul, or to quote: "Kissing one's small children in thesynagogue is forbidden, in order to fix in the heart that there is no love like the love of the Omnipresent." (Shulchan Aruch, OH 98.1, Remo).
Understanding this halachah and its sources might be a useful way to approach the different ways that (some) Orthodox and (some) Conservative Jews (and maybe Reform Jews as well, but I don't know so much about Reform Judaism) see halachah in general. For Orthodox Jews, speaking in general, the reason for the halachah is subordinate to the halachah itself. Yes, there are those situations in which "the reason is nullified and [thus] the decree is nullified," but from what I understand of contemporary Orthodox responsa there are very few situations in which a halachah in the SA is nullified based on a rationale that no longer applies. (If anyone can point me to such examples, I'd be grateful.) On the other hand,, when a Conservative rabbi makes an effort to understand a halacha in the SA, her first approach might involve an understanding of the motivations behind the halachah -- not necessarily through historical research or speculation, but through indications given in the sefer itself. Call it an active reading of the halachah.
So let's take a look at what this one says. To break it down into propositions, we first need to realize that there are several possible understandings. One is the following (call it formulation A):
1. There is no love like the love of the Omnipresent.
2. If you kiss children in shul, you show that you think 1. is false.
3. Thus you should not kiss children in shul.
Another (formulation B) is this:
1. There is no love like the love of the Omnipresent.
2. We should try to inculcate this understanding in our children and ourselves.
3. If you kiss your children in shul, you weaken this understanding, or make it more difficult
To rephrase: formulation A assumes that kissing your children in shul is, in essence, a challenge to the ontological authority of God's love. "See me kiss my children!" you are saying. "Even here, my love for them requires that I kiss them, even where I should be feeling the love of God." But this of course assumes that these two kinds of love are contradictory, that love of other people and love of God are mutually exclusive. Since this seems not to be true, at least to me, one begins to suspect that something else should be adduced to explain this halachah: namely, the prominent ascetic strand in our religious literature. For example, in siman 240 of the Shulchan Aruch, covering the laws of sexual relations, one recommended approach to sex (but by no means the only one) is something akin to terror. This is an exaggerated example of a general trend, that physical demonstrations of affection should be held in check as part of the religious life. (Compare also siman 255 of Sefer Hasidim, written before the Shulchan Aruch, which expands the prohibition to kissing one's child in the presence of one's rabbi [religious teacher, not community leader]).
If there is something besides this asceticism lying behind this halachah, I would like to figure it out so that I can better understand it. Unfortunately, I don't know when I'll have a chance to study the two works the Remo cites (or one of Remo's commentators cite?) as the sources: Binyomin Zeev (first printing: Venice, 1539) and Agudo (which I think is the same as Ha-Agudo, first printing Cracow, 1571). It would be interesting, and relevant, to find out the approach which these seforim take to the matter; i.e., with what philosophy they are deriving this halacha.
Formulation B is weaker, but still, I think, hard to defend. Just imagine this perfectly plausible explanation to a child about the relationship between God's love and parental love (what child would sit still for this without laughing in your face is another matter altogether): "I'm kissing you now because I love you. But Divine love is even greater!" That's just as defensible an account as "I'm not kissing you now, even though I love you, because Divine love is even greater." That is, kissing or not kissing a child in shul is not a particularly sensitive criterion for understanding, or agreeing with, the incomparability of Divine love, but is more strongly related to how one thinks of physical demonstrations of affection in general.
(Whether one should kiss one's child in shul in general, apart from this halachah, is a separate issue. I do it when I'm not davening.)
4/12/05
Beaver vs. Beaver
Sophomoricomical sci-jinks.
I'm not one to wax overly nostalgic over bright college days, but this is too good to pass up. (You can guess which school I went to by the fact I'm linking to it.)
Of course, the pranks I engaged in at Tech were more on the order of obscure religious/literary wordplay, but I can feel technically proficient by association.
Sophomoricomical sci-jinks.
I'm not one to wax overly nostalgic over bright college days, but this is too good to pass up. (You can guess which school I went to by the fact I'm linking to it.)
Of course, the pranks I engaged in at Tech were more on the order of obscure religious/literary wordplay, but I can feel technically proficient by association.
4/10/05
4/3/05
More of Bashevis's lustful rebbe
Still crawling along with my translation; if you're still reading the story, check out the new addition here.
Still crawling along with my translation; if you're still reading the story, check out the new addition here.
Yiddish Poets!
