The question of who the human body belongs to is one that has been debated in many different circumstances. This question comes up when evaluating the doctor-patient relationship, as well as in issues of rape, and in the debate of the legality of abortion. There is always a factor of a power struggle that goes into the discussion of who someone’s body belongs to. When discussing this issue in his writing, “Whose Body is it Anyway?”, Atul Gawande brings up the struggle for power that exists between a doctor and their patient. Whereas it is the Doctor that knows more scientifically and has more medical experience with illnesses and their treatments, there is no way for a doctor to effectively quantify someone’s pain. In the past, as Gawande points out, doctors made decisions on behalf of patients, and their patients simply allowed it to occur because the doctor was the one that held the “professional opinion”. This opinion, though always considered professional, was sometimes just based on the personal ideals of the doctors. For example, doctors would deny patients of vasectomies if they were unmarried, married without children, or “too young”. When this concept slowly changed through the decades, and patients became an important factor in the decision of what kind of treatment they receive, the issue became even more complex. Doctors now must obey a patient’s requests, however, where is the line drawn? How does a doctor determine whether or not to listen to a patient when they know that the patient is making a decision that may be detrimental to them? In Gawande’s case, for example, the doctors knew that going through with surgery to remove their patient, Joseph Lazroff’s, tumor would result in shortening his already shortened lifespan, and also that there was a huge possibility that he would end up on life support, which is something that he, since the death of his wife, has always refused to go through. In this case, although the patient’s wishes were respected, and the surgery was done, I think there was also responsibility for the doctor to explain the circumstances in a better way. I think the prospect of death was so terrifying for the patient, that he forgot about all of the fears he had of having to be put on life support, and agreed to do anything that would give him even a slight chance of survival, which, in the end, resulted in a more painful, immediate death. Would his pain and suffering have been lessened if his doctors had more of an input in his decision? I think it’s important that a patient’s wishes always be respected. An important example would be the refusal of Jehovah’s witnesses to obtain blood transfusions, belief that should be, of course respected, but I believe that there is also a responsibility on the doctor to have some sort of input in the treatment, being that they are, ultimately, more knowledgeable in terms of the actual biological aspect of illness and disease.
The question of ownership of a body is the same one that comes up in terms of the legality of abortion. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y, Hours after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, stated, “Abortion bans aren’t just about controlling women’s bodies. They’re about controlling women’s sexuality. Owning women.” Ocasio-Cortez, as well as all other pro-choice supporters, argue that making abortion illegal is taking control of the bodies of women. It strips away their choice of how to handle their pregnancies, and thus, once again, brings up the question of “whose body is it anyway?” Although different from the circumstance under which the question was asked in the first place, abortion brings up the same ideas that Antoinette Cooper discusses in her Ted Talk, “Death by Chocolate Cyst: What If My Illness Had A Voice”. She speaks of the idea that the pain of women is ignored, and the pain of black people is legitimized because they are thought to experience less pain than other human beings. She had to beg to have doctors listen to her pain, which ended up being a giant tumor on her ovary. In the same way, in the argument against abortion, the opinions and wants of women are ignored, and ownership of their body is taken away from them. Their story is not co-owned by their audience, which is what Arthur Frank says happens in the case of all storytellers in, “The Wounded Storyteller,” yet their story is taken away from them and written by those making laws and regulations in order to take ownership of their body.
Narrative medicine brings into perspective the reality of how much medicine is not simply black and white. Medicine is about the doctor, the patient, the trust between them, the biases that are built into our society that make medicine a lot more subjective than it is meant to be, and the idea of ownership of the experience. Every week, each reading made it obvious how many biases we are part of without even realizing that we are. Research showing that third-year residency medical students genuinely believe that black people have thicker skin than other human beings just shows that we are taught biases without even realizing that we are. We make breast cancer about pink ribbons and teddy bears, we think that we can quantify pain on a scale, we label differently-abled people as “disabled”. We have constructed an idea of normalcy based on these biases and, unfortunately, medicine has been affected by it and has been so much more subjective than we ever meant for it to be. Many times we think that medicine is about biology class, about cells and body parts, organs and chemicals. In reality, what narrative medicine has taught me, is that medicine is about hearing the story of the wounded and the ill and seeing them as human beings. Medicine is not about race, sex, color, disability, or any other classifications that society has created. Medicine is about humanity and the idea that although we all have to die eventually, there are things that we can, as a society, do to lessen one’s pain, whether or be by prescribing medicine, or simply listening to someone’s narrative.
