A Strange Relativity: Altered Time for Surgeon-Turned-Patient

[Music] clocks are now kind of irrelevant to me time we used to have kind of a linear progression feel to it now feels more like a [Music] space [Music] if you asked me when I was 17 you know what I'd be doing with my life I would have said I definitely be a writer for me literature was always a a powerful reflecting tool for thinking about life but found after I completed my undergraduate studies uh and for the first time really thought about what I was passionate about medicine was in fact the perfect place in the the life of a neurosurgery resident time is linked to progress and as the numbers on the clock increase so too should your progress towards some [Music] goal I first began noticing symptoms in my sixth year residency and so I ended up having a full body CT scan and you there were uh metastatic Legions kind all over the place obviously Lu D I were both very suspicious that I had some form of cancer but actually having the confirmation is still [Music] devastating and so we were in a hospital room and we just kind of laid there and cried a little bit and then called my parents my [Music] brothers after finish ing chemotherapy and coming out of the hospital and entering this recuperative phase and not working time is very different where I'm not thinking about how each 15 minutes is going to contribute to some greater productivity verb conjugation is particularly confusing for me for the verb to be I finished Neurosurgical training so I am a neurosurgeon I'm not practicing currently if I get healthier I plan on getting back into clinical medicine so in that sense I will be a neurosurgeon or I won't depending on how things go and so I don't really know what the correct tense to use is I am I was I will be I had been there's definitely a funny double sense I have at say clinic visits as a physician you're constantly concerned about how far behind you're getting and how many patients you have to see and the faster you can get through your appointments the better and so you know whenever I see a doctor there's always an awareness in my head that little clock in the back of their heads is ticking certainly medical training is very future oriented because it's all about delayed gratification and so you're always thinking about 5 years down the line what are you going to be doing 5 years down the line I don't know what I'll be doing I may be dead I may not be and so it's not all that useful to spend a lot of time thinking about the future Beyond [Music] lunch [Music] since Katie's birth my time with her has had a a very peculiar and free nature in all probability I won't live long enough for her to remember me or certainly not have any clear memory of me and so you know the time is just is what it is which is fun because she's a really good [Music] baby there is a disjunction in time between how I perceive time and how I perceive my daughter Katie's time because she's in this rapid phase of development whereas my sense of time is very static and so there is kind of a inherent tension between those things which you know sometimes when I'm reading a baby book or someone remarks kids grow up so quickly there's kind of a Pang because I'm not going to see most likely that growing up happen and the faster Katie grows up the the faster I'm not [Music] there [Music] at the same time every day is a exciting rewarding meaningful time to spend with [Music] her Pope is a very funny thing certainly as a doctor I felt it was very important and the way in which p patients come to understand and make meaning of their diseases is one of the pillars of of what matters about being a doctor and the way hope functions for me now as a patient it's a careful balance if you don't think about the bad case that ending is going to be very rough on you and your family but if you don't think about the good case you're going to miss an opportunity to really make the most out of out of your your life and time [Music] I met a traveler from an ancient land who said two vast and trunkless legs of Stone Stand in the desert near them on the sand half sunk a shattered Visage lies whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that it sculpture well those passions R which yet survive stamped on these life less things the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed and on the pedestal these words appear my name is ozim mandus King of Kings look on my Works ye Mighty and despair nothing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck boundless and bear theone L SS stretch far away [Music] the proceeding program is copyrighted by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr University please visit us at med.stanford.edu [Music]

Channel: Stanford

Views: 661,473

Keywords: Paul Kalanithi, doctor as patient, Terminal Illness (Cause Of Death), Time (Dimension), Lung Cancer (Disease Or Medical Condition), pulmonary carcinoma, small-cell lung carcinoma, non-small-cell lung carcinoma, Ozymandias (Poem), Neurosurgery (Medical Specialty), Stanford Medicine, Stanford University

Id: d5u753wQeyM

Length: 8min 39sec (519 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 20 2015