Reverend Sick

I used to work in cancer hospitals. One day I was passing by the outpatients’ department when the matron pulled me aside. She related how a new receptionist reported to work that day, and was registering a new patient. On the registration form there was a blank space asking for the oncologist’s name, and another blank space for the patient’s name. By mistake the new receptionist named the oncologist the patient. The oncologist went berserk, the matron exclaimed. “He’s so superstitious!” That was the amusement of the day.

I am a slow processor. It was only in recent years that I started to digest that little accent of the day in a different way. I started to see how I must be open to the possibility of being diagnosed with cancer. Without aversion. If I shut out that prospect and if I am closed to that possibility I can’t claim to have ever been in cancer service, even as to this day I continue handling manuscripts medical physicists submit to journals for publication. I defy all my activities—I cancel all my involvement both in the clinic and in research if I’m not open to the prospect of a similar diagnosis.

If we find the prospects of a role-reversal devastating, if we push back against vice-versa circumstances, if we break that symmetry between who’s giving and who’s receiving, if the engagement is one-way, I think we’ve got some homework to do. I think the homework has something to do with what Thich Nhat Hanh called practice. Also something to do with what Ignatius of Loyola called spiritual exercises. Advancing that piece of homework would be what someone who has lived a life and seen the world calls cultured. Good values usually works from all sides of the prism, which includes different traditions, religious and secular.

Healthcare professionals are no superior to patients. Volunteers are no superior to clients. Ministers are no superior to the administered.