Notes in the Margin - 5 November 2024
Advice from a Death Expert, High Conflict, Stories, and More
Notes from a Family Meeting is a newsletter where I hope to join the curious conversations that hang about the intersections of health and the human condition. Poems and medical journals alike will join us in our explorations. If you want to come along with me, subscribe and every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox.
Every so often, I’ll share things I’ve been reading with a few words of mine scribbled in the margins. If you have something to share, please do! The comment section is open.
“Horrifying” mistake to take organs from a living person was averted, witnesses say
Depending on who you listen to in this story, I’m not sure if what was avoided was a mistake or a horrific evil, as it sounds like the surgical team was being strongly urged to proceed with the organ retrieval despite signs of life. I agree with Truog, cited in the article, that incidents like this are probably extremely rare. However, what isn’t rare is the fervor of transplant medicine to find more organs - both to save more lives and to push the limits of the field for the sake of scientific inquiry and for the sake of money.
I’m a death expert. I designed eight questions to help you think about dying.
Joanna Ebenstein is a self-professed materialist. That doesn’t mean the existential challenge of contending with her own mortality goes away, though. Her project is a noble one, although to suggest that science can be a worldview is a bit like taking on a shovel or the smartphone as a worldview. There’s just not enough there for a worldview. Because of a lack of spiritual belief, she and others who would adopt a scientistic worldview have at least one major challenge before them: “This means that many of us are, whether we like it or not, under an obligation to develop our own belief and understanding or, as Carl Jung would say, our own personal myth.” This is a bigger problem than it might seem at first blush because contending with existential questions entirely on your own is not only difficult, it’s probably impossible. As Stephen Jenkinson wrote, we all die the death of the culture. That is, we die the death our culture gives us. So it is with all our existential tasks: we’re going to catch unexamined things from our culture, and to constantly re-examine them for our own individual appropriation, making it more of a project than a life, is existentially exhausting.
L.M. Sacasas on Ivan Illich, Technology, and Human Flourishing
joins the Lost Prophets podcast to have an incisive conversation about technology in modern life.From High Conflict to Good Conflict
interviews Amanda Ripley, co-founder of Good Conflict and author of High Conflict. Navigating conflict has been a part of my job as a physician that I felt was kept secret until I was actually in the midst of it. I don’t think I had any courses on it in medical school or residency, and even in hospice and palliative care fellowship it’s only obliquely addressed by way of serious illness communication training. Even then, that’s focused on patients - how do you deal with conflict among colleagues? Here’s a resource that helps us do just that.Alan Jacobs writes about the importance of understanding the context of inspirational quotes. In this case, it’s Joan Didion’s, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” It turns out this is less inspirational and more despairing once you gather the context. Story is a tool we use to fight back chaos. What happens to a society where narratives we once held dear unravel? People grasp for straws - conspiracies, or cobbled-together traditions, or simply the hedonistic, clarifying promises of technology. Jacobs doesn’t conclude this, but it might do us good to show each other a little grace as we each hold our stories like candles against the wind.
From the Archives
Here's something, only a little dusty, that new readers may not have seen.
If the goals of medical care are to help people live longer, to help them do something important with their bodies, and to help assuage some symptom, then what about the growing trend of aiming at death? Is death a goal of care? Or can it be used as a means while aiming at assuaging symptoms? These are some of the most crucial questions medicine is now grappling with because they involve our deepest presuppositions and values about what it means to care for sick people.
Is Death a Goal of Care?
