Film Summary: 'Wit'

In Bed Number Ten, Sue Baier shares her first-hand account of both her painful experiences and her lengthy recovery in the ICU setting. She was struck with the disabling effects of Guillain-Barre syndrome which resulted in her being admitted into an Intensive Care Unit. While there, her communication and mobility was very limited and made it very difficult for many of the staff to passionately and effectively take care of her. She describes multiple accounts of nurses and staff who were task oriented and failed to meet her physical and emotion needs. Her sense of isolation and inhumane treatment transpires from the pages to the heart of the reader. However, in the book, we observe a few staff that were sensitive to her condition and took care of her the way a person should be taken care of. Sue’s hardship and experience is one of perseverance in her time in the ICU and gives an outlook of how to be sensitive to critical care patients, as it should be.

Vivian’s physical suffering is caused by her illness, which slowly deteriorates her identity. In W;t, Vivian’s physical character is enhanced by her power through Language and it’s discourse. As time progresses, cancer slowly cause’s her to suffer physically, and therefore inverts her powerful identity. On page 25, Vivian’s body is clinically deconstructed, the

Vivian shows her relation to Donne rather early on in the play, however. As she observes the doctors and physicians examining her, she makes a connection between the manner in which they study her body and the manner in which she studies poetry. She refers to the doctors’ rounds of examining when she states, “In Grand Rounds, they read me like a book. Once I did the teaching, now I am taught” (Edson 32). This is Vivian’s first step towards her ultimate realization. In Donne’s work, “Hymn to God, My God, in my Sickness,” more connections can be made between Vivian and Donne’s speaker. Just like the speaker in the poem, Vivian sees her body as the doctors’ map to study. “…my physicians..cosmographers, and I their map, who lie flat on this bed” (Donne lines 1-2).

Throughout the entire play, Vivian dissects the medical banter between Dr. Kelekian and Jason. By doing so, Vivian is able to create meaning behind the language that Kelekian and Jason uses at her. This is first seen with Vivian’s aside that occurs simultaneously with Kelekian’s explanation of her cancer. Vivian decides that she “must read something about cancer. Must get some books, articles” (page 8). She continues on to dissecting medical terms with the definition of each component of the word. This can be seen with the word antineoplastic. “Anti: against. Neo: new. Plastic. To mold. Sharpening. Antineoplastic. Against new sharpening” (page 9). Words help fuel her life. By understanding the words used to describe her, Vivian could stand tall against her treatment. Whenever she didn’t know a word she would “look them up. It has always been my custom to treat words with respect. I can recall the time-the very hour to

The movie “Wit” is a great educational tool for healthcare professionals in terms of dealing with terminally ill patients. It teaches that nurses and medical professionals should always remember that their patients are not a case nor illness nor experiment but rather human beings with souls and pains. Palliative care is one of the most disputed issues of worldwide importance. While bureaucrats in different countries are making laws on the use of palliative drugs, patients with excruciating pains learn how to “take deep breaths and be strong” (Nichols & Brokaw, 2001). That is what nurse Susie Monahan from “Wit” advises her dying patient Vivian Bearing suffering from unbearable pains due to stage IV ovarian cancer after eight painful rounds

At the opening of the play, we learn that Vivian Bearing has been diagnosed with a terminal cancer. As she was chatting with a nurse about her illness, she realized that death could be here sooner rather than later. Vivian starts looking back on her life, and what she wishes she could have changed. As a college professor she took up studying and analyzing plays, particularly John Donne, and doesn’t seem to care all that much about her students. As the play goes on, kindness starts to become an attribute that Vivian craves more and more.

All medical providers have a duty to protect the health and dignity of their patients. Even if that is the intention of the provider, specific ethical dilemmas in healthcare may arise making it difficult for the provider to make an ethically appropriate choice. Wit, directed by Mike Nichols, takes the viewer through the healthcare of Dr. Vivian Bearing, an English professor, as she embarks on an eight-month experimental treatment to hopefully cure her stage IV ovarian cancer. As Dr. Bearing undergoes this treatment, ethical issues arise regarding her healthcare that compromises her well-being and dignity. George D. Pozgar points out that ethics is concerned with values relating to human conduct that focuses on the rightness and wrongness of actions, as well as the goodness and badness of motives and ends.1 It is clear in the film that the actions taken by the medical providers, violated ethical principles within the scope of health care such as patient dignity and respect, patient autonomy, and consent to research/treatment.

After a week working in the hospital, I went on home visits with nurses, doctors, nutritionists, psychologists and a monk. The first patient lives in a shabby wooden house. A great contrast could be seen between the room that the patient lives in and the rest of the house. “The patient is diagnosed with prostate cancer with bone metastasis. The room is specially built for him by the hospital and his family. He won’t live long.” A nurse told me. On another visit, I met a man with esophagus cancer.

