One thing that struck me about the novel (besides recognizing the parts with the airplane and simulation that we had discussed before in class) was Jack’s interaction with the doctors in the novel. He advises taking Wilder to the doctor when he and Babette cannot stop the child from crying, justifying the need for a doctor because crying is a basic human condition. The suggestion of just going to the doctor escalates the crying problem into a crisis. Doctors seem to have a power element for both Jack and Babette, make them more aware of their behavior and more nervous about it. Doctors have the power to proclaim what causes death, and to delay death. A doctor determines that Gladys Treadwell “died of lingering dread” after wandering the mall for four days with her brother. This does not seem to be a true medical cause, but because it is a doctor’s diagnosis, it is not questioned. Jack wants doctors to solve the problem of explaining his wife’s mystery drug and also helping him cure his own fear of death. The doctors also have the ability to see Jack as “the sum total of [his] data,” because his information is stored in a computer and can be analyzed impersonally to give him the rating of “pulsing stars,” meaning he is going to die, but no one will give him more information than that. Computers, not humans, take responsibility for determining Jack’s outcome; it is left to humans to deliver the news to him. Jack’s regular visits to the doctor make him a “professional patient” but the visits do not seem scientific as much as a dialogue in which little information is revealed. The doctor says that Jack has high potassium levels, but he won’t specify whether this is good or bad but also won’t explain some of the options for the good (the blood sample could have been hemolyzed) or bad (indication of kidney failure). By not giving Jack information about his condition, he enables his fear of death to continue, for Jack has no control over it. When Jack goes to the clinic for further evaluation, he wants to know that the typical response of the other patients is, then gives the same answer. He makes himself fit the mold so that he can identify with other people, even if (or especially because) that puts him at risk for death. By giving answers based on what the printout says about him, he validates the conglomeration of data the doctors are judging him by. It seems to me that Jack likes the drama of knowing that death is going to come sooner than he had thought, even though the doctors don’t know what the effects of the toxic exposure are. It gives him meaning as a regular person, not a Hitler scholar who creates a persona to be himself, but an unfortunate victim who has had contact with the unknown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One thing that struck me about the novel (besides recognizing the parts with the airplane and simulation that we had discussed before in class) was Jack’s interaction with the doctors in the novel. He advises taking Wilder to the doctor when he and Babette cannot stop the child from crying, justifying the need for a … Continue reading Patient-doctor relationships<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}