Among other events I wish I could go to in the coming weeks is this one on Sunday, April 10th, featuring a lineup of Yiddish women poets reading in both original and translation. Let me tell you about them, so that you'll go and hear them (and I can get the merit of adding a few to the crowd, even though, since I'm on call then, I can't be there myself). What follows are not wholly objective appraisals; Yiddish poets all know each other. (Dovid Katz says -- and he's right -- that today's Yiddish literature will be worth anything only if present and future critics from outside the Yiddish world recognize whatever quality it possesses. So if you go to this event on the 10th, and go you should, let me know honestly afterward what you thought of them.)
Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath manages to combine psychological sensitivity with homey (but deceptive) simplicity of speech in her careful though relatively unadorned and untricksterly work. She manages to be both acccessible and innovative, achieving literary quality without the obscurity which often accompanies it. I helped translate some of her poems for her first (and so far only) book, and I count myself a friend of hers, so I'm not exactly unbiased. In the spirit of beser hot ken shier nisht (you can always do better), I will say that sometimes I wish she pushed herself to risk new forms or venture some lengthier work.
Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman is one of the most important poets writing today in Yiddish. Her latest collection, Perpl shlenglt zikh der veg [The Winding Purple Road], includes a wide range of work, ranging from dark memoir to cutting parodies of past Yiddish giants (one of my favorite poems of hers is a dead-on, if unfair, takedown of Moyshe-Leyb Halpern) to lyric meditations on the South Bronx [sic!]. She is verbally inventive, if traditional in style, and manages to infuse each poem with the song and picture she has also created in other parallel parts of her life. (She is an accomplished painter and a very well-known Yiddish songwriter; I assume that she will sing a song-poem or two at the event.)
Miriam-Khaye Seigel [scroll down for a picture] is (shocker) another friend of mine! She's mostly a songwriter, with a singing voice that should be poured into the porch of every musically deprived ear. I've only heard a few songs she's written (because she's a perfectionist when she comes to writing and performing), but my impression is that she is a traditionalist when it comes to genre but a iconoclast in content. She is someone to watch.
Among other events I wish I could go to in the coming weeks is this one on Sunday, April 10th, featuring a lineup of Yiddish women poets reading in both original and translation. Let me tell you about them, so that you'll go and hear them (and I can get the merit of adding a few to the crowd, even though, since I'm on call then, I can't be there myself). What follows are not wholly objective appraisals; Yiddish poets all know each other. (Dovid Katz says -- and he's right -- that today's Yiddish literature will be worth anything only if present and future critics from outside the Yiddish world recognize whatever quality it possesses. So if you go to this event on the 10th, and go you should, let me know honestly afterward what you thought of them.)
Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath manages to combine psychological sensitivity with homey (but deceptive) simplicity of speech in her careful though relatively unadorned and untricksterly work. She manages to be both acccessible and innovative, achieving literary quality without the obscurity which often accompanies it. I helped translate some of her poems for her first (and so far only) book, and I count myself a friend of hers, so I'm not exactly unbiased. In the spirit of beser hot ken shier nisht (you can always do better), I will say that sometimes I wish she pushed herself to risk new forms or venture some lengthier work.
Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman is one of the most important poets writing today in Yiddish. Her latest collection, Perpl shlenglt zikh der veg [The Winding Purple Road], includes a wide range of work, ranging from dark memoir to cutting parodies of past Yiddish giants (one of my favorite poems of hers is a dead-on, if unfair, takedown of Moyshe-Leyb Halpern) to lyric meditations on the South Bronx [sic!]. She is verbally inventive, if traditional in style, and manages to infuse each poem with the song and picture she has also created in other parallel parts of her life. (She is an accomplished painter and a very well-known Yiddish songwriter; I assume that she will sing a song-poem or two at the event.)
Miriam-Khaye Seigel [scroll down for a picture] is (shocker) another friend of mine! She's mostly a songwriter, with a singing voice that should be poured into the porch of every musically deprived ear. I've only heard a few songs she's written (because she's a perfectionist when she comes to writing and performing), but my impression is that she is a traditionalist when it comes to genre but a iconoclast in content. She is someone to watch.
3/31/05
Lost and Found in the Call Room
Medicine Mensch 5 is here, so you can continue your vicarious medical-school education. (Study hard, there'll be a test later.)
Update: 4, not 5. You haven't missed one.
At long last: I'm posting the whole thing below (I had to ask my Forward folks if it was okay first), and I'll post my other Medicine Mensch articles on my blog over the next couple of days.
MEDICINE MENSCH: Has Anyone Seen a Wedding Ring?
By Zackary Sholem Berger
April 1, 2005
In between patients, each room in the hospital has a life of its own: The operating theater is prepped for another run; the delivery room is ready for another baby to come down the pike. Everything's sterilized and rearranged. While the attendants and residents wolf down their cheeseburgers, a medical student (that's me) retreats to the residents' call room to make quick work of his dependable cheese sandwiches and raisins. ("Oh!" a resident says admiringly. "You're so healthy!" "No," I respond. "I'm kosher.")
The call room is a place that many patients wouldn't want to see, since its workaday normality might disappoint those who expect their doctors to be something other than run of the mill. Imagine your break room at work, but without the stern hand and refrigerator-clearing punctiliousness of an office manager. This room is furnished with chairs that also have served as footstools and as impromptu beds; a refrigerator higgledy-piggledy with old lunches, and a TV talking to itself. Off the main call room is the back room, with a bunk bed; piles of white medical jackets, coats and other clothing, and a box of shoes that hasn't been touched since the Ford administration. Project onto this backdrop the rhythms of any workday: petty frustrations and jealousies, hot- and cold-running gossip, and unavoidable tedium, and you can understand why "ER" never could be called "Call Room."
Last week I lost my wedding ring in the back room. It's probably still there.
It happened like this. I had a week of observing surgical procedures. Surgery, like a symphony orchestra, is fascinating in the abstract but puts me to sleep after the first 30 minutes. I strain to keep my eyes open; I think of chapters from the textbooks I'm studying; I say Psalms under my breath; I eat a good lunch and sleep right; all to no avail. Luckily, my head jerked up with a start just as I was about to fall, face first, into the instrument tray.
Observing procedures is a lot less boring when your hands are allowed into the surgical field. "This is the aorta," a surgeon said during one procedure, and I said to myself, "Put it away before something happens to it!" Nothing untoward happened, even though I was only 18 inches away — partially because I wasn't allowed near any of the knives. My job was to retract, to pull apart the edges of the incision to allow the surgeons to see as much as possible.
Even for this minimal participation I had to get ready like the high priest entering the Holy of Holies. Before I donned the surgical gown and the surgical nurse held open the gloves so that I could stick my hands down into them, I scrubbed up just so. First fingernails, then sides of fingers, then fingers, palms, backs of hands and arms. I was cleaner than I'd ever been in my life. This reminds me of washing hands before breaking bread, which is similarly governed by precise detail but for a very different purpose: not cleanliness, but sanctification through the remembrance of Temple purity. In both sorts of washing, extraneous objects must be removed from the hands (although, relying on some fairly obscure leniencies, I don't take off my ring before washing for bread). I took off my watch and stuck it in the pocket of my scrubs. The first time I ever scrubbed in to a surgery (a long three weeks ago), I forgot to take off my wedding ring. As I stuck my left hand through the sleeve of the surgery gown, ready to meet the glove midair, the nurse raised her eyebrows as she glimpsed the band on my finger. "Uh-unh," she said. I retreated to the sink and started over.
Before long, I had come up with a place to store my wedding ring before scrubbing up — my Palm Pilot case — and had congratulated myself on my cleverness. Last week I was getting my things together after a long and frustrating day. I had gotten up at 3:15 a.m., arrived at the hospital at 4:30 a.m. to write notes on patients' progress after their surgery, and stood at drowsy inattention during a six-hour procedure at which I did not fall over onto the patient. I was standing in the back call room — the one with the bunk bed, piles of clothing, a box of neglected shoes and a general air of summer-camp disorder — ready to restore myself to everyday life, complete with wedding band, and go home. I opened up the Palm Pilot case, and, with a happy clink, the ring sprang free to find a new home. I haven't seen it since then.
Of course I got upset, like any normal person. But it's hard to stay annoyed about things you've lost when among the patients you see the next morning is Dolores, a woman who had a hysterectomy as a treatment for uterine cancer and (as a bonus) some of her very large stomach removed to make the operation easier. At 6 in the morning, awakened by a medical student's awkward questions, she was hardly even put out, and very happy with the belly button reconstructed for her by the surgeon. Here's to her new navel, and here's to whoever finds my wedding ring. May you use it on happy occasions.
Zackary Sholem Berger is a medical student, but someday (he hopes) he'll be a doctor. This series of columns traces his metamorphosis from one into the other. Send comments, complaints and lost-and-found notices to doctor at forward dot com. No medical advice given.
