{"id":2208,"date":"2017-01-13T11:59:40","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T16:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/general-medicine\/?p=2208"},"modified":"2017-01-19T13:59:01","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T18:59:01","slug":"ganbare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/general-medicine\/index.php\/2017\/01\/ganbare\/","title":{"rendered":"Ganbare"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jamie<\/a>

Jamie Riches, DO, is a 2016-17 Chief Resident in Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cMay I never see in the patient anything but a fellow creature in pain.\u201d- The Oath of Maimonides<\/span><\/p>\n

I am not immune to the post-election frenzy. Never in my relatively short life, nor in my even shorter existence on social media, have I seen people so divided. Shortly after the president-elect was named, I found myself wondering, \u201cAre you one of us, or one of them?\u201d I had to sit myself down and ask what that even means\u2026 I am no party loyalist. I am an American. I voted for a candidate who I thought represented my fundamental values, and against a candidate who has incited a furor with which my values do not align. It occurred to me that most Americans have made the same decision, with varied outcomes. <\/span><\/p>\n

Spoiler alert: I didn\u2019t vote for Donald Trump. I spent a good few days wondering how anyone could. I stayed quiet\u00a0\u2014 a passive observer of Facebook and Twitter. I watched as documented hate crimes filled the news, as people\u2019s relationships became publicly strained. I told my dad that I was \u201cheartbroken\u201d after the election, and he said, \u201cWhy? I couldn\u2019t stand her.\u201d He was one of them. We quickly changed the subject. My dad is probably considered an \u201cuneducated white male,\u201d when it comes to polling stats and media representation. My father doesn\u2019t have a medical degree, or even a college degree, but he has a knowledge base and skill set that allowed him to perform a job that I am not capable of. He\u2019s a retired New York City firefighter, along with his brothers, his nephews, and my mother\u2019s cousins and their sons. He\u2019s a smart guy. They all are. They\u2019re good men. They do good work. I started to dissect the term \u201cuneducated\u201d and even become offended by it. I moved into a new apartment last week and hired a team of people to help me disassemble and move furniture. These were probably \u201cuneducated\u201d or \u201cworking class\u201d people, who again were able to do a job that I simply could not. Their education, their training, is different from mine. Their electoral decisions may (or may not) have been different from mine. We are people. We are Americans. I am part us and part them. <\/span><\/p>\n

As I frantically refreshed my Facebook feed, I continued to come across divisive language. The same people who think Matt Maloney has no right to ask his employees to resign if they disagree with his criticism of the president-elect think it\u2019s OK to ask people to leave the country if they disagree with their religious views and vice versa. I thought about my own workplace and what it would mean to allow such discrimination (on either end of the political spectrum) to prevail. <\/span><\/p>\n

I work at a major cancer center with more than 10,000 employees. My colleagues, of all races, religions, nationalities, genders, sexual orientations, political affiliations, all come together day after day for the same cause: to conquer cancer. Period. Patients come from all over the world to be seen by experts in their disease. We do not ask, \u201cTo whom do you pray?\u201d as a part of the history and physical. We do not ask, \u201cTo which government are you loyal?\u201d We treat, we care for, we heal. We fight for our patients\u2019 dignity throughout their illnesses and at the end of their lives. We stand with them and their families. We share their hopes and their fears. Their successes are ours to celebrate and their failures are ours to grieve. <\/span><\/p>\n

People in the world are scared right now. Those who are scared now felt safer on November 7th, and those who were scared on November 7th feel safer now. Fellow creatures in pain. As I was driving to work the other day and quite honestly, musing on the election results, I noticed a sign that said, \u201cHill blocks view.\u201d Therein lies the metaphor: We see the worst parts of ourselves when our security and our stability is threatened. I\u2019ve experienced this first-hand. We, as physicians, preside over what are often the most terrifying moments of people\u2019s lives. Our job is to understand and clarify those fears and\u00a0to mitigate any exacerbating factors. We do not dismiss them as fabricated or unfounded. What would it look like if we did? What if societally, we adopted this principle of \u201cselective tolerance\u201d and how would it affect our immunity?<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Midwest<\/a>

Painting by Howard Horii<\/p><\/div>\n

My grandfather-in-law, a Japanese-American (who had never even visited Japan), spent a number of his formative years interned in a camp after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Could this happen again in our lifetime? I don\u2019t know. Could my [same-sex] marriage be federally nullified? I don’t know. Am I overreacting? I don\u2019t know, but the line between simply doing what is right and standing up for what is right has become more prominent. Grandpa Horii died at 92 years old, a successful architect, professor and artist, father, grandfather and husband, whose resilience and determination were nothing short of awe-inspiring.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a big-picture thinker. I\u2019m moved by systemic reform. I\u2019ve been unable to wrap my head around the big picture lately, so I\u2019m attempting to train myself to see smaller-scale\u2026 daily human interactions. My family, my profession, not my politics.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"water<\/a>

Painting by Howard Horii<\/p><\/div>\n

In his incredibly moving <\/span>New Yorker <\/span><\/i>piece called \u201cHealth Of The Nation<\/a>,\u201d Atul Gawande writes, \u201cOur hospitals and schools didn\u2019t suddenly have Reaganite values in the eighties, or Clintonian ones in the nineties. They have evolved their own ethics, in keeping with American ideals…The helping professions will stand by their norms… Our fundamental values \u2014 values such as decency, reason, and compassion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ganbare is a Japanese term of encouragement, often likened to the American expression, \u201cHang in there!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the fight to preserve decency, reason and compassion, \u201cganbare,\u201d my friends. <\/span>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMay I never see in the patient anything but a fellow creature in pain.\u201d- The Oath of Maimonides I am not immune to the post-election frenzy. Never in my relatively short life, nor in my even shorter existence on social media, have I seen people so divided. 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