The film WIT, produced by Simon Bosanquet, clearly defines poor bedside manner in all levels of medicine, from the radiologist who performed the x-ray to the physicians in charge of the patient’s care. The film is based on a seventeenth century poet professor, Vivian Bearing, who gets diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer that has already metastasized. Professor Bearing goes through intense series of experimental chemotherapy agents that are detrimental to her health, yet everyone in the medical team seems to ask the question, “how are you feeling today?” In reality no one seems to really show true interest to what she is going through. The film portrays a lack of empathy for Professor Bearing, giving a sense of loneliness and hopelessness. The professors’ rights seem to be taken from her and the medical professional fail to treat her with the dignity and respect she deserves.

Although Vivian has used her intellect and her dry wit as a shield to carry her through life, these are of little value in the face of death. She sees her reliance to concepts and her apathy to others mirrored in the actions of Jason Posher an ambitious clinical fellow working under Dr. Kelekian. He comes in and out of the movie and seems to treat Vivian as “un-human.” Throughout the whole movie he asks her “how are you feeling today Vivian,” but the way he says it is so unfeeling and cold. At the end of the movie when she is actually dead he asks, it just shows how much doctors really do not have any attachment what so ever to patients in today’s medical model.

Bearing, a hard teacher of poetry. Vivian could see herself in Kelekian. In their separate fields they both held doctorates. But in each profession there are words that one outside of the field would believe that their meaning of particular words mean something different. The passage, “Insidious means undetectable at an-….Insidious means treacherous” (Edson, 8) Dr. Bearing interrupts Dr. Kelekian because she is used to being around her students, and being known as the one who knows everything. Which is also what she believes to be to in everything. Here, she is still seen as the ‘teacher’ or the one who has more influence and power over the other in this particular moment in the play. The go back and forth on the idea about learning as much as you can, and in the end Vivian wins out. As the chapter progresses we can see Vivian explaining her position and why people should look up to her. “I am, after all, a scholar of Donne’s Holy Sonnets….And I know for a fact that I am tough. A demanding professor. Uncompromising. Never one to turn down a challenge…” (12). This quote sets up the idea that Vivian, as just coming into the hospital, still has the authority and influence over others. She still holds the knowledge above everything else, which is also all that she

Initially, the audience see Vivian as a person who is very uncompromising. The students she taught knew her as harsh, making her an unfavorable teacher. She appeared to not care about the students she taught, and her coldheartedness was reflected in her actions, an example being when one of her students tried to receive an extension on a paper because of the recent death of her grandmother, at this request Vivian concluded “ Do what you will, but the paper is due when it is due.” This impenetrable exterior that Vivian places upon herself discourages the formation of beneficial relationships from being formed in her

Vivian recalls undergoing tests by various medical technicians and being the subject of grand rounds. She remembers sharing a love of language and books with her father. She flashes back to her experiences as a student of Dr E. M. Ashford, an expert on John Donne. Bearing later finds herself under the care of Dr Jason Posner, an oncology research fellow who has taken her class on John Donne. At the hospital, she recognizes that doctors are interested in her for her research value and, like her, tend to ignore humanity in favor of knowledge. Gradually, she realizes that she would prefer kindness to

Lily had only recently began dialysis treatment, and her unwillingness to proceed with treatment would have resulted in her care becoming palliative, something the healthcare professional did not think was suitable at this point in her illness trajectory. Tait (2012) points out that a critically ill patient experiences not only physiological trauma, but also psychological trauma. This psychological trauma that can be experienced after critical care has been addressed by the National Outreach Forum (2003) who suggested that services should be developed to address the implications of critical illness. Samuelson (2011) suggests that any negative emotions associated with critical care can be counterbalanced with memories that reinforce safety, control and trust. This is a useful point to consider in Lily case, who fortunately had the time to talk through her worries concerning continual dialysis treatment with the staff on the ward, who were able to convince her she was in the safest possible hands and that continuing her dialysis treatment would be the best option.

Their differences created the conflicts between them. John, as a physician, is very practical and rationalistic. He disregards the existence of anything that cannot be seen or felt and therefore does not believe that his wife was ill even though through reading her thoughts and emotions it was clear that she was suffering severely. The woman on the other hand, is very imaginative and sensitive. John believes that all his wife needs is rest and therefore her treatment is that she does no work and especially no writing. He felt that her condition would be made worst if she does any form of work or writing. The woman strongly disagrees with John on the type of treatment that he has suggested. She thinks that having daily activities, freedom, and interesting work would help her condition and so she starts to create secret journal in an attempt to alleviate her mind and to prevent her illness from getting the best of her. John continuously suppresses her thoughts, feelings and concerns about her illness which portrays him in a sense as a “villain”. He does not provide her with the space or opportunity to try other alternatives other than the “rest cure” so that she might overcome her illness. The woman wants to write about her feelings and her conditions but she is not allowed and so she has to struggle to hide her writings from John and his sister. The fact that she cannot freely write and openly express her feelings to John strains her and drains