Medicine Mensch 5 is here, so you can continue your vicarious medical-school education. (Study hard, there'll be a test later.)
Update: 4, not 5. You haven't missed one.
At long last: I'm posting the whole thing below (I had to ask my Forward folks if it was okay first), and I'll post my other Medicine Mensch articles on my blog over the next couple of days.
MEDICINE MENSCH: Has Anyone Seen a Wedding Ring?
By Zackary Sholem Berger
April 1, 2005
In between patients, each room in the hospital has a life of its own: The operating theater is prepped for another run; the delivery room is ready for another baby to come down the pike. Everything's sterilized and rearranged. While the attendants and residents wolf down their cheeseburgers, a medical student (that's me) retreats to the residents' call room to make quick work of his dependable cheese sandwiches and raisins. ("Oh!" a resident says admiringly. "You're so healthy!" "No," I respond. "I'm kosher.")
The call room is a place that many patients wouldn't want to see, since its workaday normality might disappoint those who expect their doctors to be something other than run of the mill. Imagine your break room at work, but without the stern hand and refrigerator-clearing punctiliousness of an office manager. This room is furnished with chairs that also have served as footstools and as impromptu beds; a refrigerator higgledy-piggledy with old lunches, and a TV talking to itself. Off the main call room is the back room, with a bunk bed; piles of white medical jackets, coats and other clothing, and a box of shoes that hasn't been touched since the Ford administration. Project onto this backdrop the rhythms of any workday: petty frustrations and jealousies, hot- and cold-running gossip, and unavoidable tedium, and you can understand why "ER" never could be called "Call Room."
Last week I lost my wedding ring in the back room. It's probably still there.
It happened like this. I had a week of observing surgical procedures. Surgery, like a symphony orchestra, is fascinating in the abstract but puts me to sleep after the first 30 minutes. I strain to keep my eyes open; I think of chapters from the textbooks I'm studying; I say Psalms under my breath; I eat a good lunch and sleep right; all to no avail. Luckily, my head jerked up with a start just as I was about to fall, face first, into the instrument tray.
Observing procedures is a lot less boring when your hands are allowed into the surgical field. "This is the aorta," a surgeon said during one procedure, and I said to myself, "Put it away before something happens to it!" Nothing untoward happened, even though I was only 18 inches away — partially because I wasn't allowed near any of the knives. My job was to retract, to pull apart the edges of the incision to allow the surgeons to see as much as possible.
Even for this minimal participation I had to get ready like the high priest entering the Holy of Holies. Before I donned the surgical gown and the surgical nurse held open the gloves so that I could stick my hands down into them, I scrubbed up just so. First fingernails, then sides of fingers, then fingers, palms, backs of hands and arms. I was cleaner than I'd ever been in my life. This reminds me of washing hands before breaking bread, which is similarly governed by precise detail but for a very different purpose: not cleanliness, but sanctification through the remembrance of Temple purity. In both sorts of washing, extraneous objects must be removed from the hands (although, relying on some fairly obscure leniencies, I don't take off my ring before washing for bread). I took off my watch and stuck it in the pocket of my scrubs. The first time I ever scrubbed in to a surgery (a long three weeks ago), I forgot to take off my wedding ring. As I stuck my left hand through the sleeve of the surgery gown, ready to meet the glove midair, the nurse raised her eyebrows as she glimpsed the band on my finger. "Uh-unh," she said. I retreated to the sink and started over.
Before long, I had come up with a place to store my wedding ring before scrubbing up — my Palm Pilot case — and had congratulated myself on my cleverness. Last week I was getting my things together after a long and frustrating day. I had gotten up at 3:15 a.m., arrived at the hospital at 4:30 a.m. to write notes on patients' progress after their surgery, and stood at drowsy inattention during a six-hour procedure at which I did not fall over onto the patient. I was standing in the back call room — the one with the bunk bed, piles of clothing, a box of neglected shoes and a general air of summer-camp disorder — ready to restore myself to everyday life, complete with wedding band, and go home. I opened up the Palm Pilot case, and, with a happy clink, the ring sprang free to find a new home. I haven't seen it since then.
Of course I got upset, like any normal person. But it's hard to stay annoyed about things you've lost when among the patients you see the next morning is Dolores, a woman who had a hysterectomy as a treatment for uterine cancer and (as a bonus) some of her very large stomach removed to make the operation easier. At 6 in the morning, awakened by a medical student's awkward questions, she was hardly even put out, and very happy with the belly button reconstructed for her by the surgeon. Here's to her new navel, and here's to whoever finds my wedding ring. May you use it on happy occasions.
Zackary Sholem Berger is a medical student, but someday (he hopes) he'll be a doctor. This series of columns traces his metamorphosis from one into the other. Send comments, complaints and lost-and-found notices to doctor at forward dot com. No medical advice given.
3/20/05
Empire of the Bland
Certain restaurants are the bedrock of existence (Chennai Garden, Mendy's). Some restaurants are like old friends who you know won't write or call more than once a year -- and that's okay. Whenever you meet, you immediately pick up again where you left off as if no time had intervened; phone calls or e-mails would just get in the way. Such a restaurant was Gan Eden Glatt, an Uzbekistani place (I think; I'm not knowledgable in Central Asian cuisine, but I know what I like) on 74 W 47th St. Whenever I found myself nearby, either for reasons of jewelry or buying Chasidic newspapers, I would drop by for a plate of plov, some spicy soup, or a skewer of grilled meat. All ridiculously cheap, and served up with a Soviet-style, um, nonchalance: "You don't like it, find another restaurant.' Usually there was a group of guys in the corner dressed in sweatsuits, talking tough and looking nasty. I'm sure they were perfectly lawful gentlemen whose dress was only an ironic tip of the hat to the prevailing stereotype. Once I (accidentally) stepped on the foot of one of them, and had to quickly apologize because I wasn't packing any heat that day.
I was in the Diamond District the other day to replace some jewelry I had lost (more on that in my next column), and I decided to satisfy my need for non-humanely slaughtered, kosher meat. I walked up the two flights of stairs and I stopped stock still at what I saw on the door:
Dougie's Express.
Now, you might know Dougie's on the Upper West Side. I'm probably one of about six or seven people on the planet who find it a somewhat unappetizing -- okay, gross -- testament to Orthopop* conspicuous consumption. But it serves a purpose. Then Dougie's opened a dairy place next door. Two is maybe one too many, but stil not out of the ordinary. This Dougie's Express, this extra slice of white bread added to a tasteless table of kosher alternatives in the city, is just too much. I (should have) immediately ripped a hole in my lapel and sat down on the floor, wailing and lamenting.
*Orthopop: Orthodox pop culture. I'm trying to find a good term for it. I know "Orthopop" sounds like it means pop music, though, so if anyone can figure out another good word -- or if there's one already I'm ignorant of -- speak up!
Certain restaurants are the bedrock of existence (Chennai Garden, Mendy's). Some restaurants are like old friends who you know won't write or call more than once a year -- and that's okay. Whenever you meet, you immediately pick up again where you left off as if no time had intervened; phone calls or e-mails would just get in the way. Such a restaurant was Gan Eden Glatt, an Uzbekistani place (I think; I'm not knowledgable in Central Asian cuisine, but I know what I like) on 74 W 47th St. Whenever I found myself nearby, either for reasons of jewelry or buying Chasidic newspapers, I would drop by for a plate of plov, some spicy soup, or a skewer of grilled meat. All ridiculously cheap, and served up with a Soviet-style, um, nonchalance: "You don't like it, find another restaurant.' Usually there was a group of guys in the corner dressed in sweatsuits, talking tough and looking nasty. I'm sure they were perfectly lawful gentlemen whose dress was only an ironic tip of the hat to the prevailing stereotype. Once I (accidentally) stepped on the foot of one of them, and had to quickly apologize because I wasn't packing any heat that day.
I was in the Diamond District the other day to replace some jewelry I had lost (more on that in my next column), and I decided to satisfy my need for non-humanely slaughtered, kosher meat. I walked up the two flights of stairs and I stopped stock still at what I saw on the door:
Dougie's Express.
Now, you might know Dougie's on the Upper West Side. I'm probably one of about six or seven people on the planet who find it a somewhat unappetizing -- okay, gross -- testament to Orthopop* conspicuous consumption. But it serves a purpose. Then Dougie's opened a dairy place next door. Two is maybe one too many, but stil not out of the ordinary. This Dougie's Express, this extra slice of white bread added to a tasteless table of kosher alternatives in the city, is just too much. I (should have) immediately ripped a hole in my lapel and sat down on the floor, wailing and lamenting.
*Orthopop: Orthodox pop culture. I'm trying to find a good term for it. I know "Orthopop" sounds like it means pop music, though, so if anyone can figure out another good word -- or if there's one already I'm ignorant of -- speak up!
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