#bodyby

Why isn't more done to ensure injections aren't painful (esp. for children)? That something necessary could also be traumatic would imply a failure to manage that would cause someone who hasn't managed that (like most in medicine) to be considered responsible for the long-term negative health impacts, which idea would conflict with the narcissism of people in health (as they develop as a defence against the suffering of being in the profession), and so it's dismissed (that it's a lie when someone says 'this won't hurt' is penny-wise and pound-foolish, damaging every therapeutic relationship long-term to avoid tension during the first injection), in much the same way that, for a Spartiate, noticing how the ritual murder they did to become one was just terrorism would collapse their sense of themselves, moving their mind out-of-distribution for ego-construction (into psychosis). This is a less harmonic state than having a self-object to coordinate around, and so it's avoided if possible, usually.

I do not like the way children with cancer are described as brave. I usually understand it to be a form of pressure on the children involved, to make it less difficult for the parents to manage their own distress, and to be able to blame the child for their death, should they react to the situation with regular-style distress. You see that last one a lot in adults with cancer, as well: 'they didn't keep a positive attitude to their treatment! Really, they were just asking for it: didn't they know the cheerful have better outcomes?'

Relevant:

"

She was being poisoned by people with smiles on their faces.

She hated those smiles. Fake. Pretending to be happy, pretending to be cheerful. But she’d spent enough time here to know that her friends and family would be crying the second they thought they were out of earshot. The strangers had a weariness that spoke to the inevitable. The older they were, the more reality seemed to weigh on them.

Somewhere along the line, they had stopped telling her that the chemotherapy would make her better. The smiles had become even more strained. There was more emphasis on making her comfortable. Less explanation of what was going on.

So when her mother came in to check on her, bringing the mug of heated chicken broth, she pretended to be asleep. She hated herself for it, but she couldn’t stand the lies, the fakeness.

If it wouldn’t have given her away, she would have winced as her mother sat down by her bedside. It meant she might be staying a while.

“Becca,” her mother murmured from behind her. “You awake?”

She didn’t respond, keeping her breathing steady. She tried to breathe through her nose, so the sores that filled her mouth wouldn’t sing with pain at the contact with the air.

Her mother ran one hand over her head. Her hair was mostly gone, and the contact was uncomfortable to the point that it was almost painful.

“You’ve been so brave,” her mom whispered, so quiet she was barely audible.

I’m not brave. Not at all. I’m terrified. I’m so frustrated I could scream. But she couldn’t. Everyone had painted her as being so courageous, so noble and peaceful in the face of the months of treatment. But it was a facade, and she’d passed the point of no return. It was too late to break composure, too late to stop making bad jokes, faking smiles of her own. She couldn’t complain or use her mother’s shoulder to cry on because everyone would fall apart if she did.

She was their support.

and it's not as though this is escapable: even 'good' doctors seem incapable of grasping that the reason the profession's widely disliked is exactly that attitude (among other things)

is there a single person with something other than 'broken leg' who couldn't report medical professionals making stupid errors out of arrogance? maybe 1/3 of the time do they actually do their jobs without my having to bite my tongue and pretend like they're anything but a roadblock in the process of my achieving better health (as pointing out how they've misinterpreted what they're talking about or apparently stopped learning new things in 2005 doesn't often go well: doctors enjoy harming patients as punishment for the temerity of being even mildly competent)