23 yo White Female with chronic abdominal pain, insomina and an obession.
Published by Amy under General on September 18, 2008There is an ache in the pit of my stomach. Its familiar although not comforting. Its the sort of ache that wakes you from a really wonderful dream and you sit up in bed and wonder if holy snark I was supposed to be at work an hour ago. Then you look over at your alarm clock and see Oh Thank God its only 3Am I can sleep a little longer. But the thing is you don’t want to sleep anymore because of the ache and the adrenaline now flowing in your veins.
I get this ache when I see something that is frighteningly awesome and completely unavailable to people who really need it. It wakes me from my American, middle class, over-educated dream to the reality of oppression, poverty and injustice. I had this on Saturday at the free clinic with the little girl who needed intervention and parents couldn’t afford it. I had this ache on and off for the past month. Part of my pediatrics rotation is a community health project. Mine focuses on chronic illness and disability. I have visited special education classroom, an augmentative communication lab, home health visits for kids on vents and NICU follow up.
I can’t help but look at these kids and see faces (and some facies), glimpses of lost children who live a half a world away. I can’t help but compare. I can’t help but mourn the lost of so many who had thoughts, ideas, lives to share with the world. I can’t help but feel the wieght of the prejudice as I see what can happen in a world where it doesn’t exisits. I know that there is a lack of resources and I don’t expect American early intervention and rehab technology to translate perfectly into Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (or elsewehre for that matter). But of a lack of resources does not justify the horror of letting a child with a heart murmur (insert: Downs, CP, Not Cute (seriously), Sticklers, Clef Lip, Deaf, Club Feet) rot developmentally in a institution.
That horror is ever more acute and repugnant when contrasted with what could be, with what is in another world.
Its an ache thats not going away.
A Brief for the Defense
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
— Jack Gilbert
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