Illness and Caring for the Sick

I want to devote the following columns to illness and caring for the sick. We consider good health to be our birthright. Therefore, we do not think much about being sick until we get sick or are ill. We assume that it is normal to be in 100% good health. The normal state of human being is being fully and totally able bodied. We are not supposed to live with temporary or permanent disability. We should be able to avoid or remove chronic illness. How we imagine ourselves to be personally and how we perceive our embodied selves socially colors how we actually are and really feel when we are well and when we are ill.

I became aware of this through one of my relatives.. His comment about illness has left an indelible impression on me. He said, "if you're sick, see a doc who will fix you up and, if necessary, replace the parts." This relative thought about his body in the same way he thought about his car. He dutifully changed the oil and the filter every 3,000 miles. He dutifully saw the doctor whenever there was an ache, a pain, or a need to get a clean bill of health. Oddly enough, this relative worked very hard, lived to a very old age, and functioned quite well. He did all this while living with a congenital disability.

We live our faith in a mechanized age. Its metaphors control our imagination and its mentality overwhelms our humanity. Until recently homo technicus expected that the customer would be able to purchase only perfect merchandise. We disdain defective stuff. Just in case, we bought things with a lifetime guarantee. But we latter day consumers are stuck with repairing parts. We now buy with the expectation that we will have to replace what is obsolescent.

Late modern societies carry this thinking into health care. We expect health care providers to produce, to get results. We shop around for a second, third, even fourth opinion. Health care centers (the hospital no longer luxuriates us with hospitality) satisfy the demands of health consumers. There are surely benefits to modern technology and medicine. Highly skilled people can do sophisticated surgeries and can enable people to live a wonderful, long, and quality life. For this we give thanks to dedicated doctors, nurses, researchers, and technicians.

My quarrel is not with human skills or services. My plaint is with a societal mindset that envisions our humanity primarily or solely in mechanical images. We are not machines. We are not cars in search of body arts. Our bodies are not toasters. Our humanity is not a microwave in search of right time settings. We cannot make doctors and other health care professionals into magicians. We cannot turn to a surgeon and say, "Give me Christi Brinkley's lips." We cannot turn to a trainer and say, "Give me Michael Jordan's biceps." Our embodied selves are not the bodies that our culture desires and our magazines advertise. Our beauty and worth should be based on much more than a tummy tuck, a nose job, or hair replacement. We are made in the divine image and likeness.