Wit Is A Heart Of A Middle Aged College Professor, Vivian Bearing, With Stage Four Metastatic Ovarian

When reading through Audre’s experience of having to wait three weeks to figure out if she had cancer or not, the first time, she was struggling with the uncertainty of her life. Her mortality was put front and center and she had a lot of self-reflection during this time. In The Sick Wife by Jane Kenyon you can see an example of how uncertain life is and how quickly it can change. In The Sick Wife there was a wife who is not even fifty, yet they are not able to button a button. Even when diagnosed with cancer it is not just life and death that people are uncertain of, but also the quality of life after cancer.

I started my internship at Lopburi Cancer Hospital in Thailand with excitement and anxiety. “What stage is the cancer in?” I asked in an effort to leave a good impression of the attending physician as we rounded with patients. In my mind, the prognosis for cancer wasn’t a good one and making a patient comfortable was important. However, as I stood waiting on the answer to my question, which my attending had declined to

To begin, I will discuss how Bearing’s cancer and treatment generate pain that then leads to her salvation anxiety. Bearing first experiences physical pain which prompts her to seek a medical opinion. She describes this pain as “like a cramp, but not the same” (27). As it turns out, the pain she felt was ovarian cancer. After her diagnosis, Bearing chooses to undergo an experimental treatment. The medicine used produces nausea, vomiting, fever, and chills (31, 41, 47). After several rounds of chemotherapy, the chemicals kill all of Bearing’s white blood cells leading to her immune system being compromised and further subjection to illness (46-47). With extreme pain as a constant reminder of her death and what follows, it is no surprise Bearing also begins to suffer from salvation anxiety.

Getting prepared for death can be an exhausting experience for the patient and their family. It is very important that the patient not only knows what they want as far as their right to receive or reject treatment and medications or knowing whether they want to receive palliative care at home or in a hospital setting to include the advantages and disadvantages of each. The main focus of this paper is to give the reader an in depth look on how an end of life crisis affects a patient and their family. Ella is a breast cancer patient who just came out of remission and is at the end of her life.

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

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.

Pearson fixates her memoir on several different instances of medical mishaps that have happened in her career. For instance, she talks about the tragic death of her patient Mr. Rose. This patient provides Dr. Pearson with a life lesson that it is important to cherish the things you have then the things you wish you had. In this case, Dr. Pearson regrets cherishing the remaining time she had with Mr. Rose before he passes away. Another instance she learns a life lesson would be with her patient Elias, a young boy diagnosed with brain cancer. Even though Elias was slowly dying, his parents continued surgical procedures and heavily depended on the hospital staff to create a miracle. Dr. Pearson knew that Elias would not be able to recover, but she continued to assist through the surgeries as her “hands were tied”. Nevertheless, Dr. Pearson reflects that she could have put down her surgical tools and said no; instead, she participated in the surgeries. Later, Dr. Pearson realizes that her role and her identity as a doctor is to help her patients with their problems and to try to solve them as much as she can in a humane and respectable

A patient is a human being. Illness disturbs biological, social, psychological elements that make the patient human. It is not enough to centre and diagnoses and decisions on scientific data and empirical fact; medicine is about much more. The focus of this paper is to make the argument that the practice of medicine is a discipline that requires human empathy as well as scientific data and empirical fact to establish diagnoses with emphasis on five components of the physician-patient relationship: patient’s experience of illness, physician-patient communication, and proficiency of end of life care, medical ethics and spiritual growth. This position will be supported through the film “Wit (Nichols & Brokaw, 2002)” through the character Vivian Bearing 's revelation that illustrates a patient’s struggle with death and in the process exposes the distinction between medicine and science.

She mentions how her husband disregarded her illness, stating that “if a physician of high standing, and one 's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency - what is one to do?” (648). The doctor couldn’t see an illness without physical symptoms, but by telling everyone else that there isn’t really anything wrong, he neglects to acknowledge the way she feels by implying she can’t really be suffering if there’s no reason to suffer. In a way, he’s telling her how to feel, an action that’s both belittling and disempowering. He continues to impose his beliefs about her illness throughout the story, telling her “you really are bet¬ter, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better, I feel really much easier about you” (652) when she tries to open up to him regarding the way a lack of stimulus and the horrible yellow wallpaper around her is only making things worse; he goes on to tell her “can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?” (652), using his position as a doctor to invalidate the way she feels. The entire time, the narrator knows that her treatment isn’t right for her, writing “[I’m] absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again. Personally, I disagree

In the play “Wit”, written by Margaret Edson, the author includes many characters in her work that have their own distinct characteristics that make them unique and valuable to the play. Vivian Bearing, the main character in the play, has been diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer. Due to her diagnosis, she becomes part of a clinical trial for a new drug regimen to fight ovarian cancer. The doctors working with Vivian are very insensitive and lack compassion while interacting with her. One character in the play who displayed a great amount of compassion for Vivian was her primary nurse, Susie Monahan. Susie was the only staff member in the hospital who reached out to Vivian, was kind to her, and cared for wellbeing. She did whatever she could to make Vivian’s stay at the hospital as comfortable as possible. Vivian at first was taken by surprise and rejected

As the cause of a painful death for six hundred thousand people annually, cancer affects nearly everyone in some way. Oncologist Vincent T. DeVita Jr., M.D. shares his journey while on, “the front lines of medicine,” and ,”reveals why the war on cancer is winnable- and how we can get there,”(front cover). Most think they know of the hardships cancer patients face, however, DeVita reaches knew depths to further the understanding of the disease to his readers by incorporating vast amounts of pathos and logos. Through over fifty years of extraordinary work in oncology, DeVita shares personal relationships with patients of his who survived and those not as fortunate. Since the fifties, survival rates of this disease lower every year, though

As many patient´s illness beings to progress, many are left feeling “useless” as their health begins to deteriorate and they are unable to function as they used to. And from scheduled check-ups to surgeries, the hospital bill begins to rack up which may cause patients to feel like burdens to the family. According to a case study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a 56-year-old man with leukemia and his wife/caregiver were unemployed due to his condition and her efforts to care for him. She had many caregiving responsibilities such as “cleaning, driving, preparing meals, and coordinating medication, oxygen and other treatment-related activities”. From having no source of income, her finances were limited leading to her close watch on expenses. Meanwhile, as she focused on her husband’s health, she had failed to address her own health conditions. Lacking a support system, the intense and unpredictable future associated with shouldering the burden of her husband's outpatient care created a stressful atmosphere as she alternated her daily life schedule in order to meet his needs. In many instances of cancer, a patient's’ chances of becoming mentally and physically disabled increases. Resulting from such disabling illnesses often leaves the patient's feeling helpless as they begin to lose parts of their minds and bodies.

To begin with, I will look at what cancer is. I would like to look at cancer as a disease and the social determinants of this perspective. I would then like to investigate cancer as an illness and look at the narrative of this experience including its social determinants. Finally, I will address the differences and similarities between the two.

The physical examination conducted by Doctor Jason on Professor Vivian Bearing, while he expresses fascination to find the mass of cancer which will help him in the research and his reluctance to inform her about his findings, is unprofessional. He is enthralled by the molecular mechanism and metastasis of cancer cells, but is repulsed by a patient’s behavior and their sentiments. I found it revolting that he had to be reminded of appropriate bedside manner, without which, he would see only a