from the NY Times OPED by VALERIE GRIBBEN
TODAY, after four arduous years of examinations, graduating medical doctors will report to their residency programs. Armed with stethoscopes and scalpels, they’re preparing to lead the charge against disease in its ravaging, chimerical forms. They carry with them the classic tomes: Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine and Gray’s Anatomy. But I have an unlikely addition for their mental rucksacks: “Grimm’s Fairy Tales.”…. MY textbooks and articles let me down. They couldn’t tell me why her adult children had been neglecting her and denying her food. They gave no answers to the mysteries behind the physical symptoms, or how to process them.
In pediatrics, my team discovered long, thin scratches on a child’s back — made by metal clothes hangers that someone had dug into her skin and pulled.
In physical medicine and rehabilitation, we supervised occupational therapy for a 10-year-old who’d shot himself in the head. He shrugged when we asked why: “I dunno.”
In neurology, a stroke patient went off life support on his daughter’s birthday, and the sound of her convulsive weeping went up and down the hallways, knocking against other patients’ doors.
In internal medicine, I cared for a woman who had been so badly beaten by her late husband that her eyes pointed in different directions. She came in for trouble swallowing, and I had to hold her down during an endoscopy to see if esophageal cancer was the cause.
In surgery, a handsome young man was being eaten alive by cancer. From above the operating table, I could peer inside him and see tumors wrapping themselves around his vital organs.
In psychiatry, a waifish princess look-alike — mascara dripping down her porcelain cheekbones — was committed to our ward for hearing voices not of this world.
I found my way back to stories. The Grimm fairy tales once seemed as if they took place in lands far, far away, but I see them now in my everyday hospital rotations. I’ve met the eternal cast of characters. I’ve taken down their histories (the abandoned prince, the barren couple) or seen their handiwork (the evil stepmother, the lecherous king). readmore