THANKS FOR LISTENING

By Akira Kuriyama
(Age 22, Japan)

"Thanks for listening, Akira." My friends often tell me this. Maybe listening is one of my best qualities. By listening, I can help others, even if I am only helping to lighten their burden by sharing it with them for a short time. As I get older, I'm finding that listening is more and more important in my studies and in the work I have chosen to do. As a medical student, listening to my patients talk about their symptoms, their pain and their feelings is really important.

I've been a patient myself for 22 years. I have suffered from atopic dermatitis since I was born. As you know, this disease makes your skin red and itchy. Every time I walk in town, I feel the curious eyes of people looking as if to see something strange. Every time I wash my face, I avoid looking in the mirror because there is a red face I don't want to see. Every time I see friends running on the field, I long for the feeling of sweat dripping down my face, too. Why did this happen to me? Why only me among my friends? I've asked myself these questions countless times. But nobody has given me an answer. Eventually I came to hate my fate, wondering how God could continue to let me suffer from this incurable disease.

Through this very personal experience with disease, I've come to realize the depth of sadness and loneliness with which patients must cope. Of course, they hope to be cured from whatever ails them, but what they really all desire is an end to their sorrow and solitude. They neither need nor want empty sympathetic words. All they need is someone who would just listen to and empathize with them. As for me, I was happy to have my mother, who also suffers from this. She would sit beside me, put a hand on my itchy arm and say, "I know how hard it is for you, because I have the same disease." Her empathy was a soothing salve on my skin. My mother's quiet observation and empathy have done more for me than most doctors' superficial observations, delegated testing and quickly written prescriptions for the latest "cure". The patient doesn't only need a physical symptom treated but also an empathy-filled recognition of their emotional reaction to this symptom.
Medicine is a humanitarian profession calling for the caring of both the body and the mind of suffering patients. But nowadays doctors tend to be mostly technique and technically-orientated. I myself see this problem in my medical studies. I've learned techniques like CT and MRI, but NEVER any techniques to recognize and relieve the patients of their mental anguish. CT and MRI can show us inside the structures of the brain but it can't reveal what the patient is thinking.

The Hippocratic Oath from 400 B.C affirms, "Warmth, sympathy and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug." But The ‘Hypocritical' Oath from 2004 A.D. would seem to be its inverse: "The surgeon's knife and the chemists' drug outweigh warmth, sympathy and understanding." Many doctors seem to have sworn to this second oath, putting all their trust in science and neglecting ordinary human empathy. The development of medical technology empowers us to detect and cure diseases that we were powerless against only a few decades ago. But modern medicine is not omnipotent; it cannot guarantee us lifelong health. Cancer, AIDS, and other chronic diseases are still with us. Modern medicine cannot completely cure and is sometimes powerless in the face of these diseases. In such cases, when all other avenues of treatment have been exhausted, the only left effective treatment left is "listening and understanding" with empathy, which doctors seem to be ill-equipped to handle. In fact, this is the crux of the argument. They are ill-equipped to deal with it precisely because they cannot depend on "equipment". They haven't been trained to deal with a problem without depending on technology.

As humans we will all experience disease, pain and eventually death. There must be a recognition of this commonality in medical treatment. Over the last few years, I've come to realize that my "listening" is one of the vital skills making up my diagnostic abilities. Gradually, I am finding that I have the ability to listen to and understand the emotion of suffering patients. This is giving me growing confidence in my selection of treatments because I have really listened and understood my patients' needs.

I'd like to give Mother Teresa the last word. "If you have a sick or lonely person at home, be there. Maybe just to hold a hand, maybe just to give a smile, that is the greatest, the most beautiful work."

Thank you for listening.