Re-humanizing Medical Treatment

By: Naomi Sharman

Observation, the long-standing basis of science, seems to be taking a backseat in today's medical community -- a change that is harming patients.

I was misdiagnosed in one of the best
hospitals in the country

I came home from a Christian proselyting mission to the East Coast when I could no longer walk well and had a collection of other severe symptoms.

I thought I was dying.

Before I came home, I was hospitalized in a Johns Hopkins satellite hospital. I was tested for multiple sclerosis, a brain tumor, and Lyme disease. After ruling out multiple sclerosis with the final MRI, the doctor started talking to me as if I were a kindergartner: "Can you come in for bi-weekly visits with a psychiatrist?" I could tell from her tone of voice that she wondered if a nut-job would know the meaning of bi-weekly.

Earthquake Dreams

Something Big: Humanity's Garbage
My sophomore year at BYU I was a custodian in the Harris Fine Arts Center, the music and arts building. One of my duties was to empty all the trash bins. We filled about 5 large trash bags every day. This amount of garbage overwhelmed me, especially when I thought about how that was only the waste for one building, in one university, in one city, in one state, etc.! There are so many people in the world! And they all create so much garbage! How do we possibly contain it all!?


Something Broken: My Concept of Time
I sit in my car outside the address pulled up on my phone. I contemplate driving away at the thought of my 45-minute-late entrance into the apartment, all conversation halted as the party pauses to collectively sneer at me with disdain. I meant to be 5, maybe 10 minutes late to my friend's bridal shower, an acceptable window, just to avoid being the first person there. But somehow, there I was, at 7:45, without even a paper-wrapped peace offering because I ordered through the Amazon registry. For probably the millionth time in my life, I ask myself, Why am I like this? I sigh, slump out of the car, and shuffle like a worm to the front door.

Something Artistic or Man-Made: Pirates
It's 2009 and I'm spending a week at my cousins' house in Holbrook, Arizona. It's a time-worn house amidst a vast span of dust, but that's part of its charm. The charm runs thin one night, though, when I lie in my cold sleeping bag, overcome with worry about my parents' growing disenchantment with one another, my cousin's disease, my fear to drink the mysterious Holbrook well-water. Shakily I stuff in my earbuds and roll my iPod nano's wheel to the soundtrack of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. A mist of cello and french horn dances down my spine, and somehow I once again believe in love, and hope, and safety.

Something Mysterious: Déjà-vu
I have a dream, or a daydream, or something: I'm on the phone with my friends Jordan and John, playing a game online, talking about John's new dog. Then the table and ground and blinds start shaking, and I panic, until I snap out of it. I comfort myself: Jordan and I haven't spoken in years, I don't even have that game downloaded anymore, and John doesn't have a dog—certainly there won't be an earthquake either. I forget about this, until much later I am actually in that phone call, playing that same game, and I remember the words we already exchanged in my "dream" as we say them again in real time. I panic, remembering the earthquake. It doesn't happen. This is more than remembering a similar past event; there is no way this could have happened before, and it was so specific. As always, I catch my breath, and try not to think about it too hard.