Among the unusual things that we may think we know, some of them can't be taught. Dreaming is one of those.
There is no picture, not a single detail, about what a dream is like. We never know if babies have dreams. I didn't have the feeblest idea how to teach my angel daughter what a dream is like, until she woke up one afternoon asking for her aunt.
"Auntie Simmy, what?" I stared at my daughter, nonplussed
"Oh yes, we're having udon. Where is she?"
Until then, I had not been able to tell my daughter she'd had a dream, and how a dream looks like.
Bit by bit, she learned and told us her dreams in the morning. At one time, she described playing pirate game with teacher in the kindergarten. It was as if we knew her dream because her mum was next to her in the dream, as if we had lived together in her dream and she was surprised to hear that her mum asked about the details of her pirate game.
"What do you mean? Mum, you should know. You were there."
Not that Jasmine thought her dream is real, far from it. In fact, she knows that the dream is imagined. If there is one thing we can make up - and there is only one thing - it's her dream. Any dream, any wish.
My daughter just told her mum yesterday, "Goodnight, let's meet again tonight and play Lego in my dream. Remember."
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Friday, March 21, 2014
Sorry
The very idea of apology is that it means respect between two parties. The phrase "I am sorry" opens the window to restore broken relationships. Everything before and everything after might as well not have mattered at all.
It seems to me that apologies have become increasingly rare. Over one month after an unfortunate story of a young doctor, we haven't heard the word sorry. I won't describe the story in detail here, because even in print it's too distressing.
I really don't want the story ruin my day, and quickly forgot it after I went home today. It's a lot happier to see my daughter playing with her best friend after work. The two of them had already played outdoors for an hour, with all kinds of games they come up with by themselves, and was running around indoors when I met them. I say I met them because I didn't really joined them. As parents, I was told, we should hover less because kids gain more when we do less.
I talked with the mum of my daughter's friend, when our children were within eyesight. It's not unusual to see and hear some arguments in the playroom: an unsupervised boy wielding a gun and blocking the way, another stroppy boy in green sweatshirt calling kids by nickname, other children joining in the bullying. As we chatted, we kept an eye on our children but tried not to go near. Kids would learn much more about the world when they make up, negotiate, and derive their own rules.
I stepped in at the end, when a boy said dirty words about girls' underwear.
I didn't think it solved the problem. Anyway, my daughter was fed up with those naughty boys and asked to leave. When she and her friend were putting on shoes, to my surprise, a boy came up and spoke to my daughter with a bow. "I'm sorry. I was mean to you."
I didn't expect to hear an apology today. Now I have.
It seems to me that apologies have become increasingly rare. Over one month after an unfortunate story of a young doctor, we haven't heard the word sorry. I won't describe the story in detail here, because even in print it's too distressing.
I really don't want the story ruin my day, and quickly forgot it after I went home today. It's a lot happier to see my daughter playing with her best friend after work. The two of them had already played outdoors for an hour, with all kinds of games they come up with by themselves, and was running around indoors when I met them. I say I met them because I didn't really joined them. As parents, I was told, we should hover less because kids gain more when we do less.
I talked with the mum of my daughter's friend, when our children were within eyesight. It's not unusual to see and hear some arguments in the playroom: an unsupervised boy wielding a gun and blocking the way, another stroppy boy in green sweatshirt calling kids by nickname, other children joining in the bullying. As we chatted, we kept an eye on our children but tried not to go near. Kids would learn much more about the world when they make up, negotiate, and derive their own rules.
I stepped in at the end, when a boy said dirty words about girls' underwear.
I didn't think it solved the problem. Anyway, my daughter was fed up with those naughty boys and asked to leave. When she and her friend were putting on shoes, to my surprise, a boy came up and spoke to my daughter with a bow. "I'm sorry. I was mean to you."
I didn't expect to hear an apology today. Now I have.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Pain
Do animals have rights? Does that mean we should treat animals equal as human beings?
That's a philosophical question I happened to come across during my recent reading.
Every so often in life we get to admit we cause animals pain, for one reason or another. Not many people (me included), on the other hand, would be prepared to stop eating animals because slaughtering animals induces animals pain.
Pain may be pain, Julian Baggini reasons, but it can become more (or less) serious depending on how and when it is felt, by what kind of creature. That is not to say that animal pain is trivial. There is clearly a moral concern when we kill animals, say, for the sake of testing cosmetics. Few things turn the stomach more when reading a passage how people torture dogs and cats for fun. How about chasing or killing a cockroach at your kitchen? Well, yes, being slapped by a slipper is unpleasant and painful, but as soon as it has passed, life of the cockroach goes on - or off, depending how precise we hit the cockroach. The same is not true for humans, as made clear by Baggini, because some more mentally sophisticated animals (like Homo sapiens) can turn their pain into longer-lasting suffering and become haunted by the memory of nasty pain.
That is why we should prioritise reducing human pain over animal pain. That made sense.
Yesterday morning, I taught my students how we inserted a catheter into the tummy of a patient whose kidneys suddenly stopped working. If we didn't make an effort to dialyse him, I told them, he would die shortly. Nonetheless, we had to use a pretty sharp needle to pop open his tummy. That's painful. Indeed, it seems hard to imagine how we can do that without causing suffering. The point of getting my patient sedated was discussed. Some of my students worried about getting the patient into sleep; they would rather suggest a bigger dose of painkiller. But that may not be the whole story of pain management. In other words, pain becomes a less serious problem if it won't be remembered or anticipated over time. That is why sedative, I would argue, serves to make the pain go away.
That's a philosophical question I happened to come across during my recent reading.
Every so often in life we get to admit we cause animals pain, for one reason or another. Not many people (me included), on the other hand, would be prepared to stop eating animals because slaughtering animals induces animals pain.
Pain may be pain, Julian Baggini reasons, but it can become more (or less) serious depending on how and when it is felt, by what kind of creature. That is not to say that animal pain is trivial. There is clearly a moral concern when we kill animals, say, for the sake of testing cosmetics. Few things turn the stomach more when reading a passage how people torture dogs and cats for fun. How about chasing or killing a cockroach at your kitchen? Well, yes, being slapped by a slipper is unpleasant and painful, but as soon as it has passed, life of the cockroach goes on - or off, depending how precise we hit the cockroach. The same is not true for humans, as made clear by Baggini, because some more mentally sophisticated animals (like Homo sapiens) can turn their pain into longer-lasting suffering and become haunted by the memory of nasty pain.
That is why we should prioritise reducing human pain over animal pain. That made sense.
Yesterday morning, I taught my students how we inserted a catheter into the tummy of a patient whose kidneys suddenly stopped working. If we didn't make an effort to dialyse him, I told them, he would die shortly. Nonetheless, we had to use a pretty sharp needle to pop open his tummy. That's painful. Indeed, it seems hard to imagine how we can do that without causing suffering. The point of getting my patient sedated was discussed. Some of my students worried about getting the patient into sleep; they would rather suggest a bigger dose of painkiller. But that may not be the whole story of pain management. In other words, pain becomes a less serious problem if it won't be remembered or anticipated over time. That is why sedative, I would argue, serves to make the pain go away.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Chirps and Beeps
Today there's no hospital area - day or night - that isn't noisy. Add to this spectrum of decibels all the increasing number of machines, like infusion pump alerts, monitors that sound when patients try to leave their beds, blood pressure and heart rate alarms. Add all the pagers and hospital telephones. Ultimately the (health care worker) attention deficit-(alarm and noise) hyperactivity disorder prevails.
As a new article in the Journal of the American Medical Association states, a tenet of medical alarm is that "the alarm activates only when a serious problem develops." As the level and complexity of patient care increase, unfortunately, more and more alerts have been invented. And no wonder: many of us believe hospital alarms should improve patient safety. This is true for critical alarms. On the other hand, many of the current alerts - visual or audible - probably don't bother a doctor or nurse that much, and are often disabled (such as a pop-up message about a patient's history of hepatitis) or muted (as is the case with a patient who triggers an alarm after minor movement in bed).
Simply put, we are caught up in a chaotic maze of cues, signals and noise. Whether we realize it or not, most of the modern hospital alerts are hyperactive enough to cause attention deficit or alarm fatigue. And the last thing we want to see is a man found dead in his hospital bed with a cardiac monitor that has been set to mute.
As a new article in the Journal of the American Medical Association states, a tenet of medical alarm is that "the alarm activates only when a serious problem develops." As the level and complexity of patient care increase, unfortunately, more and more alerts have been invented. And no wonder: many of us believe hospital alarms should improve patient safety. This is true for critical alarms. On the other hand, many of the current alerts - visual or audible - probably don't bother a doctor or nurse that much, and are often disabled (such as a pop-up message about a patient's history of hepatitis) or muted (as is the case with a patient who triggers an alarm after minor movement in bed).
Simply put, we are caught up in a chaotic maze of cues, signals and noise. Whether we realize it or not, most of the modern hospital alerts are hyperactive enough to cause attention deficit or alarm fatigue. And the last thing we want to see is a man found dead in his hospital bed with a cardiac monitor that has been set to mute